Title: The Catholic World, Vol. 09, April, 1869-September, 1869
Author: Various
Language: English
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{i}

        The Catholic World.

         Monthly Magazine

  Of General Literature And Science.

----------

            Vol. IX.

   April, 1869, To September, 1869.

----------

           New York:

  The Catholic Publication House,

      126 Nassau Street.

            1869.

{ii}

       S. W. Green, Printer,
     16 and 18 Jacob St., N. Y.

{iii}

          Contents.


  Aubrey de Vere in America, 264.
  A Chinese Husband's Lament for his Wife, 279.
  Angela, 634, 756.
  Antiquities of New York, 652.
  All for the Faith, 684.

  Bishops of Rome, 86.
  Beethoven, 523, 607, 783.

  Catholic and Protestant Countries, Morality of, 52.
  Catholicity and Pantheism, 255, 554.
  Chinese Husband's Lament for his Wife, 279.
  Council of the Vatican, The Approaching, 356.
  Columbus at Salamanca, 433.
  Council of Baltimore, The Second Plenary, 497.
  Church, Our Established, 577.
  Charms of Nativity, 660.
  Conversion of Rome, The, 790.

  Daybreak, 37, 157, 303, 442, 588, 721.
  Duration of Life, Influence of Locality on, 73.
  De Vere, Aubrey, in America, 264.
  Dongan, Hon. Thomas, 767.

  Emily Linder, 98, 221.
  Educational Question, The, 121.

  Filial Affection, as Practised by the Chinese, 416.
  Foreign Literary Notes, 429, 711.
  Faith, All for the, 684.

  General Council, The Approaching, 14.
  Good Old Saxon, 318.

  Heremore Brandon, 63, 188.

  Ireland, Modern Street Ballads of, 32.
  Irish Church Act of 1869, The, 238.
  Immigration, The Philosophy of, 399.
  Ireland, A Glimpse of, 738.

  Jewish Church, Letter and Spirit in the, 690.

  Linder, Emily, 98, 221.
  Lecky on Morals, 529.
  Letter and Spirit in the Jewish Church, 690.
  Leo X. and his Age, 699.
  Little Flowers of Spain, 706.

  Morality of Catholic and Protestant Countries, 52.
  My Mother's Only Son, 249.
  Man, Primeval, 746.
  Moral Aspects of Romanism, 845.
  Matanzas, How it came to be called Matanzas, 852.

  New-York, Antiquities of, 652.
  Nativity, The Charms of, 660.

  Omnibus, The, Two Hundred Years Ago, 135.
  Our Established Church, 577.

  Pope Joan, Fable of, 1.
  Problems of the Age and its Critics, 175.
  Pope or People, 212.
  Physical Basis of Life, The, 467.
  Primeval Man, 746.
  Paganina, 803.

  Rome, The Bishops of, 86.
  Ravignan, Xavier de, 112.
  Ruined Life, A, 385.
  Roses, The Geography of, 406.
  Religion Emblemed in Flowers, 541.
  Rome, Conversion of, 790.
  Recent Scientific Discoveries, 814.

  Spain, Two Months in, 199, 343, 477, 675.
  Spiritism and Spirits, 289.
  Supernatural, The, 325.
  St. Mary's, 366.
  St. Peter, First Bishop of Rome, 374.
  Spanish Life and Character, 413.
  Sauntering, 459, 612.
  Sister Aloyse's Bequest, 489.
  St. Thomas, The Legend of, 512.
  Spiritualism and Materialism, 619.
  Spain, Little Flowers of, 706.
  Scientific Discoveries, Recent, 814.
  St. Oren's Priory, 829.

  The Woman Question, 145.
  The Omnibus Two Hundred Years Ago, 135.
  To those who tell us what Time it is, 565.
  The New Englander on the Moral Aspects of Romanism, 845.

  Woman Question, The, 145.

----------

{iv}

            Poetry


  A May Flower, 282.
  A May Carol, 373.

  Faith, 540.

  Lent, 1869, 31.

  March Omens, 97.
  May Flower, 282.
  May Carol, 373.
  Mark IV., 587.
  Mother's Prayer, A, 673.

  Our Lady's Easter, 197.

  Sick, 852.

  To a Favorite Madonna, 564.
  The Pearl and the Poison, 710.
  The Flight into Egypt, 766.
  The Assumption of Our Lady, 789.

  Vigil, 405.

  When, 72.
  Waiting, 323.

----------

         New Publications.


  Allies's Formation of Christendom, 283.
  Anne Séverin, 286.
  Auerbach's Black Forest, 424.
  Ark of the Covenant, The, 427.
  Ark of Elm Island, 428.
  Alice's Adventures in Wonder Land, 429.
  Alice Murray, 570.
  Appleton's Annual Cyclopaedia, 719.
  An American Woman in Europe, 856.
  A German Reader, 859.

  Brickmose's Travels, 140.
  Bacon's False and True Definitions of Faith, 422.
  Banim's Life and Works, 716.

  Costello, John M., 143.
  Conyngham's Irish Brigade, 720.
  Cantarium Romanum, etc., 856.

  Dublin Review, The, 426.
  Dolby's Church Embroidery and Vestments, 427.
  Dotty Dimple Stories, 428.
  Die Alte und Neue Welt. 575.
  Die Jenseitige Welt, 715.
  Divorce, Essay on, 860.

  Eudoxia, 286.

  Free Masons, The, 426.
  Fernecliffe, 428.
  Fénélon's Conversations with de Ramsai, 573.

  Glimpses of Pleasant Homes, 423.

  Hewit's Medical Profession and the Educated Classes, 423.
  Herbert's, Lady, Love; or, Self-Sacrifice, 574.
  Heat, The Laws of, 576.
  Habermeister, The, 719.

  Juliette, 429.

  Life and Works of AEngussius, 141.
  Little Women, 576.
  Lover's Poetical Works, 859.

  McSherry's Essays, 142.
  Montarges Legacy, 286.
  McClure's Poems, 288.
  Manual of General History, 288.
  Martineau's Biographical Sketches, 425.
  Müller's Chips from a German Workshop, 571.
  Mental Photographs, 576.
  Mother Margaret M. Hallahan, Life of, 714.
  Meditations on the Suffering of our Lord Jesus Christ, 856.

  Nature and Grace, 574.
  Notre Dame, Silver Jubilee of, 858.
  Nora Brady's Vow, 859.

  Oxenham on the Atonement, 568.

  Pastoral of the Archbishop of Baltimore, 571,
  Problematic Characters, 717.

  Reminiscences of Mendelssohn, 428.
  Report on Gun-shot Wounds, 857.

  Sunday-School Class-Book, 287.
  Studious Women, 287.
  Salt-Water Dick, 428.
  Sogarth Aroon, 719.
  Service Manual, Military, 857.

  Thunder and Lightning, 284.
  Twelve Nights in a Hunter's Camp, 427.
  Taine's Italy, Florence, etc., 574.
  The Fisher Maiden, 576.
  The Two Schools, 859.
  The Irish Widow's Son, 860.

  Veith's Instruments of the Passion, 141.

  Wonders of Optics, The, 284.
  Why Men do not Believe, 284.
  Wiseman's Meditations, 421.
  Winifred, 575.
  Warwick, 716.
  Walter Savage Landor, 718.
  Wandering Recollections of a Busy Life, 718.
  Way of Salvation, The, 859.

  Young Christian's Library, 719.

----------

{1}

       The Catholic World.

----------

   Vol. IX., No. 49. April, 1869.

----------

        The Fable Of Pope Joan.

  "But avoid foolish and old wives' fables."--I Tim. iv. 7.


Every one is more or less familiar with the story of a female
pope, which runs thus: Pope Leo IV. died in 855, and in the
catalogue of Popes Benedict III. appears as his successor. This,
claim the Joan story-tellers, is incorrect; for between Leo and
Benedict the papal throne was for more than two years occupied by
a woman. Her name is not permitted to appear in the list of
popes, for the reason that historians devoted to the interests of
the church desired to throw the veil of oblivion over so
sacrilegious a scandal, and here, say they, is the true account
of the affair.

On the death of Leo IV. the clergy and people of Rome met to
elect his successor, and they chose a young priest, a comparative
stranger in Rome, who during his short residence there had
acquired an immense reputation for learning and virtue, and who,
on becoming pope, assumed the name of John VII., or, according to
some, John VIII. [Footnote 1]

    [Footnote 1: And it was the most convenient one to take.
    Before 855 there were seven popes named John, and at the
    period when the story began to spread there had been
    twenty-one.]

Now, the pope so elected was, in fact, a woman, the daughter of
an English couple travelling in Germany. She was born in Fulda,
where she grew up and was well educated. Disguised as a man, she
entered the monastery at Fulda, where she remained undiscovered
for years, and from which she eventually eloped with a monk. They
fled to England, thence to France and Italy, and finally to
Greece. They were both profoundly versed in all the science of
the day, and went to Athens to study the literature and language
of that country. Here the monk died. Giovanna (her name was also
Gilberta or Agnes, according to the fancy of the writer)
[Footnote 2] then left Athens and went to Rome, where her
reputation for learning and the fame of her virtue soon spread.

    [Footnote 2:  Her maiden name was for the first time given at
    end of 14th century. It was then Agnes.]

She gave public lectures and disputations, to which she attracted
immense crowds of hearers, all delighted with her exemplary piety
and astonished at her matchless learning.

{2}

All the students of Rome, and even professors, flocked to hear
her. On the death of Leo, she was elected pope by the clergy and
people of Rome from among many men preëminent for their learning
and virtue. After governing with great wisdom for more than two
years--there being not the slightest suspicion of her sex--she
left the Vatican on a certain festival at the head of the clergy,
to walk in procession to the Lateran; but on the way was seized
with the pains of labor, and in the open street, amid the
astounded bishops and clergy and surrounding concourse of people,
then and there gave birth to a child--and died. After this
occurrence, it was determined that the pontiff in procession
should never pass that desecrated street, and a statue was placed
on the spot to perpetuate the infamy of the fact, and a certain
ceremony, minutely described, was ordained to be observed at the
consecration of all future popes, in order to prevent the
possibility of any similar scandal.

Of course there are numerous versions of the narrative,
infinitely varied in every detail, as is apt to be the case with
any story starting from no place or person in particular and
contributed to by everybody in general.

As told, this incident is supposed to fill every polemical
Protestant with delight, and to fill convicted Catholics with
what Carlyle calls "astonishment and unknown pangs."

Now, granting every tittle of the story as related to be true, we
see no good reason for delight on one side nor pangs on the
other. We repeat, conceding its entire truth, there is nothing in
the story that necessarily entails injury or disgrace on the
Catholic Church. Why should it? Catholic morality and doctrine do
not depend upon the personal qualities of popes. In this case,
supposing the story true, who was elected pope? A man--as all
concerned honestly believed--of acknowledged learning and virtue.
There was no intrigue, no improper influence; and those who
elected him had no share in the imposture, but were the victims,
not the participators, of the deceit practised. The cunning and
the imposture were all hers, and her crime consisted, not in
being delivered in the streets, but in not having lived chastely.
True, it was a scandalous accident; but the scandal could not add
to the original immorality of which, in all the world, but two
persons were guilty, and guilty in secret--for there is no
pretence, in all the versions, that the outward life of the
pretended she-pope was otherwise than blameless and even
edifying. Those who elected her were totally ignorant of her
sex--an ignorance entirely excusable--an error of fact brought
about by artful imposture. To their honor be it said, that they
recognized in their choice the sole merits of piety and learning,
and wished to reward them.

But a female pope was once the head of the church! Dreadful
reproach to come from those who call themselves Reformed,
Evangelical, and Puritans, who have not only tolerated but
established, nay, and even forced some queens and princesses to
declare themselves Head of the Church or Defender of the Faith in
their own dominions, and dispose--as one of them does to this
day--of church dignities and benefices, and order other matters
ecclesiastical according to their personal will and pleasure.

Let us now look into the story and examine the testimony on which
it is founded. The popess is said to have reigned two years and
more. Rome was then the greatest city and the very centre of the
civilized world, and always full of strangers from all parts of
the earth.
{3}
The catastrophe of the discovery brought about by the street
delivery took place under the eyes of a vast multitude of people,
and must have been known on the same day to the entire city
before the sun had set. An event so strange, so romantic, so
astounding, so scandalous, concerning the most exalted personage
in the world, must surely have been written about or chronicled
by the Italians who were there, and reported by letter or word of
mouth by foreigners to their friends at home, and found its way
from a thousand sources into the writings of the time; for it
must be remembered the pope, of all living men, was of especial
interest to the class who at that period were in the habit of
writing. Such testimony as this, being the evidence of
eye-witnesses, would be the highest testimony, and would settle
the fact beyond dispute. Where is it? Silence profound is our
only answer. Nothing of the kind is on the record of that period.
Ah! then in that case we must suppose the matter to have been
temporarily hushed up, and we will consent to receive accounts
written ten, twenty--well, we'll not haggle about a score or
two--or even fifty years later. Silence again! Not a scrap, not a
solitary line can be found.

And so we travel through all the history which learning and
industry have been able to rescue from the re-cords of the past
down to the end of the ninth century, and find the same unbroken
silence.

We must then go to the tenth century, where the murder will
surely out. Silence again, deep and profound, through all the
long years from 900 to 1000, and all is blank as before!

And now we again go on beyond another half-century, still void of
all mention of Pope Joan, until we reach the year 1058, just two
hundred and three years after the assigned Joanide.

In that year a monk, Marianus Scotus, of the monastery of Fulda,
commenced a universal chronicle, which was terminated in 1083.
Somewhere between these dates, in recording the events of 855, he
is said to have written: "Leo the Pope died on the 1st of August.
To him succeeded John, who was a woman, and sat for two years,
five months, and four days." Only this and nothing more. Not a
word of her age, origin, qualities, or circumstances of her
death. So far it is not much of a story; but little by little,
link by link, line by line, like unto the veridical and melodious
narrative of _The House that Jack built_, we'll contrive to
make a good story of it yet. The statement first appears in
Marianus. So much is certain. For during the seventeenth century,
when the Joan controversy raged, and cartloads of books and
pamphlets were written on the subject--a mere list of the titles
of which would exceed the limits of this article--every library
and collection in Europe was ransacked with the furious industry
of which a polemic writer is alone capable, for every--even the
smallest--fragment or thread connected with this subject.
Nevertheless, this ransacking was neither so thorough nor so
successful as during the present century; for, as the learned
Döllinger states, "it is only within forty years that all the
European collections of mediaeval MSS. have been investigated
with unprecedented care, every library, nook, and corner
thoroughly searched, and a surprising quantity of hitherto
unknown historical documents brought to light."

Comparing the so-called statement of Marianus with the latest
sensational and circumstantial relation, it is plain that the
story did not, like Minerva, spring full-armed into life, but
that it is the result of a long and gradual growth, fostered by
the genius of a long series of inventive chroniclers.

{4}

But where did the monk of Fulda get the story? Ah! here is an
interesting episode. His chronicle was first printed at Basle
(1559) from the text known as the Latomus MS. Its editor was John
Herold, a Calvinist of note, who, in printing the pas-sage in
question, quietly left out the words of the original, "_ut
asseritur_"--that is to say, "as report goes," or "believe it
who will"--thus changing the chronicler's hearsay to a direct and
positive assertion.

But the testimony of the Marianus chronicle comes to still
greater grief, And here a word of explanation. The Original MS.
Of Marianus is not known to exist, but we have numerous copies of
it, the respective ages of which are well ascertained. Döllinger
mentions two of them well known in Germany to be the oldest in
existence, in which not a word concerning the popess can be
found. The copy in which it is found is of 1513, and the
explanation as to its appearance there is simple. The passage in
question was doubtless put in the margin by some reader or
copyist, and by some later copyist inserted in the text, And so
we return to the original dark silence in which we started.

A feeble attempt was made to claim that Sigbert of Gembloux, who
died in 1113, had recorded the story; but it was triumphantly
demonstrated that it was first added to his chronicle in an
edition of 1513. The same attempt was made with Gottfried's
_Pantheon_ and the chronicle of Otto von Freysingen, and
also lamentably failed. In 1261, there died a certain Stephen of
Bourbon, a French Dominican, who left a work in which he speaks
of the popess, and says he got the statement from a chronicle
which must have been that of Jean de Mailly, a brother Dominican.

To the year 1240 or 1250 may then be assigned, on the highest
authority, the period when the Joan story first made its
appearance in writing and in history--nearly four hundred years
after its supposed date.

In 1261, an anonymous unedited chronicle, still preserved in the
library of St. Paul at Leipsic, states that "another false pope,
name and date unknown, since she was a woman, as the Romans
confess, of great beauty and learning, who concealed her sex and
was elected pope. She became with child, and the demon in a
consistory made the fact known to all by crying aloud to the
pope:

  "Papa Pater Patrum papissae pandito partum,
   Et tibi tunc edam de corpore quando recedam."

Some chroniclers relate it differently, namely, that the pope
undertook to exorcise a person possessed of an evil spirit, and
on demanding of the devil when he would go out from the possessed
person's body, the evil one replied in the Latin verses above
given, that is to say, "O Pope! thou father of the fathers,
declare the time of the pope's parturition, and I will then tell
you when I will go out from this body."

The demon always was a fellow who had a keen eye for the
fashions, and he appears to have indulged in alliterative Latin
poetry precisely at the period when that sort of literary
trifling was most in vogue among scholars who recreated
themselves with such lines as

  "Ruderibus rejectis Rufus Festus fieri fecit;"

or

  "Roma Ruet Romuli Ferro Flammaque Fameque."

{5}

A few years later, Martinus Polaccus or Polonus, Martin the
Polack, or the Pole, (Polack is now disused, Shakespeare makes
Horatio say, "_He smote the sledded Polack on the ice,_")
who died in 1278, the author of a chronicle of popes and emperors
down to 1207, says: "John of England, by nation of Mayence, sat 2
years, 5 months, and 4 days. It is said that this pope was a
woman." The chronicle of Polonus is merely a synchronistic
history of the popes and emperors in the form of dry biographical
notices. Nevertheless, from the fact that he had lived many years
in Rome and was intimate with the papal court his book had, to
use a modern phrase, an immense run. [Footnote 3]

    [Footnote 3: The tradition concerning the resignation of Pope
    Cyriacus was also widely spread by the same chronicle. The
    story ran that Pope Cyriacus resigned the pontificate in the
    year 238, and first took its rise a thousand years after that
    date. It was pure fiction, and was connected with the legend
    of St. Ursula and her 11,000 virgins. No such pope as
    Cyriacus ever existed.]

It was translated into all the principal languages, and more
extensively copied than any chronicle then existing. The number
of copies (MS.) still in existence far exceeds that of any other
work of the kind, and this fact suggests an important reflection.
Great stress is laid by some writers on the multitude of
witnesses for Joan. But the multitude does not increase the proof
when they but repeat one another, and they suspiciously testify
in nearly the same words. "The advocates for Pope Joan," says
Gibbon, "produce one hundred and fifty witnesses, or rather
echoes, of the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries.
They bear testimony against themselves and the legend by
multiplying the proof that so curious a story _must_ have
been repeated by writers of every description to whom it was
known."

The various versions that copy one another must necessarily bear
a strong family likeness. Their number can add nothing to their
value as proof, and is no more conclusive than the endeavor to
establish the doubted existence of a man by a great variety of
portraits of him, all--as Whately so well remarks in his
_Historic Doubts_--"all striking likenesses--of each
other."

In this case the most ancient testimony is posterior to the
claimed occurrence some four hundred years, and is utterly
inconsistent with the indisputable facts related by contemporary
authors. The erudite Launoy, in his treatise _De Auctoritate
Negantis Argumenti_, lays down the rule that a fact of a
public nature not mentioned by any writer within two hundred
years of its supposed occurrence is not to be believed. This is
the same Launoy who waged war on the legends of the saints,
claiming that much fabulous matter had crept into them. On this
account he was called "Dénicheur des Saints"--the Saint-hunter or
router--and the Abbé of St. Roch used to say, "I am always
profoundly polite to Launoy, for fear he will deprive me of St.
Roch." The general rule (Launoy's) so important in historical
criticism is in perfect harmony with a great and leading
principle of jurisprudence. In the Pope Joan incident the silence
of all the writers of that age as to so remarkable a circumstance
is to be fairly received as a _prerogative_ argument
(Baconian philosophy) when set up against the numerous modern
repetitions of the story. It may be taken as a general rule that
the silence of contemporaries is the strongest argument against
the truth of any given historical assertion, particularly when
the fact asserted is strange and interesting, and this for the
reason that man is ever prone to believe and recount the
marvellous; and in the absence of early evidence, the testimony
of later times is, for the same reason, only weaker.
{6}
Now this is in strict accordance with the principle of English
common law, which demands the highest and rejects hearsay and
secondary evidence; for scores of witnesses may depose in vain
that they have heard of such a fact; the eye-witness is the
prerogative instance. This is the logic of evidence.

And now we find that what happened to Marianus Scotus also befell
Polonus. He was entirely innocent of any mention of Joan! The
passage exists in none of the oldest copies, and is wanting in
all that follow the author's close and methodical plan of giving
one line to each year of a pope's reign, so that, with fifty
lines to the page as he wrote, each page covered precisely half a
century. This method is entirely broken up in those MSS. which
contain the passage concerning Joan, and the rage to get the
passage in was such that in one copy (the Heidelberg MS.)
Benedict III. is left out entirely and Joan put in his place. Dr.
Döllinger and the learned Bayle concur in the opinion that the
passage never had any existence in the original work of Polonus.

And just at this juncture the testimony of Tolomeo di Lucca
(1312) is important. He wrote an ecclesiastical history, and
names the popess with the remark that in all the histories and
chronicles known to him Benedict III. succeeded Leo IV. The
author was noted for learning and industry, and must necessarily
have consulted every available authority, and yet nowhere did he
find mention of Joan but in Polonus. In 1283, a versified
chronicle of Maerlandt (a Hollander) mentions Joan: "I am neither
clear nor certain whether it is a truth or a fable; mention of it
in chronicles of the popes is uncommon."

And now, as we advance into the fourteenth century, as
manuscripts multiply and one chronicler copies another, mention
of Joan increases; and successively and in due order, as the
malt, the rat, the cat, the dog, and all the rest appear in turn
to make perfect the nursery ditty, so the statue, the street, the
ceremony, and all the remaining features of the story come
gradually out, until we have it in full and detailed description,
and our popular papal "House that Jack built" is complete.

Then we have Geoffrey of Courlon, a Benedictine, (1295,) Bernard
Guidonis and Leo von Orvieto, both Dominicans, (1311,) John of
Paris, Dominican, (first half of fourteenth century,) and several
others, all of whom take the story from Polonus.

In 1306, we get the statue from Siegfried, who thus contributes
his quota: "At Rome, in a certain spot of the city, is still
shown her statue in pontifical dress, together with the image of
her child cut in marble in a wall." Bayle says that Thierry di
Niem (fifteenth century) "adds out of his own head" the statue.
But it appears that it was referred to twenty-three years earlier
than Siegfried by Maerlandt, the Hollander, who says that the
story as we read it is cut in stone and can be seen any day:

  "En daer leget soe, als wyt lesen
   Noch aleo up ten Steen ghebouween,
   Dat men ano daer mag scouwen."

Amalric di Angier wrote in 1362, and adds to the story her
"teaching three years at Rome." Petrarch repeats the version of
Polonus. Boccacio also relates it, and was the first who at that
period asserted her name was not known.

Jacopo de Acqui (1370) says that she reigned nineteen years.

Aimery du Peyrat, abbot of Moissac, who compiled a chronicle in
1399, puts "Johannes Anglicus" in the list of popes with the
remark, "Some say that she was a woman."

{7}

In 1450, Martin le Franc, in his _Champion des Dames_,
expresses surprise that Providence should have permitted such a
scandal as to allow the church to be governed by a wicked woman.

  "Comment endura Dieu, comment
   Que femme ribaulde et prestresse
   Eut l'Eglise en gouvernement?"

Hallam (_Literature of Europe_) mentions as among the most
remarkable among the Fastnacht's Spiele (carnival plays) of
Germany the apotheosis of Pope Joan, a tragic-comic legend,
written about 1480. Bouterwek, in his History of German Poetry,
also mentions it.

In 1481, "to swell the dose," as Bayle says, the stool feature of
the story first comes in.

In the Nuremberg Chronicle of 1493 (Astor Library copy) Joan is
put down as Joannes Septimus, and the page ornamented (?) with a
wood-cut of a woman with a child in her arms. It relates that she
gained the pontificate by evil arts, "malis artibus."

In the beginning of the same century there was seen a bust of
Joan among the collection of busts of the popes in the cathedral
at Sienna. And, more astonishing still, the story was related in
the _Mirabilia urbis Roma_, a sort of guide-book for
strangers and pilgrims visiting Rome, editions of which were
constantly reprinted for a period of eighty years down to 1550!

In the middle of the fifteenth century we find the story related
at full length by Felix Hammerlein, and later by John Bale, then
Bishop of Ossory, who afterward became a Protestant. He pretty
well completes the tale.

According to Tolomeo di Lucca, the Joan story in 1312 was nowhere
found but in some few copies of Polonus. Nevertheless, it is
notorious that at that time countless lists and historical tables
of popes were in existence, in none of which was there any trace
of the popess.

Suddenly we find extraordinary industry exercised in multiplying
and spreading the copies of Polonus containing the story, and in
inserting it in other chronicles that did not contain it. As the
editors of the _Histoire Littéraire e France_ aptly remark:
"Nous ne saurions nous expliquer comment il se fait que ce soit
précisëment dans les rangs de cette fidèle milice du saint-siège
que se rencontrent les propagateurs les plus naïfs, et peut-être
les inventeurs, d'une histoire si injurieuse à la papauté."
[Footnote 4]

    [Footnote 4: "We cannot understand how it is that, precisely
    among the ranks of the faithful soldiers of the holy see, we
    find the most credulous propagators and, perhaps, inventors
    of a story so injurious to the papacy."]

Dr. Döllinger answers this by stating that those who appeared to
be most active in the matter were Dominicans and Minorites,
particularly the former, (Sie waren es ja, besonders die ersten.)
This is specially to be remarked under the primacy of Boniface
VIII., who was no friend of either order. The Dominican
historians were particularly severe in their judgments on
Boniface in the matter of his difficulty with Philip the Fair,
and appear to dwell with satisfaction upon this period of the
weakened authority of the papal see.

In 1610, Alexander Cooke published in London, "_Pope Ioane, a
Dialogue Betweene a Protestant and a Papist, manifestly prouing
that a woman called Ioane was Pope of Rome: against the surmises
and objections made to the contrarie_," etc. Cooke has a
preface, "To the Popish or Catholicke reader--chuse whether name
thou hast a mind to;" which is very handsome indeed of Mr. Cooke.

{8}

The papist in the _Dialogue_ has a dreadful time of it from
one end of the book to the other, and Gregory VII. is effectually
settled by calling him "that firebrand of hell." Bayle grimly
disposes of Cooke's work thus: "It had been better for his cause
if he had kept silence."

Discussion of the story comes even down to this century. In 1843
and 1845 two works appeared in Holland: one, by Professor Kist,
to prove the existence of Joan; the other, by Professor Wensing,
to refute Kist. In 1845 was also published a very able work by
Bianchi-Giovini: _Esame critico degli atti e Documenti relativi
alla favola della Papissa Giovanna_. Di A. Bianchi-Giovini.
Milano.

It is doubtful if in all the annals of literature there exists a
more remarkable case of pure fable growing, by small and slow
degrees through several centuries, until, in the shape of a
received fact, it finally effects a lodgment in serious history.
Taking its rise no one knows where or how, full four hundred
years after the period assigned it, and stated at first in the
baldest and thinnest manner possible, it goes on from century to
century, gathering consistence, detail, and incident; requiring
three centuries for its completion, and, finally, comes out the
sensational affair we have related. All stories gain by time and
travel; scandalous stories most of all. These last are
particularly robust and long-lived. They appear to enjoy a
freedom amounting to immunity. Just as certain noxious and
foul-smelling animals frequently owe their life to the
unwillingness men have to expose themselves to such contact, so
such stories, looked upon at first as merely scandalous and too
contemptible for serious refutation, acquire, through impunity,
an importance that, in the end, makes them seriously annoying.
Then, too, well-meaning people thoughtlessly accept reports and
repeat statements that, through mere iteration, are supposed to
be well-founded. Let any one, be his or her experience ever so
small, look around and see how fully this is exemplified every
day in real life.

Moreover, there was no dearth of writers in the middle ages who
used, to the extent of license, the liberty of criticising and
blaming the papacy. By all such the Joan story was invariably put
forward by way of illustration; and they appear to have gone on
unchecked until it was found that the open enemies of the church
began to avail themselves of the scandal.

In 1451, AEneas Sylvius Piccolomini, (Pius II.,) in conference
with the Taborites of Bohemia, denied the story, and told
Nicholas, their bishop, that, "even in placing thus this woman,
there had been neither error of faith nor of right, but ignorance
of fact." Aventinus, in Germany, and Onuphrius Pauvinius, in
Italy, staggered the popularity of the story. Attention once
drawn to the subject, and investigation commenced, its weakness
was soon apparent, and testimony soon accumulated to crush it.

Ado, Archbishop of Vienne, (France,) who was at Rome in 866, has
left a chronicle in which he says that Benedict III. succeeded
immediately to Leo IV.

Prudentius, Bishop of Troyes at the same period, testifies to the
same fact.

In 855, the assigned Joanide period, there were in Rome four
individuals who afterward successively became popes, under the
names of Benedict III., Nicholas I., Adrian II., and John VIII.
During the pretended papacy of Joan these men were all either
priests or deacons, and must have taken part in her election, and
have been present at the catastrophe, Now, of all these popes
there exist many and various writings, but not a word concerning
the popess. On the contrary, they all represent Benedict III. to
have succeeded Leo IV.

{9}

Lupo, Abbot of Ferrières, in a letter to Pope Benedict, says that
he, the abbot, had been kindly received at Rome by his
predecessor, Leo IV.

In a council held at Rome, in 863, under Nicholas I., the pontiff
speaks of his predecessors Leo and Benedict.

Hincmar, Archbishop of Rheims, writing to Nicholas I., says that
certain messengers sent by him to Leo IV. had been met on their
journey by news of that pontiff's death, and had, on their
arrival at Rome, found Benedict on the throne. Ten other
contemporary writers are cited who all testify to the same
immediate succession, and afford not the slightest hint of any
story or tradition that can throw the least light on that of the
female pope. "The time of Pope Joan," says Gibbon, "is placed
somewhat earlier than Theodora or Marozia; and the two years of
her imaginary reign are forcibly inserted between Leo IV. and
Benedict III. But the contemporary Anastasius indissolubly links
the death of Leo and the elevation of Benedict; and the accurate
chronology of Pagi, Muratori, and Leibnitz fixes both events to
the year 857."

But there is no smoke without fire, it is said; and the wildest
stories must have some cause, if not foundation. Let us see.
Competent critics find the story to be a satire on John VIII.
"_Ob nimiam ejus animi facilitatem et mollitudinem_" says
Baronius, particularly in the affair with Photius, by whom John
had suffered himself to be imposed upon. Photius, Patriarch of
Constantinople, was known to be a half-man, and yet so cunning to
overreach John. Therefore they said John Was a woman, and called
him Joanna, instead Of Joannes, in that tone of bitter raillery
constantly indulged in by the Roman Pasquins and Marforios, and
this raillery, naturally enough, in course of time came to be
taken for truth.

And again: Pope John X., elected in 914, was said to have been
raised by the power and influence of Theodora, a woman of talent
and unscrupulous intrigue. In 931, John, the son of Marozia and
Duke Alberic, and grandson of Theodora, was said to be a mere
puppet in the hands of his mother. "Their reign," (Theodora and
Marozia,) says Gibbon, "may have suggested to the darker ages the
fable of a female pope."

Again, in 956, a grandson of the same Marozia was raised to the
papal chair as John XII. [Footnote 5] He renounced the dress and
decencies of his profession, and his life was so scandalous that
he was degraded by a synod. Onuphrius Pauvinius and Liutprand are
quoted to show that a woman, Joan, had such influence over him
that he loaded her with riches. She is said to have died in
childbed.

    [Footnote 5: At this period the church was as yet without the
    advantages of the great reform effected by Gregory VII. in
    1073, and the choice of a pope by the bishops or cardinals
    was ratified or rejected by the Roman people, too often, at
    that time, the dupes or tools of such men as the marquises of
    Tuscany and the counts of Tusculum, who, says Gibbon, "held
    the apostolic see in a long and disgraceful servitude."]

Long series of years preceding and following these events were
anything but times of pleasantness and peace to the successors of
St. Peter. Even Gibbon says, "The Roman pontiffs of the ninth and
tenth centuries were insulted, imprisoned, and murdered by their
tyrants, and such was their indigence, after the loss and
usurpation of the ecclesiastical patrimonies, that they could
neither support the state of a prince nor exercise the charity of
a priest."

{10}

Now, with such materials as these, a Pope Joan story is easily
constructed; for, with the license of speech that has always
existed in Rome in the form of pasquinades, it is more than
likely to have been satirically remarked by the Romans under one
or all of the three popes John, that Rome had a popess instead of
a pope, and that the chair of St. Peter was virtually occupied by
a female. These things would be repeated from mouth to mouth by
men who, according to their temper and ability, would comment on
them with bitter scoff, irreverent comment, snarling sneer, or
ribald leer, and they might readily have been received as matter
of fact assertions by German and other strangers in Rome.

Carried home and spread by wandering monks and soldiers, it is
only wonderful that they did not sooner come to the surface in
some such fable as the one under consideration. Diffused among
the people, and acquiring a certain degree of consistence by dint
of repetition through two centuries, it finally reached the ear
of the individual who inserted it in the Marianus chronicle in
the form of an _on dit_, and so he put it down "_ut
asseritur_"--"they say."

Certain it is that no such story was known in Italy until it was
spread from German chroniclers, and the absurdity was too
monstrous to pass into contemporary history even in a foreign
country.

But, it is answered, by Coeffetau and others, we do not hear of
it for so many years afterward because the church exerted its
omnipotent authority to hush up the story. There needs but slight
knowledge of human nature to decide that such an attempt would
have only served to spread and intensify the scandal. As Bayle
wisely remarks, "People do not so expose their authority by
prohibitions which are not of a nature to be observed, and which,
so far from shutting their mouth, rather excite an itching desire
to speak."

Then, too, it is claimed that for a period of several hundred
years after 855, writers and chroniclers, by agreement, tacit or
express, not only maintained a profound silence on the subject of
the scandal, but, in all Christian countries of the world,
conspired to alter the order of papal succession, forge
chronicles, and falsify historical records. And yet those who use
this argument tell us that in the city of Rome, under papal
authority, a statue was erected, an order issued, turning aside
processions from their time-consecrated itinerary, and customs as
remarkable for their indecency as their novelty were introduced,
_in order to perpetuate the memory_ of the very same events
tyrannical edicts were issued to conceal and blot out! Comment is
not needed.

The total silence of contemporary writers, and the immense chasm
of two hundred years (taking the earliest date claimed) between
the event and its first mention, was, of course, found fatal.
Consequently, an attempt was made to prop up the story by the
assertion that it was chronicled by Anastasius the Librarian, who
lived in Rome at the alleged Joannic period, was present at the
election of all the popes from 844 to 882, and must, therefore,
have been a witness of the catastrophe of 855. The testimony of
such a witness would certainly be valuable--indeed irrefutable.
Accordingly a MS. of the fourteenth century, a copy of the
Anastasian MS., was produced, in which mention was made of Pope
Joan. But this mention was attended with three suspicious
circumstances. First, it was qualified by an "_ut dicitur_"
"as is said." Anastasius would scarcely need an _on dit_ to
qualify his own testimony concerning an event that took place
under his own eyes, and must have morally convulsed all Rome.
{11}
Secondly, it was not in the text, but in a marginal note.
Thirdly, and fatally, the entire sentence was in the very words
of the Polonus chronicle. Naturally enough, it was found singular
that Anastasius, writing in the ninth century, should use the
identical phraseology of Polonus, who was posterior to him by
four hundred years.

But, in addition to these reasons, Anastasius gives a
circumstantial account of the election of Benedict III. to
succeed Leo IV., absolutely filling up the space needed for Joan.
In view of all which the critical Bayle is moved to exclaim,
"Therefore I say what relates to this woman (Joan) is spurious,
and comes from another hand." A zealous Protestant, Sarrurius,
writes to his co-religionist, Salmasius, (the same who had a
controversy with Milton,) after examining the Anastasian MS.,
"The story of the she-pope has been tacked to it by one who had
misused his time." And Gibbon says, "A most palpable forgery is
the passage of Pope Joan which has been foisted into some MSS.
and editions of the Roman Anastasius."

With regard to the early chronicle MSS., it must be borne in mind
that it was common for their readers (owners) to write additions
in the margin, A professional copyist--the publisher of those
days--usually incorporated the marginal notes with the text.
Books were then, of course, dear and scarce, and readers
frequently put in the margin the supplements another book could
furnish them, rather than buy two books. Then again--for men are
alike in all ages--those who purchased valuable books wanted, as
they want to-day, the fullest edition, with all the latest
emendations. So a chronicle with the Joan story would always be
more saleable than one without it.

But one of the strongest presumptions against the truth of the
story is seen in the profound silence of the Greek writers of the
period, (ninth to fifteenth century.) All of them who sided with
Photius were bitterly hostile to Rome, and the question of the
supremacy of the pope was precisely the vital one between Rome
and Constantinople. They would have been only too glad to get
hold of such a scandal. Numbers of Greeks were in Rome in 855,
and if such a catastrophe as the Joanine had occurred, they must
have known it. "On writers of the ninth and tenth centuries,"
says Gibbon, "the recent event would have flashed with a double
force. Would Photius have spared such a reproach? Would Liutprand
have missed such a scandal?"

We have disposed of the absurdity of the supposition that the
power and discipline of the church were so great as to enforce
secrecy concerning the Joan affair. But--even granting the truth
of this assertion--that power and discipline would avail naught
with strangers who were Greeks and schismatics. In 863, only
eight years after the alleged Joanide, the Greek schism broke out
under Photius, who was excommunicated by Nicholas I. There was no
period from 855 to 863 when there were not numbers of Greeks in
the city of Rome--learned Greeks too. Many of them agreed with
Photius, who claimed that the transfer of the imperial residence,
by the emperors, from Rome to Constantinople, at the same time
transferred the primacy and its privileges. Yet not only can no
allusion to any such story be found in any Greek writer of that
century, but there is found in Photius himself no less than three
distinct and positive assertions that Benedict III. succeeded Leo
IV.

The Greek schism became permanent in 1053, under Cerularius,
Patriarch of Constantinople, who undertook to excommunicate the
legates of the pope.

{12}

With Cerularius, as with Photius, the papal supremacy was the
main question, and neither he nor Photius would have failed to
make capital of the Joan fable, had they ever heard of it. So
also with all the Byzantine writers, and they were numerous. It
was not until the fifteenth century that the first mention of the
story was made by one of them, (Chalcocondylas,) an Athenian of
the fifteenth century, who, in his _De Rebus Turcicis_,
states the case very singularly: "Formerly a woman was in the
papal chair, her sex not being manifest, because the men in
Italy, and, indeed, in all the countries of the West, are closely
shaved." It is true that Barlaam, a Greek writer, mentioned it in
the fourteenth century; but Barlaam was living in Italy when he
wrote his book.

And now, as we reach the so-called Reformation period, we find
the tale invested with a value and importance it had never before
assumed. It was kept constantly on active duty without relief,
and compelled to do fatiguing service in a thousand controversial
battles and skirmishes. Angry and over-zealous Protestants found
it a handy thing to have in their polemical house. And, although
the more judicious cared not to use it, the story was generally
retained. Spanheim and Lenfant endeavored to think it a worthy
weapon, and even Mosheim affects to cherish suspicion as to its
falsity. Jewell, one of Elizabeth's bishops (1560) seriously, and
with great show of learning, espoused Joan's claims to existence.

Nor were answers wanting; and, including those who had previously
written on the subject, it was fully confuted by Aventinus,
Onuphrius Pauvinius, Bellarmine, Serrarius, George Scherer,
Robert Parsons, Florimond de Rémond, Allatius, and many others.

The first Protestant to cast doubt on the fable was David
Blondel. A minister of the Reformed Church, Professor of History
at Amsterdam, in 1630, he was held by his co-religionists to be a
prodigy of learning in languages, theology, and ecclesiastical
history. In his _Fable de la Papesse Jeanne_, with
invincible logic and an intelligent application of the true
canons of historical criticism, he demonstrates the absence of
foundation for the story, the tottering and stuttering weakness
of its early years, the suspicions which stand around its cradle;
and, instead of disputing how far the Pope Joan story was
believed or credited in this or that century, shows that by her
own contemporaries she was never heard of at all; the whole story
being, he says, "an inlaid piece of work embellished with time."
Blondel was bitterly assailed by all sections of Protestantism,
and accused of "bribery and corruption," the question being
asked, "How much has the pope given him?" Blondel's work brought
out a crowd of writers in defence of Joan, foremost among whom
was the Protestant Des Marets or Maresius, whose labors in turn
called out the _Cenotaphium Papessae Joannae_ by the learned
Jesuit Labbe, the celebrity of whose name drew forth a phalanx of
writers in reply.

But the worst for Joanna was yet to come. Another Protestant,
undeterred by the abuse showered upon Blondel, gave Joan her
_coup de grace_. This was the learned Bayle, who, with rigid
and judicial impartiality, sums up the essence of all that had
been advanced on either side, and shows unanswerably the
altogether insufficient grounds on which the entire story rests.
More was not needed. Nevertheless, Eckhard and Leibnitz followed
Bayle in the extinguishing process, and made it disreputable for
any scholar of respectability to advocate the convicted
falsehood.

{13}

There was no dearth of other Protestant protests against Joan.
Casaubon, the most learned of the so-called reformers, laughed at
the fable. So did Thuanus. Justus Lipsius said of it, "Revera
fabella est haud longè ab audacia et ineptis poetarum." [Footnote
6] Schookius, professor at Groningen, totally disbelieved it. Dr.
Burnet, Bishop of Salisbury, said, "I don't believe the history
of Pope Joan," and gives his reasons. So, also, Dr. Bristow. Very
pertinent was the reflection of Jurieu, (a fanatical Protestant,
if ever there was one--the same noted for his controversy with
Bayle, who was a "friend of the family"--so much so, indeed, as
to cause the remark that Jurieu discovered many hidden things in
the Apocalypse, but could not see what was going on in his own
household,) in his _Apology for the Reformation_, "I don't
think we are much concerned to prove the truth of this story of
Pope Joan."

    [Footnote 6: "In truth, it is a fable not much differing from
    the boldness and silly stories of the poets."]

The erudite Anglican, Dr. Cave, says: "Nothing helped more to
make that Chronicle (Polonus) famous than the much talked of
fable of Pope Joan. For my own part, I am thoroughly convinced
that it is a mere fable, and that it has been thrust into
Martin's chronicle, especially since it is wanting in most of the
old manuscripts."

Hallam calls it a fable. Ranke passes it over in contemptuous
silence. So also does Sismondi; and Gibbon fairly pulverizes it
with scorn.

A favorite polemical arsenal for Episcopalians is found in the
works of Jewell, so-called Bishop of Salisbury. Let them be
warned against leaning on him concerning the Joan story. Listen
how quietly yet how effectually both Joan and Jewell are disposed
of by Henry Hart Milman, D.D., Dean of St. Paul's, in his
_History of Latin Christianity_: "The eight years of Leo's
papacy were chiefly occupied in restoring the plundered and
desecrated churches of the two apostles, and adorning Rome.

"_The succession to Leo IV. was contested between Benedict
III._, who commanded the suffrages of the clergy and people,
and Anastasius, who, at the head of an armed faction, seized the
Lateran, [Footnote 7] stripped Benedict of his pontifical robes,
and awaited the confirmation of his violent usurpation by the
imperial legates, whose influence he thought he had secured, But
the commissioners, after strict investigation, decided in favor
of Benedict. Anastasius was expelled with disgrace from the
Lateran, and his rival consecrated in the presence of the
emperor's representatives." [Footnote 8] Like Ranke, Milman also
passes over the Joan story with contemptuous silence.

    [Footnote 7: Sept A.D. 855.]

    [Footnote 8: Sept. 29, 855.]

In his _Papst-Fabeln des Mittelalters_, the learned Dr.
Döllinger has exhausted the erudition of the subject, and not
only demonstrated the utter unworthiness of the invention, but--
what is for the first time done by him--points out the causes or
sources of all the separate portions of the narrative. Thus, the
statue story arose from the fact that in the same street in which
was found a grave or monumental stone, of the inscription on
which the letters P. P. P. could be deciphered, there was also
seen a statue of a man or woman with a child. It was simply an
ancient statue of a heathen priest, with an attendant boy holding
in his hand a palm-leaf, The P. P. P. on the grave-stone, as all
antiquarians agreed, merely stood for _Propria Pecunia
Posuit_; but as the marvellous only was sought for, the three
P's were first coolly duplicated and then made to stand for the
words of the line already referred to--_Papa Patrum_,
etc.--much in the same way as Mr. Jonathan Oldbuck insisted that
A. D. L. L., on a utensil of imaginary antiquity he had found,
stood for AGRICOLA DICAVIT LIBENS LUBENS, when it only meant
AIKEN DRUM'S LANG LADLE.
{14}
The controversy concerning the
existence of Joan may be considered
as long since substantially closed, and
Joan, or Agnes, or Gilberta, or Ione,
as she is called in the English (Lond.
1612) edition of Philip Morney's
(Du Plessis Mornay) _Mysterie of Iniquitie_,
to stand convicted as an imposter,
or, more properly speaking, a
nonentity. Her story is long since
banished from all respectable society,
although it contrives to keep up a
disreputable and precarious existence
in the outskirts and waste places of
vagrant literature. We are even
informed that it may be found printed
under the auspices and sponsorship
of societies and individuals considered
respectable. If this be true, it is, for
their sakes, to be regretted; and we
beg leave severally to admonish the
societies and individuals in question,
in the words of the apostle: "_Avoid
foolish and old wives' fables: and exercise
thyself to piety._"

----------

      Translated From The French.

    The Approaching General Council.

  By Mgr. Dupanloup, Bishop Of Orleans.


                 V.

   The Help Offered By The Council.

This is the reason why that church, which is the friend of souls
and which was never indifferent to the evils in society, is now
so deeply moved. Undoubtedly the church and society are distinct;
but journeying side by side in this world, and enclosing within
their ranks the same men, they are necessarily bound together in
their perils and in their trials. The church has called this
assembly, therefore, because she feels that in regard to the
evils which are common to both, she can do much to forward their
removal.

However, let us be careful, as careful of exaggerating as of
diminishing the truth. Does it depend upon the church to destroy
every human vice? No. But in this great work, in this rude
conflict of the good against the bad, she has her part, an
important part, and she wishes to perform it. Man is free, and he
does good of his own free-will. But he is also aided by divine
grace, which assists him without destroying his liberty; for as
the great Pope St. Celestine said, "Free-will is not taken away
by the grace of God, but it is made free." Being the treasury of
celestial goods, the church is man's divine assistant, and lends
him, even in the temporal order, a supernatural aid. If to-day
she is assembling in Rome, and, as it were, is collecting her
thoughts, it is only in order to accomplish her task, to work
more successfully and powerfully for the welfare of mankind.

{15}

"Who can doubt," exclaims the Holy Father, "that the doctrine of
the Catholic Church has this virtue, that it not only serves for
the eternal salvation of man, but that it also helps the temporal
welfare of society, their real prosperity, good order and
tranquillity?" And who will deny the social and refining
influence of the church? "_Religion! Religion!_" an eminent
statesman [Footnote 9] has recently said, "_it is the very life
of humanity!_ In every place, at all times, save only certain
seasons of terrible crisis and shameful decadence. Religion to
restrain or to satisfy human ambition--religion to sustain or to
reconcile us to our sorrows, the sorrows both of our worldly
station and of our soul. Let not statesmanship, though it be at
once the most just and the most ingenious, flatter itself that it
is capable of accomplishing such a work without the help of
religion. The more intense and extended is the agitation of
society, the less able is any state policy to direct startled
humanity to its end. A higher power than the powers of earth is
needed, and views which reach beyond this world. For this purpose
God and eternity are necessary."

  [Footnote 9: M. Guizot]

Then, too, the Holy Father, after he has alluded to the
beneficent influence of religion in the temporal order, proclaims
anew the concord, so often affirmed by him, between faith and
reason, and the mutual help which, in the designs of Providence,
they are called to lend one to the other. "Even," he says, "as
the church sustains society, so does divine truth sustain human
science; the church supports the very ground beneath its feet,
and in preventing it from wandering she advances its progress."
Let those who vainly strive to claim science as an antagonist to
the church understand these words! The head of the church does
not fear science, he loves it, he praises it, and with pleasure
he remembers that the Christian truths serve to aid its progress
and to establish its durability. The most illustrious scholars
who have appeared upon the earth, Leibnitz, Newton, Kepler,
Copernicus, Pascal, Descartes, before whom the learned of the
present time, if their pride has not completely blinded them,
would feel of very little importance, think the same about this
question as does the Sovereign Pontiff. This is demonstrated,
adds the Pope, by the history of all ages with unexceptionable
evidence. This too is the meaning of the well-known phrase of
Bacon, "A little learning separates us from religion; but much
learning leads us to it." Presumptuous ignorance or blind passion
may forget it; but the greatest minds have always recognized the
agreement of faith and science, the harmony between the church
and society, and rejected this antagonism of modern times, which
is so contrary to the testimony of history and the interests of
truth.

But let us not allow an ambiguous expression to become the
pretext for our opponent's attacks; how then does the church
attempt to reform society? History has answered this question.
Prejudice alone fancies that it has discovered some secret attack
upon the legitimate liberty of the human mind. The Council of
Rome will be the nineteenth Ecumenical Council, and the forty or
fifty nations which will be represented there have all been
converted in the same way; that is, they have been brought from
barbarism to civilization by the authority of her words, by the
grace of her sacraments, by the teaching of her pastors, and the
examples of her saints. Such are the ways of God and the action
of the church, sometimes seconded, but more frequently attacked,
by human powers.

{16}

Instructor of souls, the church uses the method of all good
education--authority and patience. Where there is doubt, she
affirms; where there is denial, she insists; where there is
division, she unites; she repeats for ever the same lessons, and
what grand lessons they are! The true nature of God, the true
nature of man, moral responsibility and free-will, the
immortality of the soul, the sacredness of marriage, the law of
justice, the law of charity, the inviolability of private rights
and of property, the duty of labor, and the need of peace. This
always, this everywhere, this to all men, to kings and to
shepherds, to Greeks and to Romans, to England and to France, in
Europe and in Australia, under Charlemagne or before Washington.

I dare to assert that the continuity of these affirmations
creates order in society and in the human mind, just as certainly
as the repeated rising of the same sun makes the order of the
seasons and success in the culture of the earth. O philosopher,
you who disdain the church! be candid and tell me what would have
become of the idea of a personal God among the nations, had it
not been for her influence? O Protestants and Greeks! admit that
without the church the image of Jesus Christ would have been
blotted out beneath your very eyes! O philanthropist and
statesman! what would you do without her for the family and the
sanctity of marriage?

What the church has once done, she is going to do again; what she
has already said, she is going to repeat; she will continue her
life, her course, her work, in the same spirit of wisdom and
charity; she will continue to affirm to man's reason those great
truths of which she is the guardian, and it is by this means, by
this alone, though by it most energetically, that she will act on
society.

It has been said that the religion of the masses of the people is
the whole of their morality. Then since morality is the true
source of good statesmanship and good laws, all the progress of a
people must consist in making the first principles of justice
influence more and more their private and public life. From this
it follows that every people which increases in its knowledge of
Christian truth will make substantial progress, while at the same
time every people which attempts to solve the great questions
that perplex mankind in any way opposed to the gospel of Christ
will be in reality taking the wrong road which can only end in
their utter destruction. Who expelled pagan corruption from the
world, who civilized barbarians by converting them? Look at the
East when Christianity flourished there; and look at it now under
the rule of Islam! The influence of Christianity upon
civilization is a fact as glaring as the sun. But the principles
of the gospel are far from having given all that they contain,
and time itself will never exhaust them, because they come out of
an infinite depth.

Now, although the centuries have drawn from the Christian
principle of charity, equality, and fraternity of man
consequences which have revolutionized the old world; still all
the social applications of this admirable doctrine are very far
from having been made. It is even, as I believe, the peculiar
mission of modern times to make this fruitful principle penetrate
more completely than ever the laws and customs of nations. If the
century does not wander from the path of Christian truth, it will
establish political, social, and economic truths which will
reflect upon it the greatest honor.
{17}
But it is the mission of the church and her council to preserve
these truths of revelation free from those interpretations which
falsify their meaning.

Then every great declaration of the truths of the Bible, every
explanation of the doubts and errors concerning it, every true
interpretation of Christianity by the masses of the people is a
work of progress, which is at once social and religious. This
then is why the church is using every effort, or, as says the
Holy Father, why she is exerting her strength more and more. This
is the reason why Catholic bishops will come from every part of
the world to consult with their chief.

It is in vain you say in your unjust and ignorant prejudice, the
church is old, but the times are new. The laws of the world are
also old; yet every new invention of which we are justly proud
would not exist, and could not succeed, were it not for the
application of those laws. You do not understand how pliant and
yet how firm is the material of which her Divine Founder has
built his church. He has given her an organization at once
durable and progressive. Such is the depth and the fruitfulness
of her dogmas, such too is the expansive character of her
constitution, that she can never be outstripped by any human
progress, and she is able to maintain her position under any
political system. Without changing her creed in the least, she
draws from her treasury, as our divine Lord said, things both new
and old, from century to century, by measuring carefully the
needs of the time. You will find that she is ever ready to adapt
herself to the great transformations of society, and that she
will follow mankind in all the phases of his career. The
Christian revelation is the light of the world, and always will
be; be assured that this is the reason why the coming council
will be the dawn, not as many think the setting, of the church's
glory.

                      VI.

  The Unfounded Fears On The Subject Of The Council.

What then do timid Catholics and distrustful politicians fear?
Ah! rather let mankind rejoice over the magnanimous resolution of
Pius IX. It should be a solemn hope for those who believe, as
well as for those who have not the happiness of believing. If you
have the faith, you know that the spirit of God presides over
such councils. Of course, since it will be composed of men, there
may be possible weaknesses in that assembly. But there will also
be devoted service to the church, great virtues, profound wisdom,
a pure and courageous zeal for the glory of God and the good of
souls, and an admirable spirit of charity; and, besides all this,
a divine and superior power. God will, as ever, accomplish his
work there.

"God," says Fénélon, "watches that the bishops may assemble when
it is necessary, that they may be sufficiently instructed and
attentive, and that no bad motive may induce those who are the
guardians of the truth to make an untrue statement. There may be
improper opinions expressed in the course of the examination. But
God knows how to draw from them what he pleases. He leads them to
his own end, and the conclusion infallibly reaches the precise
point which God had intended."

But if one has the misfortune not to be a Christian and not to
recognize in the church the voice of God, from simply a human
point of view, can there be anything more worthy of sympathy and
respect than this great attempt of the Catholic Church to work,
so far as it is in her power, for the enlightenment and peace of
the world?
{18}
And what can be more august and venerable than the assembly of
seven or eight hundred bishops, coming from Europe, Asia, Africa,
the two Americas, and the most distant islands of Oceanica? Their
age, their virtue, and their science make them the most worthy
delegates from the countries in which they dwell, and the
recognized representatives of men of the entire globe with whom
they come in contact every day of their lives. It is a real
senate of mankind, seen nowhere but at Rome. And although our
mind should be filled with the most unjust prejudices, what
conspiracy, what excess, what manifestation of party feeling need
be feared from a meeting of old men coming from very different
parts of the earth, almost every one a complete stranger to the
others, having no bond of sympathy but a common faith and a
common virtue? Where will we find on earth a more perfect
expression, a more certain guarantee of wisdom, of wisdom even as
men understand it? I have ventured to say that modern times,
disgusted by experience with confidence in one man, have faith in
their assemblies. But what gathering can present such a
collection of the intelligent and the independent, such diversity
in such unity? Who are these bishops? Read their mottoes:

  _"In the name of the Lord!"
     "I bring Peace!"
     "I wish for Light!"
     "I diffuse Charity!"
     "I shrink not from Toil!"
     "I serve God!"
     "I know only Christ!"
     "All things to all men!"
     "Overcome Evil by Good!"
     "Peace in Charity!"_

As to themselves, they have lost their proper names. Their
signature is the name of a saint and the name of a city. Their
own name is buried, like that of an architect, in the foundation
stone of the building. Here are Babylon and Jerusalem; New York
and Westminster; Ephesus and Antioch; Carthage and Sidon; Munich
and Dublin; Paris and Pekin; Vienna and Lima; Toledo and Malines;
Cologne and Mayence. And added to this, they are called Peter,
Paul, John, Francis, Vincent, Augustin, and Dominic; names of
great men who have established or enlightened various nations
that profess Christianity, They do not bear the names of the past
and present only, they also bear those of the future. One comes
from the Red River, another from Dahomey, others from Natal,
Victoria, Oregon, and Saigon. We are working for the future,
although we are called men of the past. We are working for
countries which to-day cannot boast a single city, and for people
who are without a name. We go farther than science, even beyond
commerce itself, until we find ourselves alone and beyond them
all. When we cannot precede your most adventurous travellers, we
tread eagerly in their footsteps; and why? To make
Christians--that is to say, to make men, to make nations. What
then do you fear? Why do you object to such a council when you
entitle yourselves, with such proud confidence, the men of
progress and the heralds of the future?

Will it be nations who are disturbed by the council? How can
nations be menaced or betrayed by men who represent every nation
of the civilized globe? The bishops love their countries; they
live in them by their own free choice, and for the defence of
their faith. Will the bishops of Poland meet the bishops of
Ireland to plan the ruin of nations and the oppression of a
fatherland? And is there a single French bishop, or one from
England, or from any other country, who will yield to any one in
patriotism, who does not claim to be as good a Frenchman, or
Englishman, or citizen, as any one of his fellow-countrymen?
{19}
Is our liberty placed in jeopardy? What can you fear from men
who, from the days of the Catacombs up to the massacre of the
Carmelites, have established Christianity only at the sacrifice
of their life, and whose blood flowed freely in the days that
liberty and the church suffered the same persecution? Will the
bishops of America join those from Belgium and Holland in a
conspiracy against liberty? Will the bishops from the East unite
with the bishops of France, and so may other European countries,
in sounding the praises of despotism?

No, no; there is nothing true in all these fears; they would be
only silly phantoms were it not that they are the result of a
hatred which foresees the good which will be done, and wishes to
prevent it. What will the council do? I cannot say; God alone
knows it at this hour. But I can say that it is a council,
because eighteen centuries of Christianity and civilization know
and affirm it; a council, hence it is the most worthy
exemplification of moral force, it is the noblest alliance of
authority and liberty that the human mind can conceive; and I may
boldly assert that it never would have conceived it by its own
power.

I am not going to mark out the limits of liberty and power. I do
not intend now to show the characteristics of schism and heresy,
of English or German Protestantism, or of the false orthodoxy of
Russia. I will say only one word, and then proceed to make my
conclusions. It is this. If the Christian churches wish to become
again sisters, and if men wish to become brothers, they can never
do it more certainly, more magnificently, or more tenderly than
in a council, under the auspices and in the breast of that church
which is their true mother.

Do you imagine that you discover different opinions in the
church, and make this an obstacle? I would have the right to be
astonished at your solicitude, but I will suppose you to be
sincere, and I answer, You know very little about the church, Her
enemies daily declare that our faith is a galling yoke, which
holds us down and prevents us from thinking. And therefore, when
they see that we do think, they are perfectly amazed. This is one
of the conditions of the church's life, and the greatest amount
of earnest thinking is always within her fold. It is true that we
have an unchanging creed, that we are not like the philosophers
outside of the church, who do little more than seek a doctrine,
and endlessly begin again their searches. They are always calling
everything in question, they are continually moving, but never
reach any known destination. With us there are certain
established definite points, about which we no longer dispute.
And thus it is that the church has an immovable foundation, and
is not built entirely in the air. Yet liberty also has its place
in the church, Our anchors are strong and our view is unlimited;
for beyond those doctrines which are defined there is an immense
space. Even in dogma the Christian mind has yet a magnificent
work to accomplish, which can be followed for ever, because, as I
have already said, our dogmas, like God, have infinite depths,
and Christian intelligence can always draw from them, but never
drain them.

No one should therefore be astonished to see that Catholics argue
about questions not included within the definitions of faith,
many of which are difficult and complex, and which modern
polemics has only made more obscure.
{20}
The spirit of Christianity was long ago defined by St. Augustine
in these memorable words: _In necessary things unity, in
doubtful things liberty, in all things charity_. The course of
centuries has changed nothing. Besides, I have before said, and I
now repeat, that the council, precisely because it is
ecumenical--that is, composed of representatives from all the
churches in the world--bishops living under every political
system and every variety of social customs--excludes necessarily
the predominance of any particular school of a narrow and
national spirit and of local prejudices. It will be the great
catholic spirit, and not such and such particular notions, which
will inspire its decisions; and whatever may happen to be the
peculiar ideas of different schools or parties, the council will
be the true light and unity. There will be complete liberty left
in regard to all things not defined. But these definitions will
be the Catholic rule of faith, and they should not disturb any
one in advance. Again, they threaten nothing which is dear to
you, men of this age, they threaten only error and injustice,
which are your enemies as well as ours. If you wish to know the
real opinions of this magnanimous pontiff, who is the object of
so many odious and ungrateful calumnies, and of the bishops, his
sons and his brothers; if you wish to conjecture the spirit of
the future council, you will find it completely stated in these
few words of Pius IX., which were addressed to some Catholic
publicists, scarcely a year ago, and which have been inscribed on
their standard as a sacred motto: "Christian charity alone can
prepare the way for that liberty, fraternity, and progress which
souls now ardently desire."

I cannot repeat too often, and you, my brethren of the holy
ministry, cannot repeat too often, that great is the mistake of
those who denounce the future council as a menace or a work of
war. We live in a time in which we are condemned to listen to
all. But nevertheless we are not bound to believe all. When, a
year ago, the Pope announced to the bishops assembled in Rome his
determination to convoke an ecumenical council, what did the
bishops of the whole world see in this? A great work of
illumination and pacification--these are the precise words of
their address. The papal bull uses the same language. In this
ecumenical council, what does the Pope ask his brothers, the
bishops, to examine, to investigate with all possible care, and
to decide with him? Before everything else, it is that which
relates to the peace of all and to universal concord.

And when I read the bull carefully, what do I see on every page
and in each line? The expression of solicitude well worthy the
father of souls, and not less for civil society than for the
church. He never separates them. He is careful always to say that
their evils and their perils are mutual. The same tempest beats
them both with the same waves. At this time, which is called a
period of transition, religion and society are both passing
through a formidable crisis. There are men to-day who would wish
to destroy the church if they could; and who, at the same time,
would shake society from its very foundations. And it is for the
purpose of bringing help to them both, and to avert the evils
which menace them together, that the holy father has conceived
the idea of a council. The reason given by him to the bishops is
precisely to examine this critical situation, and suggest the
remedy for this double wound.
{21}
These are his words: "It is necessary that our venerable
brothers, who feel and deplore as we do the critical situation of
the church and society, should strive with us and with all their
power to avert from the church and society, by God's help, all
the evils which are afflicting them."

It has been told that the Pope wished to break off friendly
relations with modern society, to condemn and proscribe it, to
give it as much trouble as lies within his power. Yet never have
the trials which you endure, Christian nations, more sadly moved
the head of the church, never has his soul poured forth more
sympathetic accents, than for your perils and your sorrows. And
it has been noticed by every one, pillaged of three-fourth of his
little territory, reduced to Rome and its surrounding country,
placed between the dangers of yesterday and those of to-morrow,
suspended, as it were, over a precipice, the Pope seems never to
think of these things; he does not seek to defend his menaced
throne; not a sentence, not a single word, about his own
interests; no, in the bull of convocation the temporal prince is
forgotten and is silent--the pontiff alone has spoken to the
world.


                 VII

  The Council And The Separated  Churches

But all has not yet been said, Other hopes may be conceived of
the future council. We delight in anticipating other great
results. The letters of the Holy Father to the Eastern bishops
and to our separated Protestant brethren give us good ground for
hope.

At two fatal epochs in the history of the world, two great
divisions have been made in this empire of souls which we call
the church--twice has the seamless robe of Christ been rent by
schism and heresy. These are the two great misfortunes of
mankind, and the two most potent causes which have retarded the
world's progress. Who does not admit this? If the old Greek
empire had not so sadly broken with the West, it would have never
been the prey of Islamism, which has so deeply degraded it, and
which even now holds it under an iron yoke. Nor would it have
drawn into its schism another vast empire, in whose breast
seventy millions of souls groan beneath a despotism which is both
political and religious.

And who can say what the Christian people of Europe would be
today, were it not for Lutheranism, Calvinism, and so many other
divisions? These unhappy separations have made Christianity lose
its active power in retaining many souls in the light of divine
revelation which have since been wrested from it by incredulity.
And who can tell us how much they have retarded the diffusion of
the gospel in heathen countries?

Sorrowful fact! There are even now millions of men upon whom the
light of the gospel has never shone, and who remain sunken in the
shadows of infidelity. Think of the poor pagans on the shores of
distant isles! They are vaguely expecting a Saviour; they stretch
their arms toward the true God; they cry out by the voice of
their miseries and their sufferings for light, truth, salvation,
Eighteen centuries ago, Jesus Christ came to bring these good
tidings to the world, and spoke these great words to his
apostles, "Preach the gospel to every creature!" The church alone
has apostles of Jesus Christ, emulators of that Peter and Paul
who landed one day upon the coast of Italy to preach the same
gospel to our fathers and to die together for the
same faith.

{22}

But poor Indians! poor Japanese! Following the apostles of the
Catholic Church sent by the successor of him to whom Jesus Christ
said, "Thou art Peter, and on this rock I will build my church,"
we see other missionaries who come to oppose them. But who sends
them? Is it Jesus Christ? What, then, is Christ, as St. Paul
asked of the dissidents of the first century, divided? Is not
this, I ask you, a dreadful misfortune for the poor infidels? And
is it not enough to make every Christian shed tears?

And union, if it were only possible, (and why should it not be,
since it is the wish of our Saviour)--union, especially because
now the way is open and distance has almost vanished, would it
not be a great and happy step toward that evangelization of every
creature which Jesus charged his apostles and their successors to
begin when he had left the earth?

Yes, every soul in which the spirit of Jesus dwells should feel
within a martyrdom when it considers these divisions, and repeat
to heaven the prayer of our Saviour and the cry for unity, "My
Father, that they may be all one, as you and I are one." This is
the great consideration which influenced the head of the Catholic
Church when, forgetting his own dangers, and moved by this care
for all the churches which weighs so heavily upon him, he
convoked an ecumenical council. He turns toward the East and to
the West, and addresses to all the separated communions a word of
peace, a generous call for unity. Whatever may be the way in
which his appeal is received, who does not recognize, in this
most earnest effort for the union of all Christians, a thought
from heaven, inspired by Him who willed that his Church should be
one, and who said, as the Holy Father has been pleased to recall,
"It is by this that you will be known to be my disciples"?

But will our brethren of the East and West respond to this
thought, this wish? The East! Who is not moved before this cradle
of the ancient faith, from whence the light has come to us? I saw
the Catholic bishops of the East trembling with joy at the
announcement of the future council, and expecting their churches
to awake to a new life and to a fruitful activity. But will the
Eastern churches refuse to hear these "words of peace and
charity" that the Holy Father has lately addressed to them "from
the depths of his heart"? [Footnote 10] And why should they be
deaf to this appeal? For what antiquated or chimerical fears? Who
has not recognized and been deeply touched by the goodness of the
pontiff? How delicately, and with what accents of particular
tenderness, does the Holy Father speak of our Oriental brethren,
who, in the midst of Mohammedan Asia, "recognize and adore, even
as we do, our Lord Jesus Christ," and who, "redeemed by his most
precious blood, have been added to his church!" What
consideration does he manifest for these ancient churches, to-day
so unfortunately detached from the centre of unity, but who
formerly "showed so much lustre by their sanctity and their
celestial doctrine, and produced abundant fruits for the glory of
God and the salvation of souls!" [Footnote 11]

    [Footnote 10: Apostolic Letter of Pius IX., September 8th,
    1868.]

    [Footnote 11: _ibidem_.]

And, at the same time, we must admire his gentleness, his
forgetfulness of all his irritating grievances. The Holy Father
speaks only of peace and charity.
{23}
He asks only one thing, and that is, that "the old laws of love
should be renewed, and the peace of our fathers, that salutary
and heavenly gift of Christ, which for so long a time has
disappeared, may be firmly re-established; that the pure light of
this long-desired union may appear to all after the clouds of
such a wearisome sorrow, and the sombre and sad obscurity of such
long dissensions." [Footnote 12]

    [Footnote 12: _Ibidem_.]

But let the Eastern bishops know that this deep longing for peace
and union is not found in the heart of the Holy Father alone; the
bishops and all the Christians of the West, how can they help
desiring this most happy event? Can there be any good gained in
keeping the robe of Christ torn asunder? And what--I ask it in
charity and for information--what can the churches of the old
Orient gain by not communicating with those of the entire
universe? Who prevents them? Are we yet in the time of the
metaphysical subtleties and cavils of the Lower Empire?

I have already alluded to the infidel nations. Let my brethren,
the Eastern bishops, permit me to recall to them what is at this
moment the state of the entire world and the situation of the
church of Christ in all its various parts. If in every time the
church of Christ has had to struggle, is she not now more than
ever before resisted and fought against? Is not the spirit of
revolution--and, unfortunately, it is an impious one--rising
against her on every side? And you, Eastern churches, whether you
are united or not, have you not also your dangers? Is not your
spiritual liberty unceasingly threatened? Is not Christianity
with you surrounded by determined enemies--at your right, at your
left, on every side? And will not the storm of impiety which now
disturbs Europe, since distance is no more an obstacle, burst
upon Asia, and will not the Christian races of the East become
contaminated by the repeated efforts of an irreligious press?

In such a critical situation, when every danger is directed
against the church of Jesus Christ by the misfortunes of the
time, the first need of all Christians is to put an end to
division which enfeebles, and to seek in reconciliation and peace
that union which is strength. What bishop, what true Christian,
will meditate upon these things, and then say, "No, division is a
good; union would be an evil"? On the contrary, who does not see
that union, the return to unity, is the certain good of souls,
the manifest will of God, and will be the salvation of your
churches? What follows from this? Can there be any personal
considerations, any human motives whatsoever, superior to these
great interests and these grave obligations? Your fathers, those
illustrious doctors, Athanasius, Gregory of Nazianzen, Basil,
Cyril, Chrysostom, did not find it hard to bend their glorious
brows before him whom they call "the firm and solid rock on which
the Saviour has built his church." [Footnote 13] If they were
living to-day, would they not, as Christians, and most nobly,
too, trample upon an independence which is not according to
Christ, but which is merely the suggestion of a blind pride? If
past centuries have committed faults, do you wish to make them
eternal?

    [Footnote 13: _Ibidem_; words of St. Gregory of
    Nazianzen, quoted by the Holy Father.]

But the time, if you will hear its lessons, will bring before
your mind the gravest duties. You who are surrounded on one side
by despotism, and on the other by Mohammedanism, surely, you
cannot fail to feel the peril of isolation, and the fatal
consequences of disunion.

{24}

May God preserve me from uttering a word which can be, even in
the most remote way, painful to you; for I come to you at this
moment with all the charity of Jesus Christ.

Indeed, whether I think of those unhappy races whose souls and
whose country have become sterile under the yoke of the religion
of Mohammed, or whether I turn my eye toward those great masses
of Russians, grave in their manners, religious, who have remained
in the faith, notwithstanding the degradation of their churches,
and notwithstanding the supremacy of a czar whose pretended
orthodoxy has never inspired even the least pity and justice for
Poland! equally do I feel the depths of my soul moved to pray for
those many nations who are worthy of our interest and our sincere
compassion. O separated brothers of the East!--Greeks, Syrians,
Armenians, Chaldeans, Bulgarians, Russians, and Sclavonians, all
whom I cannot call by name--see the Catholic Church is coming
toward you, she stretches out her arms to embrace you! O
brothers! come!

She is going to assemble, as the whole church, from all parts of
the civilized world. From our West, from your East, from the New
World, also, and from far distant islands, her bishops are now
hastening to answer the call of the supreme chief, to meet at
Rome, the centre of unity. But ah! she does not wish to assemble
her council without your presence, O brothers! come!

This is one of those solemn and infrequent occasions which will
take centuries before its equal is seen. The church offers peace.
"With all our strength we pray you, we urge you, to come to this
General Council, as your ancestors came to the Council of Lyons
and the Council of Florence, in order to renew union and peace."
[Footnote 14] But, On your Side, will you refuse to take a single
step toward us, and allow this most favorable opportunity to
escape? Who will venture to take this formidable responsibility
upon himself? O brothers! come!

  [Footnote 14: Ibidem.]

The heart of the church of Jesus Christ does not change; but the
times change, and the causes which have, unhappily, made the
efforts of our fathers fail, now, thank God, no longer exist.
Then I say to you all, O brothers! come!

In regard to ourselves, we are full of hope; and, whatever may be
the resistance that the first surprise, or perhaps old
prejudices, have made, everything seems to us to be ready for a
return. "Rome," said Bossuet, in former times--"Rome never ceases
to cry to even the most distant people, that she may invite them
to the banquet, where all are made one; and see how the East
trembles at her maternal voice, and appears to wish to give birth
to a new Christianity!"

O God! would that we could see this spectacle! What joy would it
be for thy church on earth, in the midst of so many rude combats,
and such bitter affliction! What joy for the church in heaven!
And what joy, churches of the East, for your doctors and your
saints, "when from the height of heaven they see union
established with the apostolic see, centre of catholic truth and
unity; a union that, during their life here below, they labored
to promote, to teach by all their studies, and by their
indefatigable labors, by their doctrine and their example,
inflamed as they were with the charity poured into their hearts
by the Holy Spirit, for Him who has reconciled and purchased
peace at the price of his blood; who wished that peace should be
the mark of his disciples, and who made this prayer to his
Father, 'May they be one as we are one.'" [Footnote 15]

    [Footnote 15: _Ibidem_. Unity will be the eternal
    characteristic of the true church. Every question concerning
    the church is reduced finally to this question, _Where is
    unity?_]

{25}

Oh! then, listen to the language of the church, the true church
of Jesus Christ, who alone, among all Christian societies, raises
a maternal voice, and demands again all her children, because she
is their true mother! This is the reason why the Sovereign
Pontiff, after he has spoken to the separated East, turns toward
other Christian yet not catholic communions, and addresses to all
our brothers of Protestantism the same urgent appeal.

Protestantism! "Ah!" exclaimed Bossuet, in his ardent love, in
his zealous wish for unity, "our heart beats at this name, and
the church, always a mother, can never, when she remembers it,
repress her sighs and her desires." These are sighs and desires
which we have heard from the Holy Father in an apostolic letter
written a few days after the Brief addressed to the Eastern
bishops, to "all Protestants and other non-Catholics," and in
which he deplores the misfortunes of separation, and shows the
great advantage of the unity desired by our Lord. "He exhorts, he
begs all Christians separated from him to return to the cradle of
Jesus Christ. ... In all our prayers and supplications we do not
cease to humbly ask for them, both day and night, light from
heaven, and abundant grace from the eternal Pastor of souls, and
with open arms we are waiting for the return of our wandering
children." [Footnote 16]

    [Footnote 16: Apostolic Letters of September 13th, 1868.]

See, then, what the Holy Father says, and, together with him, the
whole church. Shall we hope and pray always in vain? Will the
work of returning be as difficult as many think it? I know that
prejudices are yet deep; and the difficulty that the work of
tardy justice meets with in England is one proof among others;
but it is the business of a council to explain misunderstandings,
and, by appeasing the passions, prepare the mind to return to the
church. And, should any one be tempted to think me deluded, I
will answer that among those of our separated brethren who are
not carried away by the sad current of rationalism, there is a
daily increasing number who regret the loss of unity. I affirm
that this is true of America, that it is true of England, I will
answer, too, that more than once I have been made the recipient
of grief-stricken confidence, and heard from suffering hearts the
longing desire for the day in which will be fulfilled the words
of the Master, "There shall be one fold and one shepherd." Will
this day never come? Are divisions necessary? And why should we
not be the ones destined to see the days predicted and hailed
with joy by Bossuet? Here, undoubtedly, the dogmatic objections
are serious. But they will disappear, if the gravest difficulty
of all, in my opinion, is removed; and that difficulty is the
negation of all doctrinal authority in the church, that absolute
liberty of examination, which, willingly or unwillingly, is
certain to be confounded with the principles of rationalism. It
is for this reason that Protestantism bears in its breast the
original sin of a radical inconsistency, which is lamented by the
most vigorous and enlightened minds of their communion. And it is
upon this that we rely, at least for numerous individual
conversions, and, by God's grace, perhaps for the reconciliation
of a large number.

If this essential point is solved--and the solution is not
difficult to simple good sense and courageous faith--all the rest
will become easy. Reason says, with self-evident truth, that
Jesus Christ did not intend to found his church without this
essential principle of stability and unity.
{26}
He did not propose to found a religion incapable of living and
perpetuating itself, abandoned to the caprice of individual
interpretations. This is so clear of itself that it does not need
to be supported by any text of the Bible.

But there are texts which, to persons of candid mind, and without
any great argument, are equally convincing. I will repeat only
three; the first, "Thou art Peter," the primacy of St. Peter and
the head of the church; the second, "This is my body," the most
blessed sacrament; the third, "Behold thy mother," behold your
mother, the Blessed Virgin, Are you able to efface these three
sentences from the Gospel? Have you meditated upon them
sufficiently, and upon many others which are not less decisive?
Then from the Bible pass to history, and from texts to facts.

Do not facts tell you plainly that the living element of complete
Christianity is wanting in you? For, on the one hand, you have
had time to understand thoroughly the authors of rupture; and, on
the other, you are now able to consider its results. For three
centuries you have been reading the Bible; for three centuries
you have been studying history. Have not these three
centuries taught you a new and solemn lesson? The principle of
Protestantism, by developing, has borne its fruits; and the
predictions of catholic doctors in ancient controversies are
realized every day beneath your eyes. Contemporaneous
Protestantism is more and more rapidly dissolving into
rationalism; many of her ministers acknowledge that they have no
longer any supernatural faith; and recently a cry of alarm,
proceeding from her bosom, has resounded even in our political
assemblies. But a cry lost in the air! Dissolution will go on,
notwithstanding noble efforts and Christian resistance, always
increasing and ruining more thoroughly this incomplete
Christianity, which needs the essential power that preserves and
maintains, and which is nothing else than authority. To lose
Christianity in pure sophistry, this is the tendency of modern
Protestants, whether they are willing to admit it or not. But
good may come from an excess of evil, And what is more calculated
to enlighten many deceived but well-meaning souls concerning the
radical fault of Protestantism than this spectacle of
disintegration by the side of the powerful unity of the Catholic
Church, and the council which is going to be its living
manifestation?

There is another hope, little in accordance with human
probabilities, I know, but which my faith in the Divine mercy
does not forbid me to entertain, and that is, that even the Jews
themselves, the children of Israel, who, associating with us,
lead to-day the same kind of social life, will feel something
touch their hearts and bring them, docile at last, to the voice
of St. Paul, to the fold of the church. In the Jews, indeed, so
long and so evidently punished, I cannot help recognizing my
ancestors in the faith; the children of Moses, the countrymen of
Joseph and Mary, of Peter and Paul, and of whom it is written,
that they "who are Israelites, to whom belongeth the adoption as
of children, and the glory and the testament, and the giving of
the law and the service of God and the promises: whose are the
fathers, and of whom is Christ, according to the flesh, who is
over all things, God blessed for ever, Amen." [Footnote 17] I beg
them, therefore, to believe in Him whom they are yet expecting; I
beg them to believe eighteen hundred years of history; for
history, like a fifth gospel, proves the coming and divinity
of the Messiah.

    [Footnote 17: Romans ix. 4, 5.]

{27}

Do not feel astonished, then, to see me full of compassion for
Protestant, Greek, and Jew, while I am accused of being severe
toward the abettors of modern scepticism. I recognize the
difference between errors which are nearly finished, and errors
which are just beginning; between responsible and guilty authors
who knowingly spread false doctrines, and their innocent victims,
who, after centuries, still cling to them. How can I help being
moved to tears when I see the people of my country, its mechanics
and its farmers, so industrious and so worthy of sympathy, young
men of our schools, whose active minds call for the truth, both
fall, almost before they are aware of it, into the hands of
teachers of error? When the reawakening of faith was so
perceptible a few years ago, and a decisive progress toward good
seemed to be accomplished, how quickly did the shadows gather
around us; dismal precipices opened beneath our feet, the breath
of an impious science and violent press became most potent, and
the beautiful bark of faith and French prosperity seemed ready to
sink before she had fairly left her port! Ah! I do, indeed,
execrate the authors of that cruel wreck, while I feel myself
full of pity for the many sincere souls I see among our separated
brethren, living in error, it is true, but they have never made
error live! With warmth I extend to such captive souls a friendly
hand. Let them come back to the church; for she it is who guards
Jesus Christ, the God of the whole truth, and invites them to
this great banquet of the Father of the family, where, as Bossuet
has well said, "all are made one."

May the coming council, in its work of enlightenment and
pacification, reconcile to us many souls who are already ours by
their sincerity, their virtue, and, as I know of many, even by
their desires. Let, at least, this be the heartfelt wish of every
Catholic! Yes, let us open our hearts with more warmth than ever
to these beloved brethren; let us wish--it is the desire of the
Holy Father--that the future council may be a powerful and happy
effort, and let us repeat unceasingly to heaven the prayer of the
Master, "May they be one, as we are one."


           VIII.

    The Catholic Church.

And you, whom the duties of my position compel me to address
persistently--in time and out of time, says St. Paul--adversaries
of my faith, though I speak to you with austere words upon my
lips, still know that it is with charity in my heart toward you
all, whether philosophers, Protestants, or indifferent to all
religion, yea, I would wish my voice could reach the most
wretched pagan lost in the shadow of the superstition which yet
covers half the globe. O brethren! I would that you could taste
for a single moment the deep peace that one feels who lives and
dies in the arms of the church! Bear witness with me to this
peace, my brethren of the priesthood, and every Christian of
every rank and of all ages! When one knows that he is surrounded
by this light, assured by her promises, preceded by those sublime
creatures who are called saints, and whose glory in heaven the
church of the earth salutes, bound by tradition to all the
Christian centuries by the successors of the apostles, and
founded, at last, upon Jesus Christ, what joy! what a company!
what power! and what repose in light and certainty!

{28}

I am firmly convinced, and each day brings forth a new proof,
that the enemies of the church do not really detest her. No; the
dominant sentiment among our enemies is not always hatred. There
is another feeling which they do not admit, which is far more
frequent among them, This is envy. Yes; they envy us; the
atheist, at the moment he is insulting a Christian, says secretly
to himself, "Oh! how happy he is!"

Let us not credit that which we hear said against the church,
that her majestic face has been for ever disfigured by calumny,
and that henceforth men can only see in her a mistress of tyranny
and ignorance. These violent prejudices certainly do have an
influence; our faults and our enemies undertake the business of
propagating them. But the church, in spite of this--and the
ecumenical council will prove this again to the world--will not
be any less the church of Christ, "without blemish and without
spot," notwithstanding the imperfections of her children; and
there is not one among those that attack her who can tell us what
evil the church has ever done to him. "_My people, what have I
done to thee?_"

What evil! Citizens of town and country, you owe to the Catholic
Church the purity of your children, the fidelity of your wives,
the honesty of your neighbor, the justice of your laws, the gay
festival which breaks in upon the monotony of your daily lives,
the little picture which hangs upon your wall; and, more than
these, you owe her the sweet expectation which waits by the
cemetery and the tomb! This is the evil she has done you--this
enemy of the human race!

And if you can raise your thought above yourself, above your own
interests, above your homes; if you allow your thoughts to soar
higher than the smoke which curls above your roofs, what a grand
spectacle does the Catholic Church present! She is great and
good, even in the little history of our life--greater and far
better does she appear in the history of the laborious
developments of human society. Inseparable companion of man upon
this earth, she struggles and she suffers with him; she has
assisted, inspired, guided humanity in all its most painful and
glorious transformations. It was she who made virtues, the very
name of which was yet unknown, rise up from the midst of pagan
corruption; and souls, so pure, so noble, so elevated, that the
world still falls upon its knees before them.

It was she who tamed and transformed barbarians; and who, during
the long and perilous birth of modern races in the middle ages,
has courageously fought the evil, and presided over all progress.
And it must be again the Catholic Church which will help modern
society to disengage from the midst of its confused elements that
which disturbs its peace, the principles of life from the germs
of death, by maintaining firmly those truths which alone can save
it.

Ah! we do not know the Catholic Church well enough. We live
within her fold, we are a part of her, and yet we do not
understand her. We ignore both what she was and what she is in
the world, and the mission God has given her, and the living
forces, the divine privileges, bestowed upon her, so that she may
accomplish eternally her task upon the earth, to maintain
immutably here below truth and goodness, and to remain for ever,
as an apostle said of her, "_the pillar and the ground of
truth_."

Surely, we never hear it made a matter of reproach that a pillar
remains unchanged; what would become of the edifice, if the
pillar were to leave its place?
{29}
Why, then, reproach the church for being immovable, and why is
not this immobility salutary for you? What will you do when there
are tremblings in regard to the truth like the trembling of the
earth? While you must disperse, we are uniting. What you are
losing, we are defending. We can say to modern doctrines, "We
knew you at Alexandria and at Athens; both you, your mothers,
your daughters, and your allies." The church can say to the
nations, when the Pope has gathered their ambassadors: "France,
thou hast been formed by my bishops; thy cities and their streets
bear their names! England, who has made thee, and why wert thou
once called the isle of saints? Germany, thou hast entered into
the civilization of the West by my envoy, St. Boniface. Russia,
where wouldst thou now be, were it not for my Cyril and my
Methodius? Kings, I have known your ancestors. Before Hapsburg,
or Bourbon, or Romanoff, or Brunswick, or Hohenzollern--before
Bonaparte or Carignan, I was old; for I have seen the Caesars and
the Antonies die; to-morrow I will be, for I am ever the same. Do
you answer that it will be without money, without dwelling,
without power? It may be so, for I have endured these proofs a
hundred times, always ready to address to nations the little
sentence Jesus once spoke to Zaccheus, 'This day I must abide in
thy house.' If I leave Rome, I will go to London, to Paris, or to
New York." It is only of the church and of the sun that it can be
said that to-morrow they will certainly rise; and this is the
reason that the church, in the midst of the disturbances of the
present time, boldly announces her council.

Admirable spectacle, that our century would wish not to admire,
but whose grandeur it is forced to acknowledge. Yes, many a
wearied eye rests with irresistible emotion upon this stately
pillar, standing alone in the midst of the ruins of the past and
of the actual destruction of all human greatness. The indifferent
feel troubled, surprised, attracted at the sight of the church
testifying her immortal power by this great act; and after they
have exhausted all their doctrines, they are tempted to exclaim
to the Supreme Pontiff that which Peter, the first pontiff, once
said to Jesus, "Master, to whom shall we go? you have the words
of eternal life."

Hear the words of life, you who doubt, who search, who suffer!
Hear them also, you who triumph, who rejoice, who lord it over
your fellowman! Hear the words that the church calls her little
children to repeat at every rising of the sun: _Credo_, I
believe! I believe in one God, the Creator. See, _savants_,
here is the answer to your uncertainties. _Credo_, I
believe! I believe in a Saviour of the world who has consecrated
purity by his birth, confounded pride by his precepts, rebuked
injustice by his sufferings, and proved his divinity and
immortality by his resurrection, I believe in Jesus Christ! See
in him, poor, afflicted humanity, poor, oppressed people, an
answer to your despair. _Credo_, I believe! I believe in the
Holy Ghost, in the Holy Catholic Church, the communion of saints,
the forgiveness of sins, in the judgment, and in a life of
everlasting happiness to those who have fought the good battle.
See in our creed, O Protestants and philosophers! so divided in
your affirmations, so narrow in your hopes, the response to your
disputes. See in it, oppressive monarch, the answer to your
iniquities! And see, also, O pitiless death! the answer to your
terrors.

{30}

To love, to hope, to believe! Everything is contained in these
words; and it is the church who alone can preserve in unshaken
majesty and in the universal truth this _Credo_, that the
nineteenth century, now in the dawn of the twentieth, is going to
repeat with the two hundred and sixty-second successor of the
fisherman Peter, first apostle of Jesus Christ.

But, brothers, let us cease speaking; let us cease disputing, let
us cease fearing, let us bend the knee and pray!

O God! who knows the secret of your Providence, and who knows the
wonders which the church will yet display to the world, if men's
faults and their passion do not retard her? If religion and
society, leaning one upon the other, should advance, with mutual
concord, on their blessed course, what great steps would there be
toward the establishment of your reign upon the earth, toward the
progress of nations, toward liberty by the way of truth, toward
the real fraternity of men, toward the extinction of revolution
and of war, toward the peace of the world. Then a new era would
open before us, and a new great century appear in history. Let us
throw open our souls to these hopes; let us beg these blessings
of God, and let us foresee possible misfortunes only to prevent
them. Let it be known at least that Catholics are not men of
discouragement, of dark predictions, or of peevish menaces; but
men of charity, of noble hopes, of peaceful effort, and, at the
same time, of generous struggle.

Let us invoke St. Peter and St. Paul; let us invoke the Virgin
Mary, Mother of Jesus, the honor and the heavenly guardian of the
race of man; and, united to the souls of all the saints, let us
pray to the adorable Trinity reigning in heaven!

Let us pray that the council may be able to fulfill its task;
that the Christian world will not repel this great effort which
the church is making to help them; that light may find its way
into their minds, and that their hearts may be softened! That
misunderstandings may be explained, prejudices removed; that
unreasonable fears may disappear, and that Christianity, and
consequently civilization, may flourish with a new and more
vigorous youth. May the return to the church, so much desired and
so necessary, take place!

Let us pray for the monarchs of the world, that the wish and
formal request that the Holy Father made them in his letter may
be granted, May they cast aside all silly objections, and favor
by the liberty they give the bishops the future assembly of the
church, and let her council meet in peace.

Let us pray, too, for their people, that they may understand the
maternal intentions of the church; and, closing their ears to
calumny, may hear with confidence and accept with docility the
words of their mother.

Let us pray even for the avowed enemies of the church, that they
make a truce with their suspicions and their anger until the
church has announced, in her council and under the inspiration of
the Holy Ghost, her decrees whose wisdom and charity can hardly
fail to touch them.

Let us pray for so many men of good faith, men of science,
statesmen, the heads of families, workmen, men of honor, whom the
light of Jesus Christ has not yet enlightened, that they may now
receive its beneficent rays.

Let us pray that the anxious wishes of so many mothers, sisters,
wives, and daughters, who, in obscurity, are maintaining purity
and holiness in their families, often without being able to bring
our holy faith there, may at length be heard.

{31}

Let us pray for the East and the West, that they may be
reconciled; and for our separated brethren, that they may leave
the division which is destroying them, and answer the urgent
appeal of the holy church, and come to throw themselves in those
arms which have been open to receive them for three centuries.

Let us pray for the church, for her faithful children, and for
her ministers, that each day may find them more pure, more holy,
more learned, more charitable; so that our faults may not be an
obstacle to the reign of that God whose love we are appointed to
make known.

Let us also pray for the Holy Father. Deign, O God! to preserve
him to your church, and enable this great pontiff, who has not
feared, even amid the troubles of the age, to undertake the
laborious work of a council, to see its happy issue! May he,
after so many trials, bravely borne, rejoice in the triumph of
the church, before he goes to receive in heaven the reward of his
labors and
his virtues!

----------

          Lent, 1869.


              I.

  We like sheep have gone astray,
      Kyrie eleison!
  Each his own misguided way,
      Kyrie eleison!
  Wandering farther, day by day,
      Kyrie eleison!


              II.

  Shepherd kind, oh! lead us back;
      Christe eleison!
  Wrest us from our dangerous track,
      Christe eleison!
  Lest the wolves thy flock attack;
      Christe eleison!


             III.

  Ope for us again thy fold,
      Kyrie eleison!
  Night approaches, drear and cold;
      Kyrie eleison!
  Death, perchance, and woes untold;
      Kyrie eleison!

                 Richard Storrs Willis.

----------

{32}


    The Modern Street-ballads Of Ireland.


The home of the street-ballad, pure and simple, is in Ireland. It
has nearly vanished in England, destroyed by the penny newspaper,
which contains five times as highly spiced food for the money. In
Ireland it still exists and supplies the place of the newspaper,
not only in appeals to the passion or reason, but as a general
chronicle of every event of importance, local or national, Very
often both are combined, and the leading article and the account
of political insult will be run into rude rhyme together, and the
story of a murder be interspersed with reflections on its sin.
The quantity of ballads is, of course, enormous, and to expect
that any but a small portion should possess more poetry than a
newspaper article would be unreasonable. But all are not of this
prosaic class, and some possess the genuine spirit of poetry
under their rude but often spirited diction.

The first question naturally asked is, Whence comes this enormous
flood of ballads? Who are the poets who produce them on every
imaginable subject, even the most verse-defying public meeting,
or in praise of humblest of politicians? Like the immortal Smiths
and Joneses, that make the thunder of the _Times_, their
names never appear, and though the ballad or the leading
article--and both have done so--may influence the fate of
nations, it will bring to the author only his stipulated hire. At
present, the street-ballads of Ireland are mostly composed by the
singers themselves. In ancient days, the weavers and tailors and
the hedge-schoolmasters used to be a fruitful source of supply,
the sedentary occupations of the former being popularly supposed
to foster the poetic talent, The latter class has vanished, and
if here and there one exists, it is in the shape of a red-nosed,
white-haired veteran, who is entertained in farmers' houses and
country _shebeens_, in memory of his ancient glory, when
sesquipedalian, long words and "cute" problems made him the
monarch of the parish next to the priest himself. However, the
singer of the ballad is, in most instances, the writer, who is
only anxious for a subject of interest on which to exercise his
muse, and generally turns out half-a-dozen verses of the
established pattern in half an hour. This he takes to the
publisher, who not only allows him no copyright, but does not
even make a discount in the price of his stock in trade, for
which he pays the same as his brother bards, who, finding his
ballad popular, will straightway strain their voices to it. But
then he has the same privilege with their productions, so that it
is all right in the long run. The ballads are printed on the
coarsest of paper with the poorest of type, and generally with a
worn-out woodcut of the most inappropriate description at the
head. Thus, for instance, I have one, where a portrait of Jerome
Bonaparte does duty over the "Lamentation of Lawrence King for
the murder of Lieut. Clutterbuck."

The ballad-singers are of both sexes, and are very dilapidated
specimens. The tone in which they send their voices on the
shuddering air is utterly indescribable--a sort of droning,
_pillelu_ falsetto, at once outrageously comical and
lugubrious. They sing everything in the same melancholy cadence,
whether lamentation or love-song. Very often, two, more
especially of women, will be together.
{33}
The first will sing the first two lines of a quatrain alone, and
then the second will join in, and they rise to the height of
discord together. Fair-days are their days of harvest, although
in cities like Cork or Waterford they may be seen on every day
except Sunday. A popular ballad will often have a very large
sale, and will find its way all over the country.

The greater portion of ballads composed in this way are, of
course, destitute of anything like poetry--mere pieces of
outrageous metaphor and Malapropoian long words, for which last
the ballad-singers have a ridiculous fondness. The singers sing
in a foreign language; they have lost the sweet tongue peculiarly
fitted for improvised poetry, in which their predecessors the
bards, down to the date of less than one hundred years ago, sang
so sweetly and so strongly, with such dramatic diction and happy
boldness of epithet. The language of the Saxon oppressor is from
the tongue, and not from the heart. As the mother of the late
William Carleton used to say, "the Irish _melts into the
tune_;" the English doesn't, and so many of the finest of the
ancient melodies are now songs without words. "Turlogh
O'Carolan," "Donogh MacConmara," and the "Mangaire Sugach" have
not left their successors among the "English" poets of the
present day. Among a people naturally so eloquent as the native
Irish, not even the drapery of an incongruous language can
entirely obscure the native vigor and strength of thought. A
ballad is sometime seen which, though often unequal and rude, is
alive with impassioned poetry, fierce, melancholy, or tender, and
it almost always becomes a general favorite, and is preserved
beyond its day to become a part of the standard stock. The songs
of so genuine a poet as William Allingham, who is the only
cultivated Irish poet who has had the taste and the spirit to
reproduce in spirit and diction these wild flowers of song, have
been printed on the half-penny ballad-sheets, and sung at the
evening hearth and at the morning milking all over Ireland.
"Lovely Mary Donnelly" and the "Irish Girl's Lamentation" have
become, in truth, a part of the songs of the nation, touching
alike the cultivated intellect and the untutored heart.

The street-ballads may be divided into five classes: patriotic,
love-songs, lamentations, eulogies, and chronicles.

The patriotic songs are disappointing. There are few to stir the
heart like the war-notes of Scotland. The reason is obvious. The
triumphs were few and fleeting, and the song of the vanquished
was only of hope or despair. They must sing in secret and be
silent in the presence of the victors. In most of the political
songs allegory is largely used. Ireland is typified under the
form of a lonely female in distress, or a venerable old lady, or
some other figure is used to disguise the meaning. Of course the
street ballad-singers dare not sing anything seditious, and even
the whistling of the "Wearing of the Green" will call down the
rebuke of the "peeler." The ballads that express the hatred of
the people to their rulers are sung in stealth and are often
unprinted. They are not usually the production of the hackneyed
professional ballad-singers, and are consequently of a much
higher order. The following is a good specimen, It is entitled

{34}

     The Irishman's Farewell To His Country.

  Oh! farewell, Ireland: I am going across the stormy main,
  Where cruel strife will end my life, to see you never again.

  'Twill break my heart from you to part; _acushla astore machree_.
  But I must go, full of grief and woe, to the shores of America.

  "On Irish soil my fathers dwelt since the days of Brian Borue.
  They paid their rent and lived content convenient to Carricmore.
  But the landlord sent on the move my poor father and me.
  We must leave our home far away to roam in the fields of America.

  "No more at the churchyard, _astore machree_,
      at my mother's grave I'll kneel.
  The tyrants know but little of the woe the poor man has to feel.
  When I look on the spot of ground that is so dear to me,
  I could curse the laws that have given me cause to depart to America.

  "Oh! where are the neighbors, kind and true, that
      were once my country's pride?
  No more will they be seen on the face of the green,
      nor dance on the green hillside.
  It is the stranger's cow that is grazing now,
      where the people we used to see.
  With notice they were served to be turned out or starved,
      or banished to America.

  "O! Erin machree, must our children be exiled all over the earth?
   Will they evermore think of you, _astore_,
      as the land that gave them birth?
   Must the Irish yield to the beasts of the field?
      Oh! no--_acushla astore machree_.
   They are crossing back in ships, with vengeance on their lips,
      from the shores of America."

The songs which were in vogue among the young and enthusiastic
Fenians were, as might be supposed, of an entirely different
nature. They were not peasants, but half-educated artisans. The
proscribed _National Cork Songster_ contains probably more
rant and fustian than any similar number of printed pages in
existence. The verses, of course, bear a family resemblance to
those that appeared in the _Nation_ for a couple of years
previous to the events of '48, and in many instances are
reproductions. Those of a modern date are still more extravagant,
if possible, than that deluge of enthusiastic pathos; for among
the _Nation_ poets were Thomas Davis and James Clarence
Mangan, while among those of the Fenians of 1866 there is but one
that deserves the slightest shred of laurel. Charles J. Kickham,
now under sentence of fourteen years' penal servitude in her
Britannic Majesty's prisons, has written two or three pieces of
genuine ballad-poetry of great merit, which the people have at
once adopted as household songs. "Rory of the Hill" is of
remarkable spirit. It begins:

  "That rake up near the rafters,
     Why leave it there so long?
   The handle of the best of ash
     Is smooth and straight and strong.
   And mother, will you tell me
     Why did my father frown,
   When to make hay in summer-time
     I climbed to take it down?
   She looked up to her husband's eyes,
     While her own with light did fill,
  'You'll shortly know the reason why,'
     Said Rory of the Hill."

The love-songs, that are sung by the _colleens_ at the soft
dewy dawn, as they sit beside the sleek cows just arisen from
beneath the hedge, the nimble finger streaming the white milk
into the foaming pail, while the lark's song melts down from that
speck beneath the cloud, and the blackbird and thrush warble with
ecstasy in the hedge, the morning light shining across the dewy
green fields; or at

  "Eve's pensive air,"

when the shadows are growing long, although the tops of the
swelling uplands are bright, and the crows are winging home, and
the swallows darting in the still air; or, in the winter
evenings, when the candles are lighted in the kitchen, and busy
fingers draw the woof, while the foot beats time to the whirring
wheel, are very numerous, and generally of a higher order of
merit than the patriotic songs. The pulses of the heart are freer
and its utterance dearer in human love than in love of country.
The beauties in which the Irish girls excel all others--the
blooming cheeks, and brilliant eyes, and wealth of flowing hair,
are the main objects of compliment, and are often transformed
into personifications of endearment.
{35}
_Colleen_, the universal term for young maidens, seems but a
corruption of _coolleen_, which means a head of curls or
abundant tresses. Grey and blue eyes are especially objects of
endearment, and even in the ancient Irish poems,
_green_-eyed is not unfrequently used, which is not so
unnatural as the English reader may suppose, the Irish word
expressing the indefinable tint of some lighter blue eyes, being
untranslatable into English. [Footnote 18]

    [Footnote 18: "Sweet emerald eyes."--Massinger. "How is that
    young and green-eyed Gaditana?" Longfellow's _Spanish
    Student_.]

Although the modern love-songs are inferior to those in the Irish
language, for the reason that has been mentioned, that English is
not yet the language of the Irish heart, they often possess a
simple power, and, though seldom sustained throughout, a touch of
nature's genius, which the highest poet cannot reach with all his
art. How exquisite is the following:

  "As Katty and I were discoursing,
     She smiled upon me now and then,
   Her apron string she kept foulding,
     And twisting all round her ring."

Bits of poetry can be picked out of almost every love-ballad, as
witness the following:

  "My love is fairer than the lilies that do grow,
   She has a voice that's clearer than any winds that blow."


  "With mild eyes like the dawn."


  "One pleasant evening, when pinks and daisies
   Closed in their bosoms one drop of dew."


  "His hair shines gold revived by the sun,
   And he takes his denomination from the _drien don_."


  "I wish I were a linnet, how I would sing and fly.
   I wish I were a corn-crake, I'd sing till morning clear--
   I'd sit and sing to Molly, for once I held her dear."


  "'Twas on a bright morning in summer,
     That I first heard his voice speaking low,
   As he said to the colleen beside me,
     Who's that pretty girl milking her cow?"


  "The hands of my love are more sunny and soft
     Than the snowy sea foam."


  "My love will not come nigh me,
     Nor hear the moan I make;
   Neither would she pity me,
     Though my poor heart should break."

There is not one, however, that would bear quoting entire, and
none that comes anywhere near the flowers of the ancient Irish
love-songs which are some of the finest in the world. The
principal theme and delight of the ballad-singers are romantic
episodes, where a rich young nobleman courts a farmer's daughter
in disguise, and, after marriage, reveals himself, his lineage,
and his possessions to his bride; or where a noble lady falls in
love with a tight young serving-boy. Such a ballad will be as
great a favorite among the _colleens_ as the novels of
romantic love are said to be among milliners' apprentices. One
thing is especially noticeable among the love-ballads, and that
is the total absence not only of licentiousness, but even of
coarseness. The Irish peasant-girls at home are the most virtuous
of their class in the world, owing to the influence of the
confessional, the strong feeling of family pride, and the custom
of universal and early marriage. Not but there are unfortunates
who have made a "slip;" and when the ballad relates of such a
tragedy, it shows of how deep effect is the scorn of the parish,
and how wretched the fate of the unfortunate and her base-born
offspring. The "lamentations" or confessions of condemned
criminals are highly popular. Premeditated murder is rare among
the Irish peasantry, in comparison with the records of ruffianism
among the English laboring classes, and the interest excited by
the event is deeper, and extends to a larger space of local
influence. These lamentations are the rhymed confessions of the
criminals, giving an account of the circumstances of the tragedy,
sometimes in the third person, and sometimes in the first, always
concluding with a regret at the disgrace which the criminal has
brought on his relations, and imploring mercy for his soul.
{36}
They are of unequal merit, and, as a whole, not equal to the
love-songs. Once in a while, there is a touch of untaught pathos;
but being without exception the production of the hackneyed
writers, they are as little worth preservation as the "lives" of
eminent murderers which supply their places among us.

The narrative ballads tell of every event of interest to Irish
ears, from Aspromonte to the glorious steeplechase at Namore; the
burning of an emigrant ship, to a ploughing-match at Pilltown,
the same language being used for the one as the other. During the
late war in this country, every great battle was duly sung by the
Irish minstrels. The sympathies of the peasantry were usually
with the majority of their kindred in the North, but not
universally so. Thus does a bard give an account of the battle of
New Orleans, which would astonish General Butler:

  "To see the streets that evening,
     the heart would rend with pain.
   The human blood in rivers ran,
     like any flood or stream.
   Men's heads blown off their bodies,
     most dismal for to see;
   And wounded men did loudly cry
     in pain and agony.
   The Federals they did advance,
     and broke in through the town.
   They trampled dead and wounded
     that lay upon the ground.
   The wounded called for mercy,
     but none they did receive--"

The eulogies of person or place, some patron or his residence,
are innumerable, and ineffably absurd. Some years ago, an idle
young lawyer at Cork happened to be visiting Blarney Castle, when
one of these wandering minstrels came to the gate, and asked to
dedicate a verse to "Lady Jeffers that owns this station." The
request was granted, and the laughter of the guests, as the bard
recited his "composition," may be imagined. The occurrence and
the style of verse were common enough, but an idle banter incited
the gay youth into a burlesque imitation. The result was the
famous "Groves of Blarney," that has been sung and whistled all
over the world. Those who have not seen the originals might
imagine the "Groves of Blarney" to be an outrageous caricature.
But it is not so. It hardly equals and cannot surpass some of the
native flowers of blunder. The original is still sold in the
streets of Cork, and some extracts, in conclusion, will show how
much Dick Milliken was indebted to his unwitting model:

  "There are fine walks in those pleasant gardens,
     And spots most charming in shady bowers.
   The gladiator, who is bold and daring,
     Each night and morning to watch the flowers.

  "There are fine horses and stall-fed oxen,
     A den for foxes to play and hide,
   Fine mares for breeding, with foreign sheep,
     With snowy fleeces at Castle Hyde.

  "The buck and doe, the fox and eagle,
     Do skip and play at the river side.
   The trout and salmon are always sporting
     In the clear streams of Castle Hyde."


----------

{37}

           Daybreak.

           Chapter I.

  "O jewel in the lotos: amen!"


A wide, slow whitening of the east, a silent stealing away of
shadows, a growing radiance before which the skies receded into
ineffable heights of pale blue and gleaming silver, and a March
day came blowing in with locks of gold, and kindling glances, and
girdle of gold, and golden sandals over the horizon.

Louis Granger, standing in the open window of his chamber,
laughed as he looked in the face of the morning, and stretched
out his hands and cried, "Backsheesh, O Howadji!"

Not many streets distant, another pair of eyes looked into the
brightening east, but saw no gladness there. Margaret Hamilton
remembered that it was her twenty-fifth birthday, and that she
had cried herself to sleep the night before, thinking of it. But
she would not remember former birthdays, celebrated by father,
mother, and sisters, before they had died, one after one, and
left her alone and aghast before the world. This, and some other
memories still more recent, she put out of sight; and, since they
would not stay without force, she held them out of sight. One who
has to do this is haunted.

The woman looked haunted. Her eyes were unnaturally bright and
alert, and shadows had settled beneath them; her cheeks were worn
thin; her mouth compressed itself in closing. At twenty-five she
looked thirty-five.

And yet Miss Hamilton was meant for a beauty--one of the
brilliant kind, with clear gray eyes, and a creamy pallor
contrasting with profuse black hair. The beautiful head was well
set; something vivid and spirited in the whole air of it. Her
height was only medium, but she had the carriage of a Jane de
Montford, and there were not wanting those who would have
described her as tall.

While she looked gloomily out, a song she had heard somewhere
floated up in her mind:

  "The years they come, and the years they go,
   Like winds that blow from sea to sea;
   From dark to dark they come and go,
   All in the dew-fall and the rain."

It was like a dreary bitter wind sobbing about the chimneys when
the storm is rising. She turned hastily from the window, and
began counting the hideous phantoms of bouquets on the cheap
wall-paper, thinking that they might be the lost souls of flowers
that had been wicked in life; roses that had tempted, and lilies
that had lied. The room, she found, was sixteen bouquets long,
and fourteen and a half wide.

When her eyes began to ache with this employment, she took up a
book, and, opening it at random, read:

  "A still small voice said unto me,
  'Thou art so full of misery,
   Were it not better not to be?'"

Was everything possessed to torment her? She dropped the book,
and looked about in search of distraction. In the window opposite
her stood her little easel with a partly finished cabinet
photograph on it a man's face, with bushy whiskers, round eyes,
an insignificant nose, the expression full of a weak fierceness
superficially fell and determined, as though a lamb should try to
look like a lion.
{38}
One eye was sharply finished; and, as Margaret glanced at the
picture, this stared at her in so grotesque and threatening a
manner that she burst into a nervous laugh.

"I must turn your face to the wall, Cyclops, till I can give you
another eye," she said, suiting the action to the word.

A pile of unfinished photographs lay on a table near. She looked
them over with an expression of weariness. "O the eyes, and
noses, and mouths! Why will people so misuse the sunbeams? And
this insane woman who refuses to be toned down with India ink,
but will have colors to all the curls, and frizzles, and bows and
ends, and countless fly-away things she has on her! She looks now
more like an accident than a woman. When the colors are put in,
she will be a calamity. Only one face among them pleases me--this
pretty dear."

Selecting the picture of a lovely child, Margaret looked at it
with admiring eyes. "So sweet! I wish I had her here this moment
with her eyes, and her curls, and her mouth."

A sigh broke through the faint smile. There seemed to be a thorn
under everything she touched. Laying the picture down, she busied
herself in her room, opened drawers and closets and set them in
order; gathered the few souvenirs yet remaining to her--letters,
photographs, locks of hair--and piled them all into the grate.
One folded paper she did not open, but held an instant in fingers
that trembled as they clung; then, moaning faintly, threw it on
to the pyre. Inside that paper were two locks of hair--both
silver-threaded--twined as the two lives had been; her father's
and her mother's.

The touch of a match, and the smoke of her sacrifice curled up
into the morning sky.

Then again she came to a stand-still, and looked about for
something to do.

"I cannot work," she said. "My hand is not steady enough, and my
eyes are dim. What was it that Beethoven wrote to his friend? 'At
times cheerful, then again sorrowful; waiting to see if fate will
listen to us.' Suppose I should drop everything, since I am so
nerveless, and wait to see what fate will do."

Here again the enemy stood, The picture of waiting that came up
before her mind was that of Judge Pyncheon in the _House of the
Seven Gables_, sitting and staring blankly as the hours went
by--a sight to shriek out at when at length he was found. With a
swift pencil this woman's imagination painted a companion
picture: the door of her room opening after days of silence; a
curious, frightened face looking in; somebody sitting there cold
and patient, with half-open eyes, and not a word of welcome or
questioning for the intruder.

A clock outside struck ten. Margaret rose languidly and dressed
for a walk, after pausing to rest. Raising her arms to arrange
her hair and bonnet, she felt so faint that for a moment she was
obliged to lean forward on her dressing-table.

At length she was ready, only one duty left unperformed. Miss
Hamilton had not said her prayers that morning, and had not even
thought of saying them, or of reproaching herself for the
omission--a scandalous omission, truly, for the granddaughter of
the Rev. Doctor John Hamilton, and daughter of that excellent but
somewhat diluted deacon, John Hamilton, his son. But to pray was
to remember; and beside, God had forgotten her, she thought.

{39}

Miss Hamilton was not a Catholic, To her, Christ died eighteen
centuries ago, and went to heaven, and stayed there, only looking
and listening down in some vague and far-away manner that was
easier to doubt than to believe. The church into which, at every
dawn of day, the Beloved descends with shining pierced feet and
hands; with the lips that spoke, and the eyes that saw, and the
locks through which had sifted the winds of Olivet and the dews
of Gethsemane; with the heart of infinite love and pity, yes, and
the soul of infinite power--this church she knew not. To her it
was an abomination. The temples where pain hangs crowned with a
dolorous majesty, and where the path of sorrows is also the path
of delights, her footsteps had never sought. To her they were
temples of idolatry. Therefore, when troubles came upon her,
though she faced them intrepidly, it was only with a human
courage. What wonder if at last it proved that pain was stronger
than she?

With her hand on the latch of the door she paused, then turned
back into her chamber again. The society face she had assumed
dropped off; a sigh went shivering over her lips, and with it a
half-articulated thought, silly and womanish, "If I had some one
to come in here, put an arm around me--I'm so tired!--and say,
'Take courage, dear!' I could bear up yet longer. I could endure
to the end, perhaps."

A silly thought, but pitiful, being so vain.

Miss Hamilton was not by nature one of those who, as Sir Thomas
Browne says, looked asquint upon the face of truth. But she had
not dared to fully realize her circumstances, lest all courage
should die out of her heart. Now you could see that she put aside
the last self-delusion, and boldly looked her life in the face.
It was Medusa.

One of the bravest of soldiers has said that in his first battle
he would have been a coward if he had dared. Imagine the eyes of
such a fighter, a foe within and a foe without, and but his own
right arm and dauntless will between the two!

Such eyes had this woman. Of her whole form, only those eyes
seemed to live. But for them she might have been Margaret
Hamilton's statue.

At length she moved; and going slowly out, held on to the railing
in descending the stairs. Out doors, and down Washington street,
then, taking that direction involuntarily. It was near noon when
she found herself in a crowd on Park street, hastening through
it, without caring to inquire what the cause of the gathering
was. Coming out presently in front of the state house, and seeing
that there was space yet on the steps, she went up them, and took
her stand near a gentleman whom she had long known by sight and
repute. Mr. Louis Granger also recognized her, and made room,
quietly placing himself between her and the crowd. Miss Hamilton
scarcely noticed the movement. She was used to being attended to.

This gentleman was what might be called fine-looking, and was
thoroughly gentlemanly in appearance. He was cast in a large
mould, both form and features, had careless hazel eyes that saw
everything, and rather a lounging way with him. Indeed, he owned
himself a little lazy, and used laughingly to assert his belief
that inertia is a property of mind as well as of matter. It took
a good deal to start him; but once started, it took still more to
stop him. His age might be anywhere from thirty to forty, the few
silver threads in his fine dark hair counting for nothing. You
perceived that they had no business whatever there.
{40}
He was not a man who would catch the eye in a crowd; but, once
your attention was directed toward him, you felt attracted. The
charm of his face depended chiefly on expression; and those who
pleased him called Mr. Granger beautiful.

He stood now looking attentively at the lady beside him, finding
himself interested in her. Her eyes, that were fixed on the
advancing procession, appeared to see no more than if they had
been jewels, and her mouth was shut as if it would never open
again. The pale temples were hollow, the delicate nostrils were
slightly pinched, the teeth seemed to be set hard. He studied her
keenly, secure in her perfect abstraction, and marked even the
frail hand that clinched, not clasped, the iron railing. Mr.
Granger could read as much in a hand as Washington could; and
this hand, dazzlingly fair, full-veined, pink-palmed,
transparent, dewy, with heart-shaped finger-tips that looked as
though some finer perception were reaching out through the flesh,
was to him an epitome of the woman's character.

It was the 17th of March, and the procession in honor of St.
Patrick an unusually fine one. It flowed past like a river of
color and music, with many a silken rustling of the flag of their
adoption, but everywhere and above all the beautiful green and
gold of that most beautiful banner in the world--a banner which
speaks not of dominion, but of song and sunshine and the green
earth. While other nations, higher-headed, had taken the sun, the
star, the crescent, the eagle, or the lion for an emblem, or,
with truer loftiness, had raised the cross as their ensign, this
people, with a sweetness and humility all the more touching that
it was unconscious, bent to search in the grasses, and smilingly
and trustfully held up a shamrock as their symbol. Those had no
need to inscribe the cross upon their escutcheon who, in the face
of the world, bore it in their faithful hearts, and upon their
bowed and lacerated shoulders.

A pathetic spectacle--a countless procession of exiles; yet,
happily for them, the generous land that gave them a home grew no
dark willows to rust their harp-strings.

The music was, of course, chiefly Irish airs; but one band in
passing struck up "Sweet Home."

Margaret started at the sound, and looked about for escape. She
could not listen to that. Happening to glance upward, she saw a
company of ladies and gentlemen in the balcony over the portico.
Governor A---- was there, leaning on the railing and looking
over. He caught her glance, and beckoned. Margaret immediately
obeyed the summons, getting herself in hand all the way, and came
out on the balcony with another face than that she had worn
below. She had put on a smile; some good fairy had added a faint
blush, and Miss Hamilton was presentable. The governor met her
with a hearty smile and clasp of the hand. "I am glad to see
you," he said. "Will you stand here, or take that seat Mr.
Sinclair is offering you?"

"Yes, sir," he exclaimed, as Margaret turned away, continuing his
conversation with a gentleman beside him, "the English treatment
of the Irish is a clear case of cussedness."

"Our good chief magistrate is slightly idiomatic at times,"
remarked a lady near by.

A poetess stood in the midst of a group of gentlemen, who looked
at her, while she looked at the procession. "It is Arethusa, that
bright stream," she said with soft eagerness, "Pursued and
threatened at home, it has crept through shadowy ways, and leaped
to light in a new land."

{41}

Margaret approached Mr. Sinclair, who sat apart, and who made
room for her beside him.

Even now she noticed the splendid beauty of this man in whom
every physical attraction was perfected. Mr. Maurice Sinclair
might have posed for a Jupiter; but an artist would scarcely have
taken him for a model of the prince of the apostles. He was
superbly made, with a haughty, self-conscious beauty; his full,
bold eyes were of a light neutral tint impossible to describe, so
transparent were they, so dazzling their lustre; and his face was
delicately smooth and nobly-featured. One could scarcely regret
that the long moustache curling away from his mouth, then
drooping below his chin, and the thick hair pushed back from his
forehead, were of silvery whiteness. It did not seem to be decay,
but perfection. Mr. Sinclair used to say that his head had
blossomed.

He smiled as Miss Hamilton stepped slowly toward him, the smile
of a man entirely pleased with himself.

"Own now," he said, "that you are wishing to be Irish for the
nonce, that you might feel the full effervescence of the
occasion."

She shook her head listlessly.

Mr. Sinclair perceived that she needed to be amused. "See the
governor wave his handkerchief!" he said. "That man has been born
twice, once into Massachusetts, and the second time into all
creation."

She glanced at the object of his remarks, noting anew his short,
rotund figure, his round head with all its crow's-nest of black
ringlets, his prompt, earnest face that could be so kind. "There
isn't a drop of mean blood in his veins," she said. "He is one of
those rare men in whom feeling and principle go hand in hand."

Mr. Sinclair gave his shoulders a just perceptible shrug. "Do you
know all the people here?" he asked, observing that Margaret
looked searchingly over the company. "Let me play Helen on the
walls of Troy, and point out the notables whom you do not know.
That antique-cameo-faced gentleman whom you are looking at now is
the Rev. Mr. Southard. He is misnamed of course. He should be
called after something boreal, Does not he make you shiver? He
lives with my cousin, whom I saw you standing beside down there.
Louis likes him, or pretends to. Mr. Southard is not so much a
modern minister, as a theological reminiscence. He belongs among
the crop-heads; I have somewhere heard that he was a wild lad,
and is now doing penance. It is likely. One doesn't bar a
sheep-fold as one does a prison. He appears to be a little off
guard now, for a breath seems to have forgotten predestination.
When he looks like that, I am always reminded of something pagan,
He'd be horrified, of course, if he knew it. Mark that Olympian
look of painless melancholy, and the blue, motionless eye. What a
cold, marble face he has! Being too polished to retain heat, he
remains unmoved in the midst of enthusiasm. That's philosophy,
isn't it? He is one of those who fancy that ceasing to be human,
they become superhuman. They mistake the prefix, that's all. But
Mr. Southard bristles with virtues. I must own that I never knew
a man so forgiving toward other people's enemies."

"I know Mr. Southard well by reputation," Margaret interrupted
rather warmly. "He is human, of course, and so, fallible; but
every mountain in his soul is a Sinai!"

{42}

"Oh! he has his good points," Mr. Sinclair admitted tranquilly.
"I have known him to be surprised into a glorious laugh, for
which, to be sure, he probably beat himself afterward; and he has
a temper that peeps out now and then in a delightfully human
fashion. I have detected in him, too, a carnal weakness for
French chocolate, and a taste for pictures, even the pictures of
the Babylonians. Once I saw him stand five minutes before a faded
old painting of Cimabue's; I believe it was a virgin standing
between two little boys who leaned to kiss each other, a hand of
hers on either head, I don't condemn the man _in toto_. I
like his faults; but I detest his virtues!

"That stout, consequential person, with his chin in his cravat,
who as Suckling says of Sir Toby Mathews, is always whispering
nothing into somebody's ear, is Mr. ex-councilman Smith. He was
thrown to the surface at the time of the Know-Nothing ebullition,
and when that was over, was skinned off with the rest of 'em. He
considers himself a statesman, and looks forward with prophetic
goggle eyes to the time when his party shall be again in the
ascendant. He comes here to nurse his wrath, and I haven't a
doubt that he feels as though this procession were marching down
his throat. He used to be to a joiner, then a house-builder, then
he got to be a house-owner. Twenty years ago, my aunt Betsey, who
lives in the country, paid him two dollars to build a trellis for
her grape-vine, and he did it so well that she gave him his
dinner after the family had got through. Now he has a mansion
near hers that dwarfs her cottage to a bird-cage. His place is
really fine, grounds worth looking at, and a stone house with
bronze lions at the door. I don't know what he has lions there
for, unless to indicate that Snug the joiner lives within. I'm
not afraid of 'em. You've never heard of him here; but out there
he is tremendous. '_Imposteur à la Mecque, et prophète à
Médine_.'

"Still there are people even here who blow about him. Psaphon's
birds, of course, fed on Smith's oats, He hates me because he
thinks that I laugh at him; but I don't doubt that it soothes his
soul to know that the roses on his carpets are twice as large as
those on mine, and that he has ten pictures to my one. The first
thing you see when the vestibule door opens is a row of
portraits, ten of 'em, Smith and his wife, and eight children.
Ames painted 'em, and he must have had the nightmare regularly
till they were done. They are larger than life, and their eyes
move. I am positive that they move. I guess there are little
strings behind the canvas. There they hang and stare at you, till
you wish they were hanged by the necks. The first time I went
there, I shook my fist at 'em behind Smith's back, and he caught
me at it. I couldn't help it. The spectacle is enough to excite
any man's worst feelings. The parlor walls are covered with
landscapes painted from a cow's point of view, strong in grass
and clover, with pleasant drinking-places, and large trees to
stand under when the sun gets high. I never see such trees and
water in nature, but I dare say the cows do. My wife and I dined
there once. The eight children sat in two detachments and ate
Black Hamburg grapes, skins and all; and the peaches were brought
in polished like apples. My wife got into such a giggle that she
nearly strangled. I see, you sharp-eyed Bedouin, you want to
remind me that I have eaten of this man's salt. True, but he made
it as bitter as any that Dante ever tasted.

{43}

"That sober, middle-aged man in a complete suit of pepper and
salt, hair and all, is Mr. Ames, the member from N----, Polliwog
Ames they call him, from his great speech. Is it possible you
have never heard of it? It was the speech of the session. Some
one had introduced a bill asking an appropriation of ten thousand
dollars toward building a new museum of natural history. There
was a little palaver on the subject, then Ames got up. All winter
nothing had been heard from him but the scriptural yea and nay;
so, of course, every one was attentive, 'Gentle-men,' he said,
'while thousands of men, women, and children, in the city, and
tens of thousands in the commonwealth, are hungry to-day, and
will be hungry to-morrow, and are and will be too poor to buy
food; while paupers are crowding our almshouses, and beggars are
swarming in our streets; while all this poverty is staring us in
the face, and putting to us the problem, how are we to be fed and
clothed and sheltered, and kept from crime, and taught to read
and to pray? it would seem to me, gentlemen, an unnecessary not
to say reprehensible act, to appropriate ten thousand dollars of
the public money, in order that some long-nosed professor might
be enabled to show us how polliwogs wiggle their tails.' Having
said this, Mr. Ames shut his mouth, and sat down covered with
glory."

Margaret's only comment was to look earnestly at this man who had
remembered the poor.

They were silent a little while; then Mr. Sinclair spoke again,
in a lower voice. "I am going to Europe in a few weeks."

She had nothing to say to this. His going would make no
difference with her.

"You know, and everybody knows," he went on hastily, "that my
wife and I have not for years lived very happily together. I
think that few blame me. I would not wish all the blame to be
thrown on her, either. The fact is, we never were suited to each
other, and every day we grew more antagonistic. We had a little
sensible talk last week, and finally agreed to separate. She will
remain here, and I, as I said, shall go to Europe for an
indefinite time, perhaps for ever."

At any other time Margaret might have felt herself embarassed by
such a confidence. As it was, she hardly knew what reply to make;
but, since he waited, managed to say that if people could not
live peacefully together, she supposed it was best they should
separate.

He spoke again abruptly.

"Margaret, you cannot, if you would, hide your misery from me.
You are fitted to appreciate all that is beautiful in nature and
art, yet are bound and cramped by the necessity of constant labor
for your daily bread. You suffer, too, what to the refined is the
worst sting of poverty, the being associated with, often in the
power of, vulgar and ill-natured people, who despise you because
you are not rich, and hate you because, being poor, you yet will
not and cannot be like themselves. I know that there are those
who take delight in mortifying you, in misinterpreting your every
act and word, and in prejudicing against you persons who
otherwise might be your friends. What a wretched, double life you
live; petted by notable people on one hand, and insulted by
inferiors on the other! How long is it to last? You must be aware
that you are slipping out of the notice of your early friends.
You cannot accept their invitations, because you have not time,
and moreover, are not suitably dressed. By and by they will cease
to invite you. Do you look forward to marriage? Every day your
chances are lessening.
{44}
You are growing old before your time. I cannot see that you have
anything to look forward to but a life of ill-paid toil, a
gradual dropping out of the place that you were born and educated
to fill, a loss of courage and self-respect, a lowering of the
tastes, and at last, a sinking to the level of what you must
despise. If you should be taken ill now, what would become of
you?"

"I should probably go to the charity-ward of the public
hospital," Miss Hamilton replied coldly.

"What do you hope for?" he asked.

"I hope for nothing," she answered. "I know all that you tell me,
and far more."

Mr. Sinclair's eyes brightened. "What good are your fine friends
to you? You would never ask them to help you, I know; but if you
could bring yourself to that, would you not feel a bitter
difference? It is not mean to shrink from asking favors, when
they are for ourselves. Walter Savage Landor was neither mean nor
a fool; yet he makes one of his best characters say that the
highest price we can pay for a favor is to ask for it, and
everybody who has tried knows that. You would sink at once from a
friend to a dependent. Now your friends ask no questions, and you
tell them no lies. If they give the subject a thought, they fancy
you in some quiet, retired, and highly genteel apartment, if
rather near the eaves, then so for a pure northern light,
leisurely and elegantly painting photographs, for which you
receive the highest prices, and thanks to boot. They don't see an
upstartly assistant criticising your work, or a stingy employer
taking off part of the price for some imaginary flaw. And if they
did, they would only tell you that such annoyances are trivial,
that you must rise above them. I've heard that kind of talk. But
those who go down to battle with the pigmies know how tormenting
their bites are. The worst of it is, too, that you cannot long
maintain the dignity and purity of your own character in this
petty strife, It isn't in the nature of things, I don't care what
may be said to the contrary by parlor ascetics and philosophers.
They have no right to dogmatize on the necessary influence of
circumstances in which they have never been placed. Moreover,
constant labor is lowering to the mind, and any work is degrading
to the person who can do a higher kind of work. It may be saving
to him whose leisure would be employed in frivolity and license;
but that person is already base. The time you spend in studying
how to make one dollar do the work of five makes a lower being of
you. I can see this in you, Margaret. Your manners and
conversation are not what they were. You have no time to read, or
think, or look at pictures, or hear lectures, or listen to
music--none. You have only time for work, and, the work finished,
are too weary for anything but sleep; perhaps too weary for that
even, How long do you expect to keep up with such a life dragging
at you?"

Miss Hamilton lifted between her finger and thumb a fold of the
dress she wore. "All the time I could spare from my painting in
the last three weeks has been devoted to the task of making this
dress out of an old one," she said. "It was a difficult problem;
but I solved it. I was always fond of the mathematics. Of course,
during those three weeks my universe revolved around a black
bombazine centre. O sir! I know better than you can tell me, how
degrading such labor is. God in the beginning imposed it as a
curse; and a curse it is!"

There was again a momentary pause, during which Mr. Sinclair's
merciless eyes searched the cold face
beside him.
{45}
Margaret did not observe that all the company had gone, that the
procession had disappeared, the crowd melted away. She had sat
there and listened like one in a dream, too dull and weary to be
angry, or to wonder that such words should be addressed to her,
and such bold assertions made, where her most intimate friends
had never ventured a hint even.

When Mr. Sinclair spoke again, his voice was soft and earnest.
"Have you any friend so dear and trusty, that his frown would
make your heart ache yet more? In all the world, do you know one
to whom your actions are of moment, who thinks of you anxiously
and tenderly, for whose sake you would walk in a straight path,
though it might be full of thorns? Is there one?"

"There is not one," she said.

"Come with me, then!" he exclaimed. "Think of Italy, and what
that name means, of the east, of all the lands that live in song
and in story. Drop for ever from your hands the necessity for
toil, and let your heart and mind take holiday. 'Not one,' you
said; but, Maud, you mistook, I thought of you all the time, and
got your troubles by heart. Leave this miserable, cramping life
of yours, and come with me where we shall be as free from
criticism as if we were disembodied spirits. Forget this paltry
Boston, with its wriggling streets and narrow breaths. Fancy now
that the breeze in our faces blows off the blue Mediterranean,
the little dome above us rises and swells to St. Peter's, that
last flutter of a banner over the hill is the argent ground with
golden keys. Or Victor Immanuel has got Rome for his own, and
there floats the red, white, and green of Italy. How you would
color and brighten like a rose under such sunshine! Come with me,
Margaret, come!

She looked at him with troubled, uncomprehending eyes, groping
for the meaning under the flowery speech. His glance dazzled her.

"It is like a fairy-tale," she said. "How can it come true? I am
poor, yet you bid me travel as only the rich can. How am I to go
with you? who else is going?"

He smiled. "O silly Margaret! since there is no other way, and
since in all the world there is no one to care for or to question
you, come with me alone."

Then Margaret Hamilton knew that her cup of bitterness had lacked
one poisoned drop. She got up from the seat, shrinking away,
feeling as though she lessened physically.

But when she reached the door, Mr. Sinclair was there before her.

"At least, forgive me!" she heard him say.

"Let me go!" she exclaimed, without looking up.

"Remember my tenderness and pity for you," he urged.

"You have none!" she said. "Let me go."

"And you are not indifferent to me," he continued.

She lifted her face at that, and looked at him with eyes that
were bright, gray, and angry as an eagle's.

"Maurice Sinclair," she said haughtily, "I thank you for one
thing. Weary, and miserable, and lonely as I have been, I could
not have been certain, without this test, that such a temptation
would not make me hesitate. But now I know that temptation comes
from within, not from without, and that infamy attracts only the
infamous. I care for you, you think? My admiration and my
friendships are free; but I am not a woman to tear my hands on
other people's hedges. Let me tell you, sir, that I must honor a
man before I can feel any affection for him.
{46}
I must know that, though being human he might stumble, his proper
stature is upright. If I cared for you, I could not stand here
and scorn you, as I do; I should pray you to be true to your
noble self, to give me back my trust in you. I should forgive
you; but my forgiveness would be coals of fire on your head. If I
could love a man well enough to sin for him, I should love him
too well for that. Oh! it was manly, and tender, and generous of
you, was it not? I had lost all but self-respect, and you would
have taken that from me. But, sir, I have wings which you can
never entangle!"

"You have nowhere to turn," he said.

She stood one instant as though his words were indeed true, then
threw her hands upward, "I turn to God! I turn to God!" she cried
out.

When she looked at him again, Mr. Sinclair stepped aside and let
her pass.

But the strength that passion gives is brief, and when Margaret
reached the street, she was trembling with weakness. Where to go?
Not home; oh! not to that gloomy place! She walked across the
Common, and thence to the Public Gardens, every step a weariness.

"I must stay out in the sunshine," she thought, taking a seat
under the great linden-tree that stands open to the west.
"Darkness, and chilly, shadowed places are terrible. Oh! what
next?"

Though she had called on God, she yet believed not in him, poor
Margaret! Hers had been the instinctive outcry of one driven to
desperation; and when the impulse subsided, then darkness fell
again.

Sitting there, she drew from her pocket a little folded paper,
opened it in an absent way, and dreamily examined the delicate
white powder it contained. More than once, when life had pressed
too heavily, the enchanter hidden under this delusive form had
came to her aid, had loosened the tense cords that bound her
forehead, unclasping them with a touch as light and tender as
love's own, had charmed away the pain from flesh and spirit. She
recollected now anew its sinuous and subtile ways. First, a deep
and gradually settling quietude of mind and body, all disturbing
influences stealing away so noiselessly that their going was
imperceptible, a prickling in the arms, a languor in the throat
and at the roots of the tongue, a sweet fainting of the breath,
an entire and perfect peace. Then a slowly rising perception of
pleasures already in possession yet unnoticed before.

How delightful the mere involuntary act of breathing! How airily
intoxicating the full, soft rush of blood through the arteries,
swinging noisily like a dance to a song, never lost, in whatever
labyrinthine windings it might wander. How the universe opened
like a folded bud, like myriad buds that bloom in light and color
and perfume! The air and the sunshine became miracles; common
things slipped off their disguise, and revealed undreamed-of
glories. All this in silence. And presently the silence would be
found rhythmic like a tune.

She went no farther. The point at which all these downy
influences became twined into a cord as potent as the fabulous
Gleipnir, and tightened about both body and soul with its soft,
implacable coils--that her thought glanced away from.

She carefully shook the shining powder into a little heap in the
paper. There was ten times as much as she had ever taken at once;
but then she had ten times greater need of rest and
forgetfulness. Her head felt giddy, as if a wheel were going
within it.
{47}
Catching at that thought of a wheel, her confused memory called
up strange eastern scenes, a temple in a gorge among rocky
mountains; outside, the dash of a torrent foaming over its rough
bed between the palms; not far away, the jungle, where the tiger
springs with a golden flash through the shadows; within, hideous
carved idols with vestments of cloth of gold, and silver bowls
set before them, the noiseless entering of a gliding lama, the
bowed form and hand outstretched to twirl the praying-wheel,
whereon is wound in million-fold repetition the one desire of his
soul, "_Um mani panee, houm!_" O jewel in the lotos! Rest
and forgetfulness! So her thought kept murmuring with weary
persistency.

As she raised the morphine to her lips, some one touched her arm.

"Madam!" said a man's voice just behind her shoulder.

She started and half turned. "Well, sir!"

"What have you there?" he asked, without removing his hand.

She shook herself loose from him. "Will you go on, sir? you are
insolent!"

"I cannot go while you have such a face, and while that paper is
in your hand," Louis Granger said firmly; and reaching, took the
morphine from her.

Her glance slid away from his face, and became fixed.

"O child! what would you do?" he exclaimed.

She did not appear to hear him. She was swaying in her seat, and
her breath came sobbingly.

Mr. Granger called a carriage that was passing, and led her to
it. She made no resistance, and did not object, scarcely noticed,
indeed, when he seated himself opposite her.

"Walk your horses till I find out where the lady wants to go," he
said to the driver.

When, after a few minutes of sickening half-consciousness,
Margaret began to realize who and where she was, and looked at
Mr. Granger, she met his eyes full of tears.

"I have no claim on your confidence," he said, "but I desire to
serve you; and if you can trust me, I assure you that you will
never have reason to regret it."

Margaret dropped her face into her hands, and all the pride died
out of her heart.

"I was starving," she said. "I have not tasted food for
twenty-four hours; and for a week I have eaten nothing but dry
bread."

Mr. Granger leaned quickly and took her hand in a strong grasp,
as we take the hands of the dying, to give them strength to die.

"I worked day and night," she sobbed; "and I only got enough to
make me decent, and pay for my room. I have done all I could; but
I was losing the strength to do. I have been starving so for more
than a year, growing worse every day. I wasn't responsible for
trying to take the morphine. My head is so light and my heart is
so heavy, that everything seems strange, and I don't quite know
what is right and what is wrong."

Mr. Granger's sympathy was painfully excited. He was not only
shocked and hurt for this woman, but he felt that in some way he
was to blame when such things could be. He had also that
uneasiness which we all experience when reminded how deceitful is
the fair surface of life, and what tragedies may be going on
about us, under our very eyes, yet unseen and unsuspected by us.
"What if my own little girl should come to this!" he thought.

"What was Mr. Sinclair saying to you up there?" he asked
abruptly.

She told him without hesitation.

{48}

"The villain!" he muttered.

"No," Margaret replied sadly, "I think that according to his
light, he had some kind meaning. You know he doesn't believe in
any religion, that he denies revelation; yet you would not call
him a villain for that. Why then is he a villain for denying a
moral code that is founded on revelation? He is consistent. If
God and my own instincts had not forbidden me to accept his
proposal, nothing else would have had power."

She sighed wearily, and leaned against the back of the carriage.

"Promise to trust all to me now," Mr. Granger said hastily, "I am
not a Maurice Sinclair."

"Have I not trusted you?" she asked with trembling lips.
"Besides, it seems that God has sent you to me, and trusting you
is trusting him. I didn't expect him to answer me; but I called,
and he has answered."



         Chapter  II.

         A Louis D'or.


With the exception of that perfect domestic circle not often
beheld save in visions, there is perhaps no more delightful
social existence than may be enjoyed where a few congenial
persons are gathered under one roof, in all the freedom of
private life, but without its cares, where no one is obliged to
entertain or be entertained, but is at liberty to be
spontaneously charming or disagreeable, according to his mood,
where comfort is taken thought of, and elegance is not forgotten.

Into such an establishment Mr. Granger's home had expanded after
the death of his wife. It could not be called a boarding-house,
since he admitted only a few near friends; and he refused to
consider himself as host, The only visible authorities in the
place were Mrs. James, the housekeeper, whose weapon was a
duster, and Miss Dora Granger, whose sceptre was a blossom.

The house was a large, old-fashioned one, standing with plentiful
elbow-room in a highly respectable street that had once been very
grand, and there were windows on four sides. All these windows
looked like pleasant eyes with spectacles over them. There was a
rim of green about the place, a tall horse-chestnut-tree each
side of the street,
and an irrepressible grape-vine
that, having been planted at the rear of the
house, was now well on its way to the front. This vine was
unpruned, an embodied mirth, flinging itself in every direction,
making the slightest thing it could catch at an excuse for the
most profuse luxuriance, so happy it could never stop growing, so
full of life it could not grow old.

In the days when Mr. Granger's grandfather built this mansion,
walls were not raised with an eye chiefly to the accommodation of
Pyramus and Thisbe. They grew slowly and solidly, of honest
stone, brick, and mortar. They had timbers, not splinters; there
wasn't an inch of veneering from attic to basement; and instead
of stucco, they had woodwork with flutings as fine as those of a
lady's ruffle. When you see mahogany-colored doors in one of
those dwellings, you may be pretty sure that the doors are
mahogany; and the white knobs and hinges do not wear red.
Cannon-balls fired at these houses stick in the outer wall.

Such was Mr. Louis Granger's home. Miss Hamilton had looked at
that house many a time, and sighingly contrasted it with the
dingy brick declivity in which she had her eyrie, Now she was to
live here.

"How wishes do sometimes come fulfilled, if we only wish long
enough!" she thought, as the carriage in which she had come drew
up before the steps.
{49}
Mr. Granger stood in the open door, and there was a glimpse of
the housekeeper behind him, looking out with the utmost respect
on the equipage of their visitor--for one of Miss Hamilton's
wealthy friends had offered her a carriage.

But as the step was let down, and the liveried footman stood
bowing before her, Margaret shrank back with a sudden
recollection that was unspeakably bitter and humiliating. In
spite of the mocking show, she was coming to this house as a
beggar, literally asking for bread. On the impulse of the moment,
she could have turned back to her attic and starvation rather
than accept friendship on such terms. In that instant all the
petty spokes and wheels in the engine of her poverty combined
themselves for one wrench more.

"I have been watching for you," said Mr. Granger's voice at the
carriage-door.

Margaret gave him her hand, and stepped out on to the pavement,
her face downcast and deeply blushing.

"I hope I have not incommoded you," she said coldly.

He made no reply, and seemed not to have heard her ungracious
comment; but when they reached the threshold, he paused there,
and said earnestly, "I bid you welcome to your new home. May it
be to you a happy one!"

She looked up gratefully, ashamed of her bitterness.

Mr. Granger's manner was joyful and cordial, as if he were
receiving an old friend, or meeting some great good fortune.
Bidding the housekeeper wait, he conducted Margaret to a room
near by, and seated her there to hear one word more before he
should go to his business and leave her to the tender mercies of
his servants. As she sat, he stood before her, and leaning on the
high back of a chair, looked smilingly down into the expectant
and somewhat anxious face that looked up at him.

"I am so cruel as to rejoice over every circumstance which has
been influential in adding to my household so welcome and
valuable a friend," he said. "I have worlds for you to do. First,
my little Dora is in need of your care. It is time she should
begin to learn something. I have also consented, subject to your
approval, to associate with her two little girls of her age, who
live near, and will come here for their lessons. Besides this, a
friend of mine, who is preparing a scientific work, and who does
not understand French, wishes you to make some translations for
him. Does this suit you?"

"Perfectly!"

"But first you must rest," he said. "And now I will leave you to
get acquainted with the house under Mrs. James's auspices. Do not
forget that your comfort and happiness are to be considered, that
you are to ask for whatever you may want, and mention whatever
may be not to your liking, Have you anything to say to me now?"
pausing with his hand on the door-knob.

"Yes," she replied, smiling, to hide emotion; "as in the Koran
God said of St. John, so I of you, 'May he be blessed the day
whereon he was born, the day whereon he shall die, and the day
whereon he shall be raised to life!'"

He took her hand in a friendly clasp, then opened the door, and
with a gesture that included the whole house, said, "You are at
home!"

Margaret glanced after him as he went out, and thought, "At home!
The French say it better: I am _chez vous!_"

{50}

"You have to go up two flights, Miss Hamilton," the housekeeper
began apologetically, with the footman still in her eye.
"But Mr. Granger said that you want a good deal of light. Mr. and
Mrs. Lewis occupy that front room over the parlor, and the next
one is the spare-chamber, and that one under yours is Mr.
Granger's, and that little one is Dora's, and the long one back
in the L is Mr. Southard's. Up this other flight, Miss Aurelia
Lewis has the front chamber. She likes it because the
horse-chestnut tree comes up against the window. In summer you
can hardly see through. It's like being in the woods. There, this
is your chamber," flinging open the door of a large, airy room
that had two deep windows looking over the house-tops straight
into the eyes of the east. The coloring of this room was
delightfully fresh and cool, the walls a pale olive-green, the
wood-work white, and the wide mantel-piece of green marble. There
were snow-white muslin curtains, Indian matting on the floor, and
the chairs were all wicker, except one, a crimson-cushioned
arm-chair. The old-fashioned bureau and wardrobe were of solid
mahogany adorned with glittering brass knobs and handles, and the
black and gilt framed looking-glass had brass candle-sockets at
each side. The open grate was filled with savin-boughs, and a
bright shell set in the midst. In the centre of the mantle-piece
was a white vase running over full of glistening smilax sprays,
and at each end stood a brass candlestick with a green wax candle
in it. There were three pictures on the three blank walls; one a
water-color of moss-roses and buds dew sprinkled, the second, a
chromo of a yellow-gray cat stretched out in an attitude of
slumbrous repose, her tail coiled about her lithe haunches, her
head advanced and resting on her paws, her eyes half shut, but
showing a sly line of watchful golden lustre. The third was a
very good engraving of the Sistine Madonna. A large closet with
drawers and shelves, delightful to feminine eyes, led back from
this quaint and pleasant chamber.

Margaret glanced around her pretty nest, then flung off her
bonnet and shawl, and, seating herself in the armchair by the
window, for the first time really looked at the housekeeper. Till
that moment she had not been conscious of the woman.

Mrs. James was hospitably making herself busy doing nothing,
moving chairs that were already well placed, and wiping off
imaginary specks of dust. She looked as though she would be an
excellent housekeeper, and put her whole soul in the business;
but appeared to be neutral otherwise.

"Everything here was as clean as your eye this morning," she
said, frowning anxiously as she stooped to bring a suspected
table-top between her vision and the light.

"Everything is exquisite," Miss Hamilton replied. "One can't help
having a speck of dust now and then, The earth is made of it, you
know."

The housekeeper sighed wofully. "Yes, there's a great deal of
dirt in the world."

When she was left alone, Margaret still sat there, letting the
room get acquainted with her, and settling herself into a new and
delicious content. Happening after a while to glance toward the
door, she saw it slowly and noiselessly moving an inch or two,
stopping, then again opening a little way. She continued to look,
wondering what singular current of air or eccentricity of hinge
produced that intermittent motion. Presently she spied, clasped
around the edge of the door, at about two feet from the carpet,
four infinitesimal fingertips, rosy-white against the
yellow-white of the paint. Miss Hamilton checked the breath a
little on her smiling lips, and awaited further revelations.

{51}

After a moment, there appeared just above the fingers a
half-curled, flossy lock of pale gold-colored hair, and softly
dawning after that aurora, a beautiful child's face.

"Oh! come to me!" exclaimed Margaret.

Immediately the face disappeared, and there was silence.

Miss Hamilton leaned back in her chair again, and began to
recollect the tactics for such cases made and provided by the
great law-giver Nature. She affected not to be aware that the
silken locks reappeared, and after them a glimpse of a low,
milk-white forehead, then a blue, bright eye, and finally, the
whole exquisite little form in a gala-dress of white, with a gay
sash and shoulder-knots.

Dora came in looking intently at the mantel-piece, and
elaborately unconscious that there was any one present but
herself. Miss Hamilton's attention was entirely absorbed by the
outer world.

"I never did see such a lovely flower as there is in that
window," she soliloquized. "It is as pink as ever it can be.
Indeed, I think it is a little pinker than it can conveniently
be. It must have to try hard."

Dora glanced toward the stranger, and listened attentively.

"And I see three tiny clouds scudding down the east. I shouldn't
be surprised if their mother didn't know they are out. They run
as if they didn't mean to stop till they get into the middle of
next week."

Dora took a step or two nearer, looked warily at the speaker, and
peeped out the window in search of the truant cloudlets.

"And there is another cloud overhead that has gone sound asleep,"
Miss Hamilton pursued as tranquilly as if she had been sitting
there and talking time out of mind. "One side of it is as white
as it can be, and the other side is so much whiter than it can
be, that it makes the white side look dark. If anybody wants to
see it, she had better make haste."

"Anybody," was by this time close to the window, looking out with
all her eyes, her hand timidly, half unconsciously touching the
lady's dress.

"Oh! what a splendid bird!" cried the enchantress. "What a pity
it should fly away! But it may come back again pretty soon."

Silence, and the pressure of a dimpled elbow on Margaret's knee.

"I suppose you don't care much about sitting in my lap, so as to
see better," was the next remark, addressed, apparently, to all
out-doors.

The child began shyly to climb to the lady's knee, and was
presently assisted there.

"Such a bird!" sighed Margaret then, looking at the little one,
thinking that by this time her glance could be borne. "It had
yellow specks on its breast," illustrating with profuse and
animated gestures, "and a long bill, and a glossy head with
yellow feathers standing up on top, and yellow stripes on its
wings," pointing toward her own shoulders, her glance following
her finger. Then a break, and an exclamation of dismay, "What has
become of my wings?"

Dora reached up to look over the lady's shoulder, but saw only
the back of a well-fitting bombazine gown.

"I guess they's flied away," said the child in the voice of a
anguid bobolink.

"Then I'll tell you a story," said Margaret. "Once there was a
lady who lived in a real mean place, and she didn't have a good
time at all. She was just as lonesome and homesick as she could
be. One day she brought home the photograph of a dear little
girl, and that she liked. And she wished that she could see the
real little girl, and that she could talk to her; but she had
only the paper picture.
{52}
Well, by and by she went to live in a delightful house; and while
she sat in her chamber, the door opened, and who should come in
but the same dear child whose picture she had loved! Wasn't the
lady glad then?"

"Who was the little girl?" asked Dora with a shy, conscious look
and smile.

The answer was a shower of kisses all over her sweet face, and
two tears that dropped unseen into her sunny hair.


        To Be Continued

----------

     Comparative Morality Of Catholic
        And Protestant Countries.


It is truly refreshing to read in _Putnam's Magazine_ for
January, 1869, the article entitled, "The Literature of the
Coming Controversy," written, as we now know, by Rev. Leonard W.
Bacon, a Protestant minister of Brooklyn, In it, he castigates
most soundly the well known anti-popery society called "The
American and Foreign Christian Union," "numbering," as he says,
among its vice-presidents and directors, some of the most eminent
pastors, bishops, theologians, and civilians of the American
Protestant churches. Some of its publications he calls "wicked
impostures" and "shameful scandals," and wonders "how they can
stand, from year to year, accredited to the public by some of the
most eminent and excellent men in the country." Our wonder is
still greater how he can call men who countenance such things
"excellent." He says: "All the time that this society has been
running its manufactory of falsehoods and scandals, only the
resolute good sense of the public, in not buying the rubbish, has
saved the church of Christ from a burning and ineffaceable
disgrace." The disgrace to the church, it seems to us, is the
same, since its chief men are implicated in this proceeding,
"whether the public buy the rubbish or not." We honor Mr. Bacon
for his manly, straightforward conduct, and thank him for this
act of justice. It is the first we have had to rejoice in for a
long while, but we hope it will not be the last. The time seems
to be approaching, when calumny and abuse will no longer be
received with favor by the public, and the Catholic Church be
allowed to speak in her own defence, and listened to, and judged
of, according to her own intrinsic merits. All we ask is fair
play, and we are confident the truth will make itself known.

But the Rev. Mr. Bacon, after denouncing the lying and scurrilous
attacks against the church, goes on to say: "It is a pleasant
relief to take up another author--the Rev. M. Hobart Seymour, of
the Church of England. His two books, entitled _Mornings with
the Jesuits at Rome_, and _Evenings with the Romanists_,
are models of religious controversy. The latter of the two,
especially, being the more popular, is peculiarly fitted to be
effective in general circulation." .... "This sprightly,
instructive, and interesting book has gone out of print." ... It
is out of print in English; but desiring to gladden our eyes with
a copy of this model of "courtesy, fairness, ability, and
religious feeling," we procured a translation into Spanish,
entitled, _Noches con los Romanistas_, issued by The
American Tract Society, for the use of benighted Spaniards.
{53}
We have read the opening chapter, and found it enough. We are
tempted to exclaim with bitter disappointment, Is this all the
fairness and justice we are to expect from one who is described
as the "model" of a Protestant controversialist? We prefer the
McGavins, the Brownlees, or the Kirwans whom Mr. Bacon so justly
holds up to public scorn. This man stabs you in the dark; he is a
Titus Oates, who swears away your life by false testimony--by
telling just enough to convict you, when he knows enough to give
you an honorable acquittal.

This opening chapter has for its theme the relative effects of
Protestantism and the Catholic religion upon the morality of
those under their respective influence; and to show that Catholic
countries, in comparison to Protestant, are sinks of crime and
impurity. This, if fairly proved, would be a practical argument
of overwhelming force, sufficient to close the mind against all
that can be said in favor of the Catholic Church; and be a
sufficient reason, with most people, for refusing even to
entertain her claims to be the Church of God. We know that she is
Christ's Church, and that just in proportion as she exerts her
influence, virtue and morality must prevail; and that it is
impossible to prove, unless through fraud and misrepresentation,
that the practical working of her system produces a morality
inferior to that of any other.

We know all the importance of the question; it is one that
touches our good name, and we feel indignation against any one
who shall attempt to rob us of it, by any mean or unfair tricks.
Let us see how our "model" controversialist deals with this
matter. "In order not to cause a useless waste of time by going
over all sorts of crimes," he selects the greatest one, that of
murder or homicide. Then he selects England, and compares it with
nearly all the Catholic countries of Europe, and shows it to be
at least four times better than the very best of them. We do not
propose to ferret this out; we cannot lay our hands upon the
statistics of this particular crime, which seem to be everywhere
very loosely given; but we can show shortly, that his conclusions
are utterly false. He gives the number of persons
_imprisoned_ on this charge of homicide in England and
Wales, during 1852, as 74, and the annual mean for three years as
72. This will strike every one as simply ridiculous. Luckily, the
_Statistical Journal_ of 1867 gives the following tables of
this crime for 1865, as follows:

     Verdicts Of Coroners' Juries.

  Wilful murder,  227
  Manslaughter,   282
  Total,          509


       Police Returns.

  Wilful murder,        135
  Manslaughter,         279
  Concealment of birth, 232
  Total,                646


      Criminal Tables.

  Wilful murder cases tried,          60
  Manslaughter, cases tried,         316
  Concealment of birth, cases tried, 143
  Total,                             519


{54}

If 519 were tried, we may judge of the number _imprisoned_.
The author of the article in the _Journal_ says: "The police
returns do not correspond with the coroners', and the discrepancy
is so great that I can only account for it on the supposition
that, according to the police view of it, infanticide is not
murder." The number of coroners' inquests held in 1865, in
England and Wales, was

  Total                             25,011
  Verdict of accidental deaths, . . 11,397

He continues, "Open verdicts, as they are termed, such as, 'found
dead,' or 'found drowned,' are rendered in many cases when a more
accurate knowledge would have led to the verdict of 'wilful
murder.'"

It is just as easy to compare the total of first-class criminals
of all sorts, as to select homicide.

Alison [Footnote 19] says, "The proportion of crime to the
inhabitants was _twelve times_ greater in Prussia
(Protestant) than in France, (Catholic,) and in Austria,
(Catholic,) the proportion of convicted crime is not _one
fourth_ of what is found in Prussia." The _Statistical
Journals_ for 1864-65 show that France is better than England.

    [Footnote 19: _History of Europe_, vol. iii. chap,
    xxvii. 10, 11.]

There were no less than 846 deaths of children under one year
old, in 1857, in England and Wales from violent causes, [Footnote
20] from which we may form some little idea of the extent of only
one sort of homicide.

    [Footnote 20: _Statistical Journal_, 1859.]

Only 74 incarcerations for homicide in all England and Wales for
the year 1852! Why, it is stated in the _New York Herald_ of
February 4th, that 78 persons were arrested last year for murder
in New York alone. We can easily imagine what the grand total for
the United States must be, and how much better is England, with
its pauperism and crime, than the United States?

Mr. Seymour undoubtedly is "sprightly" enough, but only
"instructive" by showing us the amount of nonsense which the
public is expected to swallow without examination, where the
Catholic Church is concerned, and the amount of fair play to be
expected from a "model" of a Protestant controversialist.

But as a comparison based on "homicide" alone would prove
nothing, any more than one based on drunkenness or robbery, Mr.
Seymour institutes another, in respect to unchastity, or
immorality, and here he sets up as his criterion the amount of
_illegitimacy_ among Catholics and Protestants respectively.
In any community, the moral condition is to be estimated by the
greater or smaller proportion of illegitimacy. We object to this
as a very unreliable test. In some communities, an illegitimate
birth is almost unknown, and yet they are the most corrupt and
licentious on the face of the earth. Infanticide and foeticide
replace illegitimacy. A young woman falls from virtue; but in
spite of the finger of scorn which will be pointed at her, her
sense of religious duty restrains her from adding a horrible
crime to her sin. What is her moral condition in the sight of
God, compared with that of the guilty one whom no fear of the
Almighty has restrained from the commission of this crime? The
absence of illegitimacy may be the most convincing proof of a
state of moral corruption, as in Persia and Turkey, where no
children except in wedlock, are suffered to see the light of the
world. [Footnote 21]

  [Footnote 21: Storer, _Criminal Abortion_, p. 32.]

There are good reasons why more illegitimate children might be
expected to be born among Catholics than among Protestants, and
yet the former be much more the moral than the latter. "The
doctrine of the Catholic Church," says Bishop Fitzpatrick, "her
canons, her pontifical constitutions, her theologians, without
exception teach, and constantly have taught, that the destruction
of the human foetus in the womb of the mother, at any period from
the first instant of conception, is a heinous crime, equal at
least in guilt to that of murder." [Footnote 22]

    [Footnote 22: Ibid. p. 72.]

{55}

This is understood by Catholics of all classes, and inspires a
salutary horror of the crime. Protestantism does not teach
morality in this definite way, but leaves people to reason out
for themselves the degree of criminality of particular offences.
Let us listen to Dr. Storer, an eminent Protestant physician. "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; our American women arrogate to themselves the
settlement of what they consider, if doubtful, purely an ethical
question; and there can be no doubt that the Romish ordinance,
flanked on the one hand by the confessional, and by denouncement
and excommunications on the other, has saved to to the world
thousands of infant lives." [Footnote 23] Rev. Dr. Todd, a
Protestant minister of Pittsfield, Mass., to his honor be it
said, has had the courage to declare the same thing in similar
words. [Footnote 24] Dr. Storer proceeds, "During the ten years
that have passed since the preceding sentence was written, we
have had ample verification of its truth. Several hundreds of
Protestant women have personally acknowledged to us their guilt,
against whom only seven Catholics, and of these we found, upon
further inquiry, that but two were only nominally so, not going
to the confession." [Footnote 25]

    [Footnote 23: _Criminal Abortion_, P. 74.]

    [Footnote 24: _Serpents in the Dove's Nest_.]

    [Footnote 25: _Criminal Abortion_, p. 74.]

Two communities exist, in which, say, an equal amount of
unchastity occurs. In one, religion restrains from the commission
of further crime, and there is much illegitimacy apparent; in the
other, criminal abortion destroys all the evidence, and though
horribly corrupt in comparison, the appearance is all the other
way. Some such comparison might be made between Paris and Boston;
with what truth, each one can determine for himself, And there is
another reason which adds force to what has been said. In
Catholic countries, foundling hospitals, established for the very
purpose of saving infant life, exist everywhere, Knowing that the
temptation to conceal one's shame will, in many cases, be too
strong to be resisted, and thus one crime be added to another,
the impulse of Christian charity has caused the founding of these
hospitals, so that the infant, instead of being killed, may be
provided for, and the mother have a chance to repent, without
being for ever marked with the brand of shame. Scarcely any such
exist among Protestants. To set up, then, illegitimacy as the
best criterion of the morals of a community, is a palpable
injustice to Catholics.

But let us, nevertheless, follow Mr. Seymour on his own chosen
ground, He thinks the Catholic country people may, in the absence
of peculiar temptations, be as good as the Protestant; and that
the state of great cities will show more the influence of
religion on the morals of the people, We think the opposite; for
in great cities there are immense masses of degraded people, who
abandon the practice of religion, never go to church, and for
whom the Protestant church, at least, would be apt to disclaim
all responsibility. The country people are within the knowledge
and the voice of the preacher or the priest, and religion
exercises its proper influence upon them.

{56}

He selects London, on the Protestant side, as the largest city in
the world, the richest, and where there are "the most numerous,
the strongest, and the most varied temptations;" and, of course,
where there should naturally be the most vice and crime. But
facts contradict theory. The percentage of illegitimate births in
London is 4.2, while that for all England and Wales is 6.5, and
in the country districts, where the "numerous, strong, and varied
temptations" are wanting, it varies from 9 to over 11. [Footnote
26]

    [Footnote 26: _Statistical Journal_, 1862.]

London is compared with Paris, Brussels, Munich, and Vienna; and
the rates are given as follows:

  Proportion Of Illegitimate Births.

  In Paris,    Roman Catholic,  thirty-three per cent.
  In Brussels, Roman Catholic,  thirty-five  per cent.
  In Munich,   Roman Catholic,  forty-eight  per cent.
  In Vienna,   Roman Catholic,  fifty-one    per cent.

  In London, Protestant, four per cent.

and then, to show that this fearful disproportion exists not only
in the capital cities, but also in other smaller ones, we have
another table:

  Protestant England.      R. C. Austria.

  Bristol and
    Clifton,   4 per ct.   Troppau,    26 per ct.
  Bradford,    8 per ct.   Zara,       30 per ct.
  Birmingham,  6 per ct.   Innspruck,  22 per ct.
  Brighton,    7 per ct.   Laybach,    38 per ct.
  Cheltenham,  7 per ct.   Brunn,      42 per ct.
  Exeter,      8 per ct.   Linz,       46 per ct.
  Liverpool,   6 per ct.   Prague,     47 per ct.
  Manchester,  7 per ct.   Lemberg,    47 per ct.
  Plymouth,    5 per ct.   Klagenfort, 56 per ct.
  Portsea,     5 per ct.   Gratz,      65 per ct.

The inference from these figures, drawn with many exclamations of
surprise and horror, is, that the Protestant religion is ten
times as powerful against crime and vice as the Catholic, and to
create an overwhelming conviction of the essential corruption of
the latter. Nothing is further from the truth. London, Liverpool,
Birmingham, etc., are as corrupt as any cities of the world. The
cities of France and Austria need not fear the comparison, and
the more thoroughly it is made the better.

J. D. Chambers, Recorder of Salisbury, a Protestant, says:
[Footnote 27]

    [Footnote 27: _Church and World_, 1867.]


  "And here a few words on the unhappy reason why London and
  other large towns of Great Britain and also Holland are
  comparatively moral in this respect, and that in their cases
  the average of this species of immorality is far below that of
  the great cities of the continent; the fact that in this
  respect the urban population of Great Britain appears to be
  what it most certainly is not, comparatively pure, the rural
  the most corrupt; whilst on the continent the reverse is
  evident. There can be no doubt, as Mr. Lumley, in his able
  _Poor-Law Reports_, has often hinted, that this difference
  is owing to the prevalence of what has been justly called the
  'social evil;' to the license, it may, in truth, be called
  encouragement, which, in the populous districts of this
  country, and notoriously in Holland, is given to public
  prostitution. Of course there will be no illegitimacy among
  Mohammedans and Hindoos, in Japan and China, or the African
  tribes, nor also among those who live much in the same manner."
  And, we might add, who practise infanticide and foeticide as
  they do. He goes on, "In London, the fallen women may be taken,
  at the mean of the estimates, at 40,000. ... In Birmingham, in
  1864, there were 966 disreputable houses where they resorted;
  in Manchester, 1111; in Liverpool, 1578; in Leeds, 313; in
  Sheffield, 433. [Footnote 28] And here we have revealed a
  plague-spot in English society which runs through every grade,
  especially the artisan, manufacturing, and lower commercial
  classes, who, as we have seen, in general never enter a church.
  ... There is no need, in addition, to dwell on the revelations
  of the divorce court, which prove that Englishmen are nearly as
  bad in this respect as the northern Germans. There is no one
  who is acquainted with the condition of the families of
  artisans who does not know the sad frequency with which they
  abandon their wives, and how frequently they live in a state of
  concubinage."

Alison corroborates this: "In London the proportion (of
illegitimacy) is one to thirty-six, the effect, it is to be
feared, of the immense mass of concubinage which there prevails,
under circumstances where a law of nature renders an increase of
the population from that source impossible." [Footnote 29]

    [Footnote 28: _Statistical Journal_, 1864.]

    [Footnote 29: Vol. ii. chap. xvii. 122.]


{57}

"In London, however, and the English cities, there are more
illegitimate births than appear on the registers, because
children of people who live together without being married are
registered 'legitimate.'" [Footnote 30] So much for London,
Liverpool, etc.

  [Footnote 30: _Statistical Journal_, 1862.]

In Paris, a great proportion of the children reckoned
illegitimate are born in the lying-in hospitals, or brought to
the foundling hospitals, and the greater proportion of the
mothers are from the provinces, as will be seen from the
following table for 1856:

  Mothers known,      3383
  Department Seine,    551
  Other departments,  2550
  Foreign countries,   282

Children born in concubinage are reckoned illegitimate, and about
one-ninth of such children, on an average, are afterward
legitimated. The proportion of illegitimacy, then, for Paris
proper, on the best calculations, is not over 12 per cent; and
that of London, calculated on the same data, would probably be
quite as large, if not larger.

The same considerations apply to Brussels, Vienna, and Munich.
Large foundling and lying-in hospitals exist in al these places,
and are resorted to by all the country round. The figures for
these cities are in no sense a criterion of their morals.

In Munich and Vienna, there is another important thing to be
taken into account, which we shall explain when we come to speak
of countries. We see, then, how much value is to be attributed to
the heavenly purity of Protestant London, Liverpool, etc., in
comparison to the "astonishing," "horrible" corruption of
Catholic capitals on the continent. Moreover, in the latter the
"social evil" is kept within strictest limits, and under the
complete control of the government, and is not allowed to flaunt
itself in public, as in London and New York, These considerations
are strengthened by the case of Protestant Stockholm, where,
public prostitution being prohibited, the rate of illegitimacy is
over fifty to the hundred--quite equal to that of Vienna.
[Footnote 31] Why did not Mr. Seymour cite Stockholm, which is
notorious? I will answer: It was not convenient to spoil a good
story.

    [Footnote 31: _Appleton's Cyc._, art. "Foundling
    Hospital."]

Now as to the smaller cities of Austria, which, according to
Seymour, beat the world for corruption, what is to be said?
Simply, that they are no worse than their neighbors. What we have
said of the foundling and lying-in hospitals of Paris explains
the whole matter. "In Austria, excluding Hungary, there are forty
foundling and forty lying-in hospitals, and the number of
foundlings provided for by the government is over 20,000."
[Footnote 32]

    [Footnote 32: _Ibid_.]

These hospitals exist, without doubt, in all these cities; and if
we subtract their inmates who come from the country we should
find that they do not compare unfavorably with their neighbors.
They include the chief cities of the German provinces of the
empire; and allowing only 4273 foundlings from the country to be
in their hospitals, which is certainly a very moderate
calculation, their own proper rate of illegitimacy would not
exceed ten per cent. This would be the case in Innspruck, for
example, if 53 only were received. Our "model of fairness" from
such data draws his main conclusions, which prove that he is very
"sprightly" at the figures, if nothing else. Shall we excuse him
on the plea of ignorance? No! he was bound to verify his
statements, and the conclusions from them; and if he had chosen
to take the pains, the sources of information were open to him.
{58}
An infamous calumny against the Catholic Church is invented by
somebody, and the whole tribe of popery-haters forthwith swear
roundly that it is "undoubted," "notorious," etc., and, by dint
of clamor, force the public to give credit to it.

But, seemingly aware that comparing London with cities so
different in climate, position, language, etc., has rather an
unfair look, he says he will take cities of two adjoining
countries of the same race, and gives us the following table:

  _Austria, Rom. Cath.   Prussia, Protestant._

   Vienna,     51%         Berlin,          18%
   Prague,     47%         Breslau          26%
   Linz,       46%         Cologne,         10%
   Milan,      32%         Konigsberg,      28%
   Klagenfort, 56%         Dantzig,         20%
   Gratz,      65%         Magdeburg        11%
   Lembach,    47%         Aix la Chapelle,  4%
   Laybach,    38%         Stettin,         13%
   Zara,       30%         Posen,           19%
   Brunn,      22%         Potsdam,         12%

The only thing this table proves is, that in Prussia the two
Catholic cities of Cologne and Aix la Chapelle are better than
any of the Protestant ones. They show excellently well in the
Protestant column; but then the reader who is not well-posted or
observant might suppose that, being in Protestant Prussia, they
are Protestant cities. We can hardly suppose Mr. Seymour, who is
a traveller, to be ignorant of so well known a fact. And how
comes it that Protestant Prussia makes so poor a show alongside
of the pure and virtuous cities of Birmingham and Liverpool,
where there are "so many and varied temptations"?

"If, then," he says, "the question of the comparative efficacy of
Romanism and Protestantism to restrain vice and immorality is to
be decided by the comparison of Austria and Prussia, we have as a
basis of a certain judgment this notable fact, that in ten cities
of Austria we find forty-five illegitimate births in the hundred,
and in ten cities of Prussia, sixteen only." We have seen what
this is worth. It seems to us that it would be more satisfactory
to compare Austria and Prussia at once than to pick out cities
here and there to suit one's purpose. And this seems to strike
our author; for he says, "They often assure us that some
Protestant countries, as Norway, Sweden, Saxony, Hanover, and
Wurtemberg are as demoralized as Roman Catholic countries. I
shall not deny the allegation; but if a profound demoralization
exists in some Protestant countries, that in Catholic countries
is much worse." Then he goes on in this style to make his
assertion good:

  _Protestant.       Catholic._

  Norway,     10%     Styria,           24%
  Sweden,      7%     Up. & L. Austria, 25%
  Saxony,     14%     Carinthia,        35%
  Denmark,    10%     Salzburg,         22%
  Hanover,    10%     Prov. of Trieste, 23%
  Wurtemberg, 12%     Bavaria,          24%

Here we have Styria, Upper and Lower Austria, Carinthia,
Salzburg, Trieste, which are not separate countries at all, but
simply the German provinces of the Austrian empire, and Bavaria,
compared with countries so different and wide apart as Norway,
Sweden, Saxony, Hanover, and Wurtemberg. This is tricky in the
extreme. Moreover, there is no reliance to be placed on the
figures which express their rate of illegitimacy, for a very good
reason. Marriage is forbidden to great numbers in German Austria
and Bavaria. "No person in Austria can marry if he does not know
how to read, write, and cipher." [Footnote 33] Besides, in both
countries, a man, before being permitted to marry, had to possess
a sum of money quite out of reach of a great many. _Appleton's
Cyclopaedia_ [Footnote 34] says, "In some German states the
obstacles to legal marriage are so great that numbers of people
prefer to live together in what would be perfectly legal wedlock
in Scotland and America, but is only concubinage by the local
laws of the state."

    [Footnote 33: _Alison_, vol. iii. chap, xxvii. 9.]

    [Footnote 34: Article Europe.]

{59}

They marry, but the state will not recognize the children as
legitimate, and the official registers are no criterion of the
real state of the case. Mr. J. D. Chambers says, [Footnote 35]
"In Bavaria, moreover, where the population is one-third
Protestant, there exists an atrocious state of law which forbids
marriage unless the contracting parties satisfy the authorities
that they are capable of maintaining a family without extraneous
aid. This, of course, leads to many secret marriages and illicit
connections, so that this country ought to be excepted from the
average."

    [Footnote 35: _Church and World_, 1867.]

The Bavarians are as good a people as any in Germany, and it is a
shame to libel them. If countries are to be compared--and it is
the only fair and honest way to proceed--why not compare them in
a straightforward, obvious way--France and England, Prussia and
Austria--in fact, all the countries we can get the statistics of,
and show the result in a tabular form, so that we can understand
the _whole_ thing at a glance? This would effectually put a
stop to the cry of the vice of Catholic countries, which the
_Chicago Press_, of January 11th, declares to be "notorious
throughout the country." It is "notorious," because statements
like Seymour's, cooked up for a purpose, give rise to utterly
false conclusions, which are easily caught up and trumpeted,
through the pulpit and the press, all over the country.

We shall now, leaving out Bavaria, for the reasons above given,
give the latest and best statistics, in respect to illegitimate
births, which it is possible to get. They are taken from the
journals of the Statistical Society of London of the years 1860,
1862, 1865, 1867, the principal portions being compiled by Mr.
Lumley, Honorary Secretary of the society, and contained in that
of 1862, to be seen in the Astor Library. It will be interesting
to the general reader, apart from its controversial bearings.

In Prussia, we have statistics according to the religious creed
of the people. We shall, therefore, divide it into Catholic and
Protestant. We wish the same could be done for Holland and
Switzerland. Where there is a large minority differing from the
majority, it would be most interesting; but it cannot be done
except in Prussia. The number of illegitimate births in the
hundred is as follows, according to the latest accounts given:

    _Catholic Countries._

  1828-37,  Kingdom of Sardinia,   2.1
  1859,     Spain,                 5.6
  1853,     Tuscany                6.
  1858,     Catholic Prussia,      6.1
  1859,     Belgium,               7.4
  1856,     Sicily,                7.4
  1858,     France,                7.8.
  1851,     Austria,               9.


    _Protestant Countries._

  1859,     England and Wales,     6.5
  1855,     Norway,                9.3
  1858,     Protestant Prussia,    9.3
  1855,     Sweden                 9.5
  1855,     Hanover,               9.9
  1866,     Scotland,             10.1
  1855,     Denmark,              11.5
  1838-47,  Iceland,              14.
  1858,     Saxony,               16.
  1857,     Wurtemberg,           16.1

Mixed countries, where the Catholic population approaches the
half:

  1859,  Holland,      4.1
  1852,  Switzerland,  6.

Lest we be deemed to wish to conceal the depravity of Ireland, we
give what is given by Mr. J. D. Chambers, [Footnote 36] who
probably has access to the registrar's reports, which, of course,
we have not:

  1865-66, Catholic Ireland, 3

and these, we remark, are _mostly in the north_, which is
Protestant.

   [Footnote 36: _Church and World_, 1867.]

{60}

The particulars of the statistics throw a good deal of light on
the morality of the different countries, for instance, in France
and England. The rate of illegitimacy in all

  England and Wales is  6.5
  London only           4.2
  Birmingham,           4.7
  Liverpool,            4.9

In spite of the "numerous and varied temptations" of the large
towns, the rate is much less in them than in the country, which
runs after this fashion:

  Nottingham,        8.9
  York, N. Riding,   8.9
  Salop,             9.8
  Westmoreland,      9.7
  Norfolk,          10.7
  Cumberland,       11.4

In France, it is just the other way. The rate is,

  In all France,               7.8
  In Paris,                   27.
  Urban districts,            12.
  Rural districts              4.2
  La Vendée,                   2.2
  Brittany, Dep't. Cote D'Or,  1.2

Brittany and La Vendee remained Catholic through the storm of the
French Revolution, and at this moment are thoroughly so. In
Austria, the rate is: whole empire, only 9; urban districts, from
25 to 65; therefore, rural districts cannot be more than 5 or 6.

Prussia gives us, perhaps, the most conclusive test of the
effects of religion on morals; for the census has been carefully
taken according to creed, for many years, with uniform result
thus. There are over 11,000,000 Protestants, and over 7,000,000
Catholics, principally in the Rhine provinces, Westphalia, and
Posen. [Footnote 37] The rate

  Among Catholics,  6.48  Among Protestants, 10.0
  Westphalia,       3.7   Prov. of Prussia,   6.7
  Rhineland,        3.3   Pomerania,         10.3
  Posen             6.8   Brandenburg,       12.0

    [Footnote 37: _Historische Blätter_, 9th Heft, 1867.]

Rev. T. W. Woolsey, of Yale College, New Haven, bears testimony
to this relative state of morals in regard to the kindred subject
of divorce, in an address before the Western Social Science
Convention, at Chicago, as follows: "We have made some
comparisons between the frequency of divorce in this country and
in other parts of Protestantism. Prussia had the reputation of
having the lowest system of divorce laws anywhere to be found.
But the ratio there of annual divorces to annual marriages in
1855 was, among non-Catholics, one to twenty-nine, or about 3.5
per cent less than in Vermont or Ohio, and far less than in
Connecticut, where it is 9.6 per cent. The greatest ratio nearly
thirty years ago in the judicial districts of Prussia was 57
divorces to 100,000 inhabitants; the least, 16 to 100,000: nay
more, in the Prussian Rhenish provinces, where the law is based
on the Code Napoleon, and where the Catholic inhabitants, being
numerous, must have some influence on the social habits of
Protestants, there were but four fair divorces to 100,000
Protestants, or twenty-four in all among 600,000 of that class of
inhabitants. I write this in pain, being a Protestant, if, as the
Apostle Paul says, 'I may provoke to emulation them which are my
flesh, and might save some of them.'"

Scotland might be supposed by our Protestant friends to be high
up on the list, having always been so completely under the
influence of the pure gospel of Calvin and Knox; but the rate for
Scotland is 10.1.

In the Lowlands, where Presbyterianism carried all before it, the
rate is from 10 to 15. In the Highlands, which remained to a
considerable extent Catholic, the average is 5.6.

{61}

Supposing the immorality of the large cities, Protestant and
Catholic, to be the same, though it is pretty sure the Catholic
are much the best, and confining our comparison to the mass of
the rural population, which is the fairer test, and the countries
would stand in the following order, beginning with the most
favorable:

  Sardinia,            Catholic.
  Ireland,             Catholic.
  Holland,             Mixed.
  Spain,               Catholic.
  Switzerland,         Mixed.
  Tuscany,             Catholic.
  Catholic Prussia,    Catholic.
  Belgium,             Catholic.
  France,              Catholic.
  Sicily,              Catholic.
  Austria,             Catholic.
  England,             Protestant.
  Norway,              Protestant.
  Protestant Prussia.  Protestant.
  Scotland,            Protestant.
  Denmark,             Protestant.
  Sweden,              Protestant.
  Hanover,             Protestant.
  Iceland,             Protestant.
  Saxony,              Protestant.
  Wurtemberg,          Protestant.

Thus, to sum up, the Catholic countries of Europe, perhaps
without an exception, are above the Protestant, if the number of
illegitimate births is accepted as a criterion of morality. Could
we get the statistics of infanticide, and of a still more common
and destructive crime, foeticide, and add them to the above, then
we could form a more just idea of the benefit the Catholic
religion, with her divine ordinance of Confession, has conferred
on the human race. But of course it is impossible to determine
with exactness the amount of this crime which hides itself in
profound darkness; we can only conjecture from sure indications
that it is one of fearful magnitude.

We need not go abroad; the evidence is at our own door. Take the
State of Rhode Island as a specimen. The number of children
annually receiving Catholic baptism exceeds the half of all the
children born in the State, although the Catholic population does
not exceed the third part; in other words, there are two
Protestants to every Catholic, and yet there are more Catholic
children born than Protestant. Illegitimacy is almost unknown
among Catholics, and the birthrate is at least 1 to 25, which
demonstrates that criminal abortion cannot exist to any extent
worth speaking of. The birth-rate among Protestants is i to over
50. What becomes of the children who ought to be born? Let Dr.
Storer speak: [Footnote 38] "Hardly a newspaper throughout the
land that does not contain their open and pointed advertisements.
... The profits that must be made from the sale of the drugs
supposed abortifacient, may be judged from the extent to which
they are advertised and the prices willingly paid for them." "We
are compelled to admit that Christianity itself, or, at least,
Protestantism, has failed to check the increase of criminal
abortion." [Footnote 39] To the same effect we have a writer in
Harper's very anti-popery Magazine: "We are shocked at the
destruction of human life upon the banks of the Ganges, as well
as on the shores of the South Sea Islands; but here in the heart
of Christendom, foeticide and infanticide are extensively
practised under the most aggravating circumstances. ... It should
be stated that believers in the Roman Catholic faith never resort
to any such practices; the strictly Americans are almost alone
guilty of such crimes." And Bishop Coxe, of the Protestant
Episcopal Church, has published to his people the following: "I
have hitherto warned my flock against the blood-guiltiness of
ante-natal infanticide. If any doubts existed heretofore as to
the propriety of my warnings on the subject, they must now
disappear before the fact that the world itself is beginning to
be horrified by the practical results of the sacrifices to Moloch
which defile our land."

    [Footnote 38: _Criminal Abortion_, p. 55.]

    [Footnote 39: Page 69.]


{62}

How is it with Protestant England? Dr. Lankester, one of the
coroners of London, declares that there are 12,000 mothers in
London alone, guilty of infanticide. [Footnote 40] In Prussia,
Mr. J. Laing says that, "Chastity, the index virtue of the moral
condition of the people, is lower than in almost any part of
Europe." [Footnote 41] Let us look at home. Our attention has
been so diverted to the _vice and immorality_ of our
Catholic neighbors, that we have begun to imagine ourselves the
most moral, the most virtuous, the most enlightened people on the
face of the earth, while, in reality, we are fast getting to be
the most corrupt and abominable. It would be well to call to mind
a little oftener the saying of our Lord, "First pull the beam out
of thine own eye, and then thou shalt see clearly to pull the
mote out of thy brother's eye."

    [Footnote 40: _Church and World_, 1866, p. 57.]

    [Footnote 41: _Spald. Miscell_. p. 484.]

We have thus exposed the untrustworthiness of Mr Seymour's
_Nights among the Romanists_. With the evidence before him,
he has kept back any honest and fair statement of it, and only
put forward such portion as would serve to substantiate an
utterly false conclusion, most injurious to us Catholics, both
religiously and personally; for we cannot be looked upon in the
mass as corrupt and vicious, without a great deal of personal
ill-will and contempt and hatred being engendered.

We call the attention of the Rev. Mr. Bacon to this. He has taken
a noble stand against base and unfair practices in the
controversy with the Catholic Church, and we hope he will
persevere in spite of the opposition he has raised against
himself. We feel inclined to forgive him for some sins of his
own, in this respect; for example, in speaking of the "Tax-Book
of Roman Chancery," when Bishop England has so clearly shown it
to be a base forgery. We hope our exposure of Mr. Seymour will be
met in a generous and Christian spirit, and that he will promptly
disavow all connection with him as an _amende honorable_ for
having recommended him.

We see, by _The Christian World_ of September, that the
American and Foreign Christian Union are going to reissue this
book, and we hope these "eminent and excellent" men, now that
their attention is called to it, will clean this out with the
rest of the filth of their Augean stable. And also the directors
of the American Tract Society are requested to consider seriously
whether defamation is exactly the most Christian weapon to fight
with, or the one most likely in the long run to overcome the
Catholic Church, and whether they should not withdraw from
circulation a book so damaging to their reputation as lights of
the pure Protestant Gospel, shining amongst the darkness and
moral corruptions of Popery.

----------

{63}

      Heremore-Brandon; Or,
    The Fortunes Of A Newsboy.


         Chapter VIII.


As might have ben supposed, Dick was at Mr. Brandon's office long
before that gentleman made his appearance down-town. It was a
sultry morning, with occasional snatches of rain to make the
gloomy streets more gloomy, and the depressing atmosphere more
depressing. Mr. Brandon was sensitive to heat; he had no cool
summer retreat to go to in the evenings, and return from with a
rose in his button-hole in the mornings; and as, instead of being
grateful for the many years in which he had enjoyed this luxury,
he was disposed to consider himself decidedly ill-used in not
having it still, so soon as he found Dick waiting for him, he
began his repinings in the most querulous of all his tones:

"Pretty hard on a man who has had his own country-place, and been
his own lord and master, to come down to this blistering old hole
every morning, isn't it, Mr. Heremore? Well, well, some people
have no feeling! There are those old nabobs who were hand and
glove with me, mighty glad of a dinner with me, and where are
they now? Do they come around with '_How are you, Brandon?_'
and invitations to _their_ dinners? Indeed not!"

"Mr. Brandon, I have come to talk to you about some business,"
began Dick, who had prepared a dozen introductions, all forgotten
at the needed moment; then abruptly, "Mr. Brandon, did you ever
hear my name, the name of _Heremore_ before?"

It would be false to say that Mr. Brandon showed any emotion
beyond that of natural surprise at the abruptness of the
question; but it is safe to add that the surprise was very great,
almost exaggerated. He replied, coolly enough, as he hung up his
hat and sat down, wiping his face with his handkerchief:
"Heremore? It is not, so to say, a common name; and I may or may
not have heard it before. One who has been in the world so long
as I have, Mr. Heremore, can hardly be expected to know what
names he has or has not heard in the course of his life. I
suppose you ask for some especial reason."

"I do," said Dick, a little staggered by the other's
unembarrassed reply, "Did you not once know a gentleman in
Wiltshire, called Dr. Heremore?"

"This is close questioning from a young man in your position to
an old gentleman in mine, and I am slightly curious to know your
object in asking before I reply."

"I believe you were married twice, Mr. Brandon, and that your
first wife's maiden name was Heremore?"

"Well--and then?"

"And that she died while you were away, believing you were dead;
and and that she had two children," said Dick, who began to feel
uneasy under the steady, smiling gaze of the other--"and that
she had two children, a son and a daughter."

"Almost any one can tell you that my family consists of my first
wife's daughter, and two sons by my second wife. But that's of no
consequence. Two children, a son and a daughter, you were
saying."

"Yes, two; although you may have been able to trace only one. She
died in great poverty, did she not?"

{64}

"I decline answering any questions, I am highly
flattered--charmed, indeed--at the interest you show in my
family by these remarks; and I can only regret that my fortunes
are now so low that I know of no way in which to prove my
grateful appreciation of the manner in which you must have
labored in order to know so much. In happier times, I might have
secured you a place in the police department; but unfortunately,
I am a ruined man, unable to assist any one at present."

At this speech, which was delivered in the most languid manner,
and in a tone that was infinitely more insulting than the words,
Dick was on the point of thrusting his mother's letter before the
man's eyes, to show by what means he had obtained his knowledge;
but the cool words, the indifferent manner, had a great effect
upon our hero, who found it every moment more difficult to
believe in the theory that from the first had seemed so likely to
be the real one, and so he answered respectfully:

"I assure you, I mean no rudeness to you, Mr. Brandon; but I am
engaged in the most serious business in the world, for me. I may
be mistaken in you, and shall not know how to atone for the
mistake, should I come to know it; but I hope you will be sure of
my respectful intention, however I may err."

Mr. Brandon bowed, smiled, and played with his pen, as if the
conversation were drawing to a close. Dick, heated and more
embarrassed than ever, was obliged to recommence it.

"But was not your first wife's name Heremore? I beg you to answer
me this one question, for all depends upon it."

"A very sufficient reason why I should not answer it. But as you
to have something very interesting to disclose, perhaps we had
better imagine that her name was Heremore before it was Brandon.
Permit me to ask if, in that case, I am to own a relation in you?
I certainly cannot make such a connection as advantageous as I
could a year or so ago; but though I cannot prove the rich uncle
of the romances, I shall be glad to know what scion of my wife's
noble house I have the honor of addressing."

It seems easy to have answered "_your son_" but the words
would not come. More and more the whole thing seemed a dream.
What! a man so hardened that he could sit before his own son,
whom by this time he must have known to be his son, and talk
after this fashion of his dead wife's house! Impossible! If,
then, he should tell his tale, and tell it to an unconcerned
listener, what a sacrilege he would commit!

"A very near relative," Dick said at last. "I know that Dr.
Heremore's daughter married a Charles Brandon about twenty-five
years ago."

"Ah! I see! And you thought there was but one Charles Brandon in
in the world! You see I shall have to learn a lesson in
politeness from you; for I could conceive that there should be
room in this world even two Richard Heremores."

Poor Dick was silenced for the moment. He knew he was taking up
Mr. Brandon's time, and so the time of his employer. He walked up
and down the little office and thought it all over. Certain
passages in his mother's letter came to his mind. In this way,
perhaps, had her appeals been sneered at in the olden times!

"Mr. Brandon," he said, standing in front of his tormentor, his
whole appearance changed from that of the hesitating, embarrassed
boy to the resolute, high-spirited man--
"Mr. Brandon, there has been enough trifling.
{65}
I insist upon knowing if you were or were not the husband of Miss
Heremore. If you were not, it is a very simple thing to say so.
There are plenty of ways by which I can make myself certain of
the fact without your assistance; but out of consideration for
you, I came to you first."

"I am deeply grateful," with a mock ceremonious bow.

"But if you persist in this way of treating me, I shall have to
go elsewhere."

"And then?"

"Heaven knows I do not ask anything of you, beyond the
information I came to seek. I wondered yesterday why she should
have given me her father's name instead of mine; now I can
understand it. I had doubts while first speaking to you, but now
they are gone. I believe it is so. If you will not tell me as
much as you know of Dr. Heremore, I can go to his old home for
it. It would have saved me time and expense if you had answered
my questions; but as you please."

He was clearly in earnest. Mr. Brandon saw it, and stopped him at
the door.

"My wife's name _was_ Heremore," he said very indifferently,
"and her father has been dead these twenty years. You have your
answer. Permit me to ask what you mean to do about it?"

"Dr. Heremore was my grandfather," said Dick, coming back and
sitting down.

"Ah! indeed!" politely; "he was a very excellent old gentleman in
his way; it is much to be regretted that he and you should have
been unable to make each other's acquaintance."

"When my mother--your first wife--died, you knew she left two
children."

"One--a daughter. I think you have met her."

"There were two. I was the other."

"Are you quite sure?" asked Mr. Brandon in the same languid
tones; but, for the first time, it seemed to Dick that they
faltered.

"I am quite sure. You would know her writing."

"Possibly. It was a great while ago, and my eyes are not as good
as they were."

"You would recognize her portrait?"

"If one I had seen before, I might."

"I should say this was a portrait of the first Mrs. Brandon," he
said, taking that which Dick handed him and, looking at it, not
without some signs of embarrassment, "or of someone very like
her. And this is not unlike her writing, as I remember it. Oh!
you wish me to read this?"

Dick signed assent, watching him while he read. Whatever Mr.
Brandon felt while reading that letter, he kept it all in his own
heart.

"This is all?" he asked when he had read and deliberately
refolded it.

"It is all at present," answered Dick.

Then Mr. Brandon arose, handed the paper back, and said very
quietly but deliberately:

"My first wife is dead and gone; her daughter lives with me, and,
as long as I had the means, received every luxury she could
desire. The past is past, and I do not wish it revived.
Understand me. I do not wish it revived. I want to hear nothing
more, not a word more, on this subject. If I were rich as I once
was, I could understand why you should persist in this thing. I
am not yet so poor that the law cannot protect me from any
further persecution about the matter. Your mother, you say, named
you for your grandfather, not for me.
{66}
If you wish paternal advice--all that my poverty would enable me
to give, however I were disposed--I advise you to go for it to
her father, for whom she showed her judgment in naming you. Good
morning."

"You cannot mean this! You must have known me as a child, and
known my name before, long, long ago, and surely consented to it,
or she would not have so named me. Of course, it was by some
mistake the Brandon was dropped at first, not by her, but by
those who took care of me when she died; she could never have
meant such a thing; it was undoubtedly an accident. You cannot
mean to end all here--that I am not to know, to see, my sister!"

"I tell you I wish to hear not another word of this matter; do
you hear me? Have I not troubles enough now without your coming
to bring up the hateful past? You shall not add to your sister's,
whatever you may do to mine."

"I insist upon seeing her."

"You shall not. I positively forbid you to go near her. Now leave
me! I have borne enough."

"But I cannot let the matter rest here; you know I cannot. The
idea of it is absurd! If you do not wish me for a son, I have no
desire to force myself upon you. I do not know why you should
refuse to own me; I am not conscious of any cause I have given
you to so dislike me."

"I don't dislike you, nor do I like you particularly; I have no
ill-feeling against you, but I don't want this old matter dragged
up. I am not strong enough to bear persecution now."

"But I do not want to persecute you. I want--"

"Well, what _do_ you want?"

"I hardly know. I may have had an idea that you would welcome
your oldest child after so many years of loss, however unworthy
of you he might be. I may have thought that if you once were not
all you should have been to one who, likely, was at one time very
dear to you, it might be a satisfaction to you, even at this late
day, to retrieve--"

"You thought wrong, and it is not worth while wasting words on the
matter. I have got over all that, and don't want it revived. I
can't put you out, but I beg you to go; or, if you persist in
forcing your words upon me, pray choose some other subject."

"I will go, since you so heartily desire it; but I warn you that
I will not give up seeing Miss--my sister."

"As you please. You will get as little satisfaction there, I
fancy; though it may not be quite as annoying to her as to me."

"I shall try, at all events."

"Try. Go to her; say anything to her; make any arrangement with
her you choose; take her away altogether. I don't care a button
what you do, so you only leave me."

"I will leave you willingly, and am indeed sorry to have put you
to so much pain."

"Not a word, I pray you," answered Mr. Brandon, now polite and
smiling. "You have performed a disagreeable duty in the least
disagreeable way you could, I do not doubt. All I ask is, never
to hear it mentioned again."

Dick stayed for no more ceremony. Glad to be released from such
an atmosphere of selfishness and cowardice, he hardly waited for
the answer to his good-morning before turning to the street.

In less than an hour he was in the dreary room, with
_boarding-house_ stamped all over its walls, saying
good-morning to a stately young lady, very pale and
weary-looking, who kindly rose to receive him.
{67}
The little room was hot and close; there were no shutters to the
windows; the shades were too narrow at the sides; besides being
so unevenly put up that the eyes ached every time one turned
toward them, and the gleaming light was almost worse than the
heat.

"I have been trying for the dozenth time to straighten them,"
said Mary, drawing one down somewhat lower, "but it's of no use."

"Are they crooked?" asked Dick innocently.

"Well, yes, rather," answered Mary, smiling. "I think I never saw
anything before that was so near the perfection of crooked."

"I have seen your father this morning," Dick began, taking a
chair near the table.

"There is nothing the matter, I hope?" she questioned nervously.

"Nothing that any one but myself need mind. I made some
discoveries about myself last evening that I would like to tell
you. Have you time?"

"I have nothing to do. I shall be very glad if my attentive
listening can do you any service." She moved her chair, in a
quiet way, a little farther from his, and looked at him in some
surprise. She saw he was very earnest, excited, and greatly
embarrassed. She could not help seeing that his eyes were
anxiously following her every movement, eagerly trying to read
her face.

"I am afraid I shall shock you very much, and you are not well; I
am sorry I came. I thought only of my own eagerness to see you;
not, until this moment, of the pain I may cause you."

"Do not think of that. I do not think, Mr. Heremore, you are
likely to say anything that should pain me. I think you too
sensible--I mean, too gentlemanly for that."

"I hope you really mean that. I am sure I must seem very rude and
unpolished in your eyes; but I would have been far more so, had
it not been for you."

"For me?"

"Yes." And he told her about the Christmas morning in Fourteenth
Street.

"And you remembered that little thing all this time!" Mary
exclaimed. "And you were once a newsboy!"

"Yes; I was once a great, stupid, ragged newsboy. I do not mean
to deny, to conceal anything. I am so very sorry, for your sake;
but I hope you will like me in spite of it all. If just those few
words and that one smile did so much for me, what is there your
influence may not do?"

"Mr. Heremore, I do not in the least understand you."

"I don't know where to begin; this has excited me so that I do
not know what I am saying, and now I wish almost that you might
never know it; there is such a difference between us that I
cannot tell how to begin."

"Is it necessary that you should begin?" asked Mary. "You told me
you wished to speak to me, of some discoveries you had made in
regard to yourself. To anything about yourself I will listen with
interest; but I do not care to have anything said about myself;
there can be no connection between the two subjects that I can
see; so pray do not waste words on so poor a subject as myself;
but tell me the discovery, if you please."

"But it concerns you as much as it does me. Do you know much
about your own mother? She died, you told me, long ago."

"I know very little about her. I presume her death was a great
grief to papa; for he has never permitted a word to be said about
her, and anything that pains papa in that way is never alluded to.
{68}
The little I do know I have learned from my old nurse."

"You do not remember her?"

"Not in the least; she died when I was a mere baby."

"Did you ever see her portrait, or any of her writing, or hear
her maiden name?"

"No, to all your questions. Does papa know you are here, this
morning?"

"Yes; I went to him at once. At first he was very determined I
should not see you; but in the end, he seemed glad to get me
silenced at any price, and I was so anxious to see you that I did
not wait for very cordial permission."

"You did not talk to papa about my mother?"

"Yes, that is what I went for."

"How did you dare to do it? Was he not very angry? I am sure you
know something about mamma."

"Yes, I do. I have her portrait; this is it."

"Her portrait! My mamma's portrait! O what a beautiful face! Is
this really my mamma? Did papa see it? Did he recognize it?"

"I showed it to him. He did not deny it was hers."

"_Deny it was hers!_ What in the world do you mean, Mr.
Heremore? Where did you get it?"

Then Dick, in the best way he could, told the whole story of the
box, and gave her the letter to read. When Mary came to the part
which said, "_Will you love your sister always, let what may be
her fate? Remember, always, she had no mother to guide her_,"
she turned her eyes, full of tears, to Dick, saying no words.

"She did not know that it would be the other way," Dick replied
to her look, his own eyes hardly dry. "She would have begged for
me if she had known that--" farther than this he could not get.
Mary put her hands in his, and said earnestly:

"No need for that; her pleading comes just as it should. Will you
really be my brother--all wearied, sick, and worn-out as I am?
Oh! if this had only come two years ago, I could have been
something to you!"

But Dick could not answer a word, He could only keep his eyes
upon her face; afraid, as it seemed, that it would suddenly prove
all a dream.

But the day wore on and it did not prove less real. The heat and
the glaring light were forgotten, or not heeded, while the two
sat together and talked of this strange story, and tried to fill
up the outlines of their mother's history.

"I feel as if our grandpapa were living, or, if not living, there
must be somebody who knows something about him," she said.

"I think I ought to go and see. Mr. Staffs was very particular in
urging that."

"I think so; even if you learned nothing, it would be a good
thing for you just to have tried."

"I know I can get permission to stay away for a few days longer;
there's nothing doing at this season, Would it take long?"

"I don't know much about it; not more than two days each way, I
should think. There is a steamer, too, that goes to Portland, and
you can find out if Wiltshire is near there. The steamer trip
would be splendid at this season. Are you a good sailor?"

"I don't know. You have got a great ignoramus for a brother. I
have never been half a day's journey from New York in my life."

"Is that so? Well, you must go to Portland. How you will enjoy
the strong, bracing sea-breezes; they make one feel a new life!"

{69}

Then suddenly Dick's face grew very red, but bright, and he said
eagerly: "Would you trust me--I mean could your father be
persuaded--would you be afraid to go with me?"

"Oh! I wish I could! I would enjoy it as I never did a journey
before! Just to see the sea again, and with a brother! I can't
tell you how I have all my life envied girls with great, grown-up
brothers. Nobody else is ever like a brother. Fred and Joe are
younger than I, and have been away so much that they never seemed
like brothers. A journey with you on such a quest would be
something never to be forgotten."

"It doesn't seem as if such a good thing could come to pass,"
answered Dick. "I don't know anything about travelling; you would
have to train me; but if you will bear with me now, I will try
hard to learn. Do you think your father would listen to the
idea?"

"No; he would not listen to ten words about it. He hates to be
troubled; he would never forgive me if I went into explanations
about an affair that did not please him; but if I say, 'Papa, I
am going away for a couple of weeks to New England, unless you
want me for something,' he will know where I am going, what for,
and will not mind, so he is not made to talk about it; that is
his way."

"Will you really go, then, with me? You know I shall not know how
to treat you gallantly, like your grand beaux."

"Ah! don't put on airs, Mr. Dick; you were not so very humble
before you knew our relationship. Remember, I have known you
long."

"I wonder what you thought of me."

"I thought a great deal of good of you; so did papa, so does Mr.
Ames."

"You know Mr. Ames?"

"Ah! very well indeed; he comes to see us every New Year's day;
he actually found us out this year, and I got to liking him more
than ever; he has come quite often since, and we talked of you;
he says you are a good boy. I am going to be _grande dame_
to-day, and have lunch brought up for us two, unless Madame the
landlady is shocked."

"Does that mean I have staid too long?"

"No, indeed. Mrs. Grundy never interferes with people with clear
consciences, at least in civilized communities; in provincial
cities, and country towns she will not let you turn around except
as she pleases; that's the difference. There are no bells in this
establishment, or, if there are, nobody ever knew one to be
answered, so I will start on a raid and see what I can discover."

In course of time she returned with a servant, who cleared the
little rickety table, and then disappeared, returning at the end
of half an hour with a very light lunch for two; but that was not
her fault, poor thing!

Then hour after hour passed and still Dick could not leave her;
he had gone out and bought a guidebook, which required them to go
all over the route again, and there was so much of the past life
of each to be told and wondered at, that it was late in the
afternoon and Mr. Brandon's hand was on the door before Dick had
thought of leaving. Of course he must remain to see Mr. Brandon,
who, however, did not seem any too glad to see him. Nothing was
said in regard to the matter which had been all day under
discussion. Mr. Brandon talked of the news of the day, of the
weather, and the last book he had read, accompanied him to the
door, and shook hands with him quite cordially, to the surprise
of the landlady, who was peeping over the banisters in
expectation of high words between them.
{70}
Mr. Brandon even went so far as to speak of him as a very near
relative, as several of the boarders distinctly heard. Mr.
Brandon hated to be talked to on disagreeable subjects, but he
knew the world's ways all the same.

"Come very early to-morrow morning," Mary said in a low voice as
they parted, "and I will let you know if I can go."

Dick did not forget this parting charge, and early the next
morning had the happiness of hearing that her father had
consented to let her go.

"Papa isn't as indifferent as he seems," she said. "When it is
all fixed and settled, he will treat you just as he does the rest
of us, only he hates a scene and explanations. I suppose he
_was_ unkind to poor mamma, and now hates to say a word
about it; but you may be sure he feels it. And now you must take
everything for granted, come and go just as if you had always
been at home with us, and he will take it so."

"But what will people say?"

"Why, we will tell the truth, only as simply as possible--as if
it were an everyday affair--that papa's first wife died while he
was away from home, and that when he returned from Paris, where
he says he was then, the people told him you were dead too. I
don't know why that old woman should have told such a story."

"Nor I, but perhaps, poor, ignorant soul, she thought the boy was
better under her charge than given over to a 'Protestant,' who
had acted so like a heathen to the child's mother; but good as
was her motive, and perhaps her judgment, I hope she did not
really tell a lie about it, so peace to her soul. Who knows how
much Dick owes to her pious prayers?"

A very proud and happy man was Dick in these days, when he
journeyed to Maine with his newly-found sister. It is true that
the change in Mr. Brandon's circumstances did not enable Mary to
have a new travelling suit for the occasion, and that she was
obliged to wear a last year's dress; but last year's dress was a
very elegant one, and almost "as good as new;" for Mary, fine
lady that she was, had the taste and grace of her station, and
deft fingers, quick and willing servants of her will, that would
do honor to any station; so her dress was all _à la mode_,
and Dick had reason to be proud of escorting her. She had,
however, something more than her dress of which to be proud, or
Dick would not have been so grateful for finding her his sister;
she had a kind heart, which enabled her always to answer readily
all who addressed her, to make her constantly cheerful with Dick,
and to keep everything smooth for the inexperienced traveller,
who otherwise would have suffered many mortifications; she had,
too, a womanly dignity, a sense of what was due to and from her,
not as Miss Brandon, but as a woman, which secured her from any
incivility and made her always gentle and considerate to every
one. Dick could never enough delight in the quiet, composed way
in which she received attentions which she never by a look
suggested; for the gentle firmness, the self-possession, the
quiet composure, the perfect courtesy of a refined and cultivated
woman were new things to him; and to say he loved the very ground
she walked on would be only a mild way of expressing the feeling
of his heart toward her.

Added to all this, giving to everything else a greater charm,
Mary's mind was always alive; she had been thoroughly educated,
and had mingled all her life with intelligent and often
intellectual people, whose influence had enabled her to seek at
the proper fountains for entertainment and instruction.
{71}
Whatever passed before her eyes, she saw; and whatever she saw,
she thought about. In her turn, Mary already dearly loved her
brother; although two years younger than he, she was, as
generally happens at their age, much more mature, and she could
see, as if with more experienced eyes, what a true, honest heart,
what thorough desire to do right, what patience and what spirit,
too, there was in him, and again and again said to herself, "What
would he not have been under other circumstances!" But she
forgot, when saying that, that God knows how to suit the
circumstances to the character, and that Dick, not having
neglected his opportunities, had put his talent out to as great
interest as he could under other influences. There was much that
had to be broadened in his mind, great worlds of art and
literature for him to enter; but there was time enough for that
yet; he had a character formed to truth and earnestness, and had
proved himself patient and energetic at the proper times. It now
was time for new and refining influences to be brought to bear;
it was time for gentleness and courtesy to teach him the value of
pleasant manners and self-restraint; for the conversation of
cultivated people to teach him the value of intelligent thoughts
and suitable words in which to clothe them; for the knowledge of
other lives and other aims to teach him the value or the mistake
of his own. These things were unconsciously becoming clearer to
him every day that he was with his sister, who, I need hardly
say, never lectured, sermonized, or put essays into quotation
marks, but whose conversation was simple, refined, and
intelligent, whatever was its subject. Others greater than Mary
would come after her when her work was done, we may be sure; but
at the present time Dick was not in a state to be benefited by
such.


      To Be Continued.

----------

{72}

          When?


  Come, gentle April showers,
  And water my May flowers.
      The violet--
  Blue, white, and yellow streaked with jet--
  Thickly in my bed are set;
      Gay daffodillies,
  Tulips and St. Joseph's lilies;
      Bethlehem's star,
  Gleaming through its leaves afar;
  Merry crocuses, which quaff
  Sunshine till they fairly laugh;
  And that fragrant one so pale,
  Meekest lily of the vale,
  All are keeping whist, afraid
  Of this late snow o'er them laid.
  Come, then, gentle April showers,
  And coax out my pretty flowers.

  I am tired of wintry days,
  Have no longer heart to praise
  Icicles and banks of snow.
  When will dandelions blow,
      And meadow-sweet,
  And cowslips, dipping their cool feet
      In little rills
  Gushing from the mossy hills?
  I am weary of this weather.
  Vernal breezes, hasten hither,
  Bringing in your dappled train,
  Tearful sunshine, smiling rain,
  And, to coax out all my flowers,
  Fall, fall gently, April showers.

----------

{73}


    Translated From The French Of Le Correspondant.

  Influence Of Locality On The Duration Of Human Life.


In every place there are influences which are favorable or
unfavorable to the duration of human life. The nature of the
soil, the atmospheric changes, the variations of the temperature,
the position of one's abode with respect to the points of the
compass and its elevation above the level of the sea, act in a
powerful manner upon the organization.

A vast forest is one the grandest, most enchanting and enlivening
scenes in nature. What an ineffable and touching harmony comes
from the varieties of foliage, and what a sweet perfume they lend
to the caressing breeze! What a soothing charm in their cool
shade, calming the fever of life, purifying the soul from all
passion, expanding and elevating the mind, and making man realize
more fully his celestial origin. All men who are endowed with
superior mental faculties have a natural and powerful inclination
for solitude--especially the solitude of a vast forest. The soft
light of its open spaces, the deep shades, the endless variety of
tones from the quivering leaves, the pungent sweetness of the
odors, the air full of vibrations and sparkling light, surround
and penetrate them. It seems to them a glimpse of a world of
mystery to which they have drawn near, and which harmonizes
perfectly with all the thoughts and feelings in which they love
to indulge.

Not only persons capable of reading the divine lessons written on
space, love to wander in the shades of vast forests, but great
noble hearts that have been wounded, also find here a balm. The
soothing melancholy they drink in, the divine presence they feel,
fill up the void left by some charming illusion that has been
dispelled. There are special places where the air we breathe, and
every exterior influence, tend to nourish and develop not only
physical but intellectual life. A beneficent spirit seems to
watch over the safety of humanity and to promote its happiness.
The fluids, the emanations that surround us, penetrate our
organization and become a part of our being; and in consequence
of the wonderful sympathy between the body and soul, it is
evident that they also influence our intellectual faculties.

Umbrageous forests are especially favorable to our existence;
trees are devoted and faithful friends that never reproach us for
their benefits, and their love is susceptible of no change,
Plants are for us a real panacea. They are the natural pharmacies
which Providence has established on earth for the prevention or
cure of our diseases. From their wood, barks, leaves, flowers,
and fruits, are exhaled essences which strengthen our organs,
purify the blood, and neutralize the noxious air around us.

The history of all ages shows that those regions which are
favored with vast forests have always been healthy and propitious
to man; but where the forests have been cut down, those same
regions have become marshy and the source of deadly miasmas, The
marsh fevers which now prevail in certain parts of Asia Minor
render them uninhabitable.
{74}
Nevertheless, ancient authors speak of marshes of small extent,
but not of marsh fevers, because then the forests still remained.

A thousand years ago, La Brenne was covered with woods,
interspersed with meadows. These meadows were watered by living
streams. It was then a country famous for the fertility of its
pastures and the mildness of its climate. Now the forests have
disappeared. La Brenne is gloomy, marshy, and unhealthy. The same
could be said of La Dombe, La Bresse, La Sologne, etc.

The following is a permanent example exactly to the point. In the
Pontine marshes, a wood intercepts the current of damp air laden
with pestilential miasmas, rendering one side of it healthy,
while the other is filled with its destructive vapors. The places
where forests have disappeared seem as if inhabited by evil
genii, who eagerly seek to enter the human frame under the form
of fevers, cholera, diseases of the lungs and liver, rheumatism,
etc. For example, it is sufficient to breathe for only a few
seconds in certain regions of Madagascar, or some of the fatal
islands near by, for the whole organization to be instantly
seized with mortal symptoms. The most robust and vigorous young
man, who goes full of ardor to those shores with the hope of a
bright future, affected by these miasmas, feels as if dying with
the venom of the rattlesnake in his veins; and, if he recovers
from his agony, it is often to drag out in sorrow the small
remnant of his days. How many unfortunate people of this class
have I not met during my voyage in the Indian Ocean. What a
sacrilege to think of destroying these delicious and mysterious
forests, with their atmosphere full of celestial vibrations, and
their divine orchestra, where the breeze murmurs in a thousand
tones the hymn which reveals the Creator to the creature! Every
sorrow is soothed in the depths of those beneficent shades. There
the soul, as well as the body, finds a repose which regenerates
it. The divinity descends; we feel its presence. It moves us to
the depths of our souls. It caresses us like the breath of the
mother we adore!

Man may live to an advanced age in almost every climate, in the
torrid as well as the frigid zone; but he cannot everywhere
attain the utmost limit of human life. The examples of extreme
longevity are more common in some countries than in others.
Although, in general, a northern climate may be favorable to long
life, too great a degree of cold is injurious. In Iceland, in the
north of Asia--that is, in Siberia--man lives, at the longest,
but sixty or seventy years. The countries where people of the
most advanced age have been found, of late years, are Sweden,
Norway, Denmark, and England. Individuals of one hundred and
thirty, one hundred and forty, and one hundred and fifty years of
age, have been found there. Ireland shares with England and
Scotland the reputation of being favorable to the duration of
life. More than eighty persons above fourscore years of age have
been found in a single small village of that country, called
Dumsford. Bacon said that he did not think you could mention a
single village of that country where there was not to be found at
least one octogenarian. Examples of longevity are more rare in
France, in Italy, and especially in Spain. Some cantons of
Hungary are noted for the advanced age to which their inhabitants
attain. Germany also has a good many old people, but few who live
to a remarkable age. Only a small number are to be found in
Holland. It is seldom that any one reaches the age of one hundred
in that country.
{75}
The climate of Greece, which is as healthy as it is agreeable, is
considered now, as it formerly was, favorable to longevity. The
island of Naxos is specially noted in this respect. It was
generally admitted in Greece that the air of Attica disposed
those who breathed it to philosophy.

Examples of longevity are to be found in Egypt, and in the East
Indies, principally in the caste of Brahmins and among the
anchorets and hermits, who, unlike the rest of the inhabitants,
do not abandon themselves to indolence and excesses of every
kind.

A careful computation of the comparative longevity, in the
different departments of France, has been made for 1860 and the
preceding years. The medium annual number of deaths in France, at
the age of one hundred years and upward, is 148. The following
fifteen _départements_, given in decreasing order, are those
which have the greatest number: Basses-Pyrenees, Dordogne,
Calvados, Gers, Puy-de-Dôme, Ariége, Aveyron, Gironde, Landes,
Lot, Ardèche, Cantal, Doubs, Seine, Tarn-et-Garonne. It will be
seen that a great number of mountainous districts are to be found
in these departments. It is surprising to see that of _la
Seine_ on this list. Nevertheless these departments do not
hold the same rank in respect to the ordinary duration of life;
which would seem to prove that some examples of extreme longevity
are not a sufficient index that a country is favorable to long
life. I give their numbers in order: Basses-Pyrénées, 7;
Dordogne, 42; Calvados, 2; Gers, 9; Puy-de-Dôme, 30; Ariége, 48;
Aveyron, 34; Gironde, 18; Landes, 52; Lot, 33; Ardèche, 43;
Cantal, 23; Doubs, 25; Seine, 53; Tarn-et-Garonne, 13.

The fifteen departments in which ordinary life is most prolonged
are: Orne, Calvados, Eure-et-Loir, Sarthe, Eure, Lot-et-Garonne,
Deux-Sèvres, Indre-et-Loire, Basses-Pyrenees, Maine-et-Loire,
Ardennes, Gers, Aube, Hautes-Pyrenees, et Haute-Garonne.

It is evident that places need not be very remote from each other
to produce a different influence on the duration of life.

That cold is injurious to the nerves, remarks M. Reveille-Parise,
is a truth almost as old as the medical art. A low temperature
produces not only a painful effect upon the skin, but it benumbs
and paralyzes the nerves of the extremities, and diminishes the
circulation of the fluids, and this gives rise to all sorts of
diseases.

Men of intellectual pursuits, having an extremely nervous
susceptibility, are particularly affected by change of
temperature. It is not surprising, then, to find that the mental
faculties have attained their utmost degree of perfection in
certain climates. Choice natures, such as poets and other men of
genius, only produce the finest fruit under the influence of an
ardent sun and a pure and brilliant atmosphere. It is only in
warm and temperate climates that nature and life are most lavish
of their treasures; there we find genuine creations; elsewhere
are imitations only, with the exception of the physical sciences,
which depend on continued observation. It is remarkable that, if
the men of the North have conquered the South, the opinions of
the South have always held sway in the North. Besides, fertility
of the soil and a mild temperature set man free, in southern
countries, from all present care and all anxiety respecting the
future, and infuse that blissful serenity of soul so favorable to
the flights of the imagination. In the misty climate of the
north, he has to struggle incessantly against the influence of
the weather, which so greatly diminishes the powers of the mind.
{76}
This struggle is almost always a disadvantage to the minds of
men, who are particularly impressible and often reduced to a
state of muscular enervation. Cold, dampness, fogs, violent
winds, sudden changes of temperature, frequent rains, endless
winters, uncertain summers with their storms and unhealthy
exhalations, are fearful enemies to an organization which is
delicate, nervous, irritable, suffering, and exhausted.

The state of the atmosphere, then, acts powerfully on the mental
faculties. There are really days when the mind is not clear. The
thoughts, sometimes so free and abundant, are suddenly arrested.
The sources of the imagination are expanded and contracted
according to the degrees of the barometer and thermometer. The
different seasons of the year have more influence than may be
thought, upon the master-pieces of art, upon the affections, the
events of life and even upon political catastrophes. History
relates that Chancellor de Cheverny warned President de Thou that
if the Duke de Guise irritated the mind of Henry III during a
frost, (which rendered him furious,) the king would have him
assassinated; and this really happened on the twenty-third of
December, 1588.

The Duchess d'Abrantès says:

  "Napoleon could not endure the least cold without immediate
  suffering. He had fires made in the month of July, and did not
  understand why others were not equally affected by the least
  wind from the northeast. It was Napoleon's nature to love air
  and exercise. The privation of these two things threw him into
  a violent condition. The state of the weather could be
  perceived by the temper he displayed at dinner. If rain or any
  other cause had prevented him from taking his accustomed walk,
  he was not only cross but suffering."

We read in the Journal of Eugénie de Guerin:

  "With the rain, cold winds, wintry skies, the nightingales
  singing from time to time under the dead leaves, we have a
  gloomy month of May. I wish my soul were not so much influenced
  by the state of the atmosphere and variations of the seasons,
  as to be like a flower that opens or closes with the cold and
  the sun. It is something I do not understand, but so it is as
  long as my soul is imprisoned in this frail body."

Ask the poets, artists, and men of thought, if a lively feeling
of energy and of joy, prompting to action and labor; or,
otherwise, if a certain state languor--of strange and undefinable
uneasiness--does not make them dependent on the state of the
atmosphere.

It may be considered, then, as an established principle, that a
temperate climate, mild seasons, and pure air constantly, renewed
constitute not only the highest physical enjoyment but the
indispensable conditions of health.

The physical character of places has a truly astonishing effect
upon man. A distinguished traveller, M. Trémaux, has endeavored
to prove, in several _mémoires_ to the Académie des
Sciences, that man be changed from the Caucasian to the negro
type simply by this influence. He calls attention to the
coincidences that exist between the physical types and the
geological nature of the countries acting especially through
their products. The least perfect, or rather, the type which is
farthest removed from our own, belongs to the oldest lands, and,
in a subsidiary manner, to climates the least favored. The most
perfect belongs to the countries which, within the smallest
limits, offer the greatest variety of formations, allowing the
most recent to predominate, and, in a subsidiary manner, to the
most favored climates. The type is also influenced by other
causes of a more secondary nature which are very complex.

{77}

The geological chart of Europe, says Mr. Trémaux, shows that the
greatest surface of primitive rock formations is in Lapland,
which possesses also the most inferior people; going to the south
of Scandinavia, gneiss and granite occupy also a great part of
the country, but that region is also connected with others more
varied. It contains many lakes, and its climate is more favored,
as well as its inhabitants. As to the Scandinavians of Denmark,
they have a purely Germanic type and are, in effect, upon the
same soil.

Russia possesses different formations of a medium age, but the
extended surface of each kind does not permit its people to
profit by the resources of those adjoining, and, consequently,
they are but indifferently favored. If we turn to the countries
which are in the best condition, we distinguish in general all
the west and south of Europe, and more particularly France,
Italy, Greece, the eastern part of Spain, and the north-east of
England. It is here, in truth, that civilization and the
intellectual faculties have most sway.

Race does not change while it remains upon the same soil and
under the same natural influences; whereas, it is gradually
modified, according to its new position, when it is removed to
another place.

The physical influences of a region, and of mixture of race, have
a distinct manner of acting. By cross-breeding, the features are
at once strongly modified in individuals, but especially
according to the region in which it takes place. Thus, in Europe,
the mixed race is more strongly inclined to the type of the white
man; in Soudan, to that of the negro. A type seems to be more
readily improved than degenerated. The physical character of a
place does not act in detail, but in a general manner, beginning
by modifying the complexion more and more in each generation. It
acts less quickly upon the hair, and more slowly still upon the
features. Cross-breeding is considered the principal modifying
agent only because its effects are at once perceptible, but it
can explain evident facts only in an imperfect manner.

The elevation of a place above the level of the sea has a radical
influence upon phthisis. With the design of indicating the
regions and the degrees of elevation within which this malady is
rare or completely unknown, Dr. Schnepp has made a compilation
from a series of meteorological observations, made in the
Pyrenees and at Eaux Bonnes, and from analogous documents
furnished by travellers who have lived upon the elevated and
inhabited plateaux of the old and new world.

The document on this subject which he sent to the Academy of
Sciences shows that, in the choice of a healthy locality for
invalids, people are too exclusively influenced by a warm
temperature, disregarding the more formal indications of nature
in distributing the maladies of the human race over the surface
of the globe. For instance, phthisis exists in the tropical zone.
In Brazil, it causes one fifth of the cases of mortality; in
Peru, three tenths, and in the Antilles, from six to seven, in
every thousand inhabitants. In the East Indies, the greater part
of the English physicians report, among the causes of death, two
cases from phthisis to every thousand people. In the temperate
zones, phthisis is one of the most devastating of diseases. It
generally attacks from three to four in every thousand
inhabitants. The three countries in which it was not to be found,
Algiers, Egypt, and the Russian steppes of Kirghis, have also
been invaded by it, although in a smaller proportion, In Algeria,
the deaths from phthisis are, to those from other causes, in the
proportion of one to every twenty-four or twenty-seven; in Egypt,
in the proportion of one to eight.

{78}

This old malady becomes more rare as we approach the higher
latitudes. It is supposed not to exist at all in Siberia, in
Iceland, and in the Faroe Islands. Thus, diseases of the lungs
seem to be more rare in certain cold countries than in warm
countries. It is also observed that at a certain altitude the
number of cases greatly diminish, and even completely disappear.
Brockman testifies that phthisis is rare on the plateaux of the
Hartz mountains at the height of two thousand feet above the
level of the sea; and C. Fuchs, stating the same fact concerning
certain elevations in Thuringia and the Black Forest, was the
first to advance the theory that phthisis diminishes according to
certain altitudes.

Dr. Brüggens, also, has since testified to the infrequency of
this disease in the Swiss Alps, at the height of 4500 to 6000
feet in the Engaddine; nor is it found among the monks of the
Great Saint Bernard at the altitude of 6825 feet. According to M.
Lombard, it completely disappears among these mountains at the
height of 4500 feet.

The populous cities of the American continent, which are situated
in the tropical zone at an altitude of six thousand feet above
the level of the sea, are exempt from lung diseases; although, in
the same latitude, phthisis is common in lower regions, This
immunity exists on the other hemisphere in the same zone--on the
elevated plateaux of Hindostan and the Himalaya. In examining the
state of the climate on the heights in which phthisis is seldom
or never found, we find there, even on the equator, a medium
temperature sufficiently low throughout the year; between twelve
and fifteen degrees on the heights below 9000 feet; between three
and five degrees on those between 9000 and 12,000 feet.

In the temperate zone it is still lower. But the warmest months
upon tropical heights do not vary more than six or eight degrees
from the medium temperature. It is the same on the plateaux of
the Alps and in Iceland, and is a general and common
characteristic of the regions in which phthisis is not found. The
deviations below the annual medium, appear even to increase this
immunity. If sufficient observations have not been made to decide
upon the degree of comparative humidity on the heights above
12,000 feet, we know that the elevation at which phthisis is
wanting, is in a hygrometrical condition more nearly approaching
saturation than the lower regions, and that the rains are also
more abundant there.

It is desirable that the heights of Cévennes, the Pyrenees, the
Alps, and, above all, the elevated parts of our Algerian
possessions should be carefully studied, with a view to the
treatment of lung diseases, which are the great scourge of the
human race, and which annually cause the death of more than three
millions of its number.

It is useful, not only to study different countries with respect
to their salubrity, but also to observe the different situations
in the same locality, and the different quarters of the same
city. M. Junod presented to the Academy of Sciences, some years
since, an essay on this subject, which is full of interest. In
considering the distribution of the population in large cities,
we are struck by the tendency of the wealthy class to move toward
the western portions, abandoning the opposite side to the
industrial pursuits, It seems to have divined, by a kind of
intuition, the locality which would have the greatest immunity in
the time of sore public calamities.
{79}
For example, let us speak first of Paris. From the foundation of
the city, the opulent class has constantly directed its course
toward the west. It is the same in London, and generally, in all
the cities of England. At Vienna, Berlin, St. Petersburg, and,
indeed, in all the capitals of Europe, this same fact is
repeated; there is the same movement of the rich toward the west,
where are assembled the palaces of the kings, and the dwellings
for which only pleasant and healthy sites are desired.

In visiting the ruins of Pompeii and other ancient cities, I have
observed, as well as M. Junod, that this custom dates from the
highest antiquity. In those cities, as is seen at Paris in our
day, the largest cemeteries are found in the eastern parts, and
generally none in the western. M. Junod, examining the reason of
so general a fact, thinks it is connected with _atmospheric
pressure_. When the mercury in the barometer rises, the smoke
and injurious emanations are quickly dispelled in the air. When
the mercury lowers, we see the smoke and noxious vapors remain in
the apartments and near the surface of the earth. Now every one
knows that, of all winds, that from the east causes the mercury
in the barometer to rise the highest, and that which lowers it
most is from the west. When the latter blows, it carries with it
all the deleterious gases it meets in its course from the west.
The result is, that the inhabitants of the eastern parts of a
city not only have their own smoke and miasmas, but also those of
the western parts, brought by the west wind. When, on the
contrary, the east wind blows, it purifies the air by causing the
injurious emanations to rise, so that they cannot be thrown back
upon the west. It is evident, then, that the inhabitants of the
western parts receive pure air from whatever quarter of the
horizon it comes. We will add, that the west wind is most
prevalent, and the west end receives it all fresh from the
country.

From the foregoing facts, M. Junod lays down the following
directions: First, persons who are free to choose, especially
those of delicate health, should reside in the western part of a
city. Secondly, for the same reason, all the establishments that
send forth vapors or injurious gases should be in the eastern
part. Thirdly and finally, in erecting a house in the city, and
even in the country, the kitchen should be on the eastern side,
as well as all the out-houses from which unhealthy emanations
might spread into the apartments.

M. Elie de Beaumont has since mentioned some facts which tend to
prove the constancy and generality of the rule laid down by M.
Junod. He noticed in most of the large cities this tendency of
the wealthy class to move to the same side--generally, the
western--unless hindered by certain local obstacles. Turin,
Liége, and Caen are examples of this. M. Moquin-Tandon has
observed the same thing at Montpellier and at Toulouse. Paris and
London also present analogous facts, although the rivers which
traverse those two great centres flow in a diametrically
different direction. Paris increased in a north-easterly
direction at the time when the Bastille, the Palais des
Tournelles, the Hotel St. Paul, etc., were built; but the
inhabitants were then influenced by fear of the aggressive
Normans, whose fleets ascended the Seine as far as Paris, and
were only arrested by the Pont-au-Change. At that time, and as
long as this fear lasted, they must have felt unwilling to live
in Auteuil or Grenelle, But since the foundation of the Louvre,
and especially since the reign of Henri Quatre, the current has
resumed its normal direction.
{80}
M. Elie de Beaumont is inclined to believe that, among the causes
of this phenomenon, we should reckon the temperature and the
hygrometrical state of the air, which is generally warmer and
more moist during the winds from the west and south-west than
during the east and north-east winds.

What most contributes to prolong existence is a certain
uniformity in heat and cold, and in the density and rarity of the
atmosphere. This is why the countries in which the barometer and
thermometer are subject to sudden and considerable changes are
never favorable to the duration of life. They may be healthy, and
man may live a long time there; but he will never attain a very
advanced age, because the variations of the atmosphere produce
many interior changes which consume, to a surprising degree, both
the strength and the organs of life.

Too much dryness or too much humidity are equally injurious to
the duration of life; yet the air most favorable to longevity is
that which contains a certain quantity of water in dissolution.
Moist air being already partly saturated, absorbs less from the
body, and does not consume it as soon as a dry atmosphere; it
keeps the organs a longer time in a state of suppleness and
vigor; while a dry atmosphere dries up the fibres and hastens the
approach of old age. It is for this reason, doubtless, that
islands and peninsulas have always been favorable to old age. Man
lives longer there than in the same latitude upon continents.
Islands and peninsulas, especially in warm climates, generally
offer everything that contributes to a long life: purity of air,
a moist atmosphere, a temperature often at one's choice,
wholesome fruit, clear water, and a climate almost unvariable. I
had an opportunity, long desired, of traversing the ocean as far
the Tristan Islands, and of returning to the Indian Ocean by
doubling the Cape of Good Hope with a captain who wished to
observe the different islands on the way. I was thus able, in
going as well as returning, to visit these numerous islands, and
I can speak of them from reasonable observation. But it is
sufficient to mention, from a hygienic point of view, the Isle of
Bourbon, (where I lived for many years,) to give an idea of the
sanitary condition of islands in general. Like most isles, the
Isle of Bourbon has a form more or less pyramidal. The shore,
almost on a level with the sea, is the part principally
inhabited. There are few villages in the interior of the island,
but many private residences. The temperature on the shore, though
very high, is less intense than is supposed: the medium
temperature being between 40° and 50°. The sea and land breezes,
which succeed each other morning and evening, refresh the
atmosphere and maintain a healthy moisture. It hardly ever rains
except during the winter, Besides, it is very easy to choose the
temperature one prefers. As the mountains are very lofty, they
afford every season at once. On the summit are seen snow and ice,
while at the foot the heat is tropical; so that it is sufficient
to ascend for ten or fifteen minutes to find a marked change of
temperature, And the colonists of but little wealth are careful
to profit by this precious favor of nature. They select two or
three habitations at different heights, in order to enjoy a
continual spring, During the cool season, they reside on the
sea-shore. Then they go to their dwelling a little above, where
the temperature is mild. And in the hot season, they ascend to
still higher regions.

It is impossible to express the pleasure of thus having several
dwellings at one's choice, in some one of which desirable
temperature can be enjoyed in any season.
{81}
I had three: one at St. Denis, capital of the colony, one at La
Rivière-des-Pluies, and another at La Ressource. La
Rivière-des-Pluies, belonging to M. Desbassayns, a venerable old
man and president of the general council, is the finest situation
on the island. It was formerly called the Versailles of Bourbon.
I inhabited a summer-house above which the surrounding trees
crossed their tufted branches, forming a dome of verdure in which
the birds came to warble. Regular alleys, extending as far as the
eye could reach, formed by superb mango-trees, were enclosed by
parterres, groves, gardens, woods, and all the surroundings of a
small village. Each large habitation in the colony had every
resource within itself, and was the faithful copy of the old
feudal castles.

La Ressource, a dwelling for the hottest season, belonging also
to M. Desbassayns, presented another kind of beauty. There was
less artistic luxury about it, but nature had lavished on it all
her splendor. After dinner, admiring the panorama which was
spread out as far as the horizon, I remarked to M. Desbassayns
that I did not believe it possible for the entire world of nature
to furnish a more beautiful perspective. "I have travelled a
great deal," said he, "and in truth I have never seen anything
like it, not even from the most magnificent points of view in
America." The venerable old man then took me by the arm and
invited me to visit his estate. He made me first look at his
woods, with their tufted foliage; the cane-fields; the deep
ravines; the streams, with their windings rising one above the
other in such a manner that the lower ones were perfectly
visible, and extending in successive circuits more or less varied
to the shore of the sea, which gleamed like a mirror as far as
the eye could reach, and upon the azure surface of which stood
clearly out, like silver clouds, the white sails from all parts
of the world which had given each other _rendezvous_ here,
and were constantly approaching this isle of lava, flowers,
shadows, and light, which they had taken as the centre of
_réunion_.

He made me afterward notice the verdant fields which had formerly
belonged to the parents of Virginia, the heroine of the romance
of Bernardin de St. Pierre. He related to me the true history of
Virginia, who was his cousin. Her death happened nearly as
described by the celebrated romancer. He made me notice, upon his
genealogical tree, the branch that bore upon one of its leaves
the name of Virginia!

M. Desbassayns had promised me some reliable notes respecting
her, and I was glad to offer them to my illustrious friend, Count
Alfred de Vigny, who, in giving me a farewell embrace, had
commissioned me to bear his most tender expressions of love to
the region which had inspired the touching narrative of St.
Pierre. But alas! remorseless death warns us to remember the
uncertainty of life, even when everything disposes us to forget
it.

He took me to one after another of the most interesting trees,
particularly to the _arbre du voyageur_, a kind of banana,
the leaves of which are inserted within one another like those of
the iris, so as to form, at the height of eight or nine feet, a
vast fan. Rain-water, and particularly dew, accumulates at the
bottom of these leaves, as in a natural cup, and is kept very
fresh; and if the base is pierced with a narrow blade, the liquid
will flow out in a thread-like stream, which it is easy to
receive in the mouth. The venerable old man opened one of their
vegetable veins by way of example, and I soon lanced a great
number of these providential trees, and refreshed myself with
their limpid streams.

{82}

Finally, he conducted me by a narrow path to the edge of a deep
ravine in which flowed an abundant torrent, forming capricious
cascades as it wound its way. After passing over a rustic bridge,
an admirable spectacle was presented to our view. An alley was
formed through a wilderness of bamboos, so sombre, so narrow, and
high, that it would be difficult to give an idea of it. It was as
if pierced through a forest of gigantic pipes; and when they were
agitated by a storm, they produced a harmony so plaintive, so
languid, and at the same time so terrible and full of poetry,
that I often passed the entire night in listening to it. I am not
astonished by what is related of these tall and sonorous
_culms_.

In those fortunate countries that are shaded by the bamboo, it is
said that happy lovers and suffering souls make holes in these
long pipes and combine them in such a way that, when the wind
blows, they give out a faithful expression of their joy or their
grief. Nothing is sweeter than the tones that are thus produced
by the evening breeze which attunes these harmonious reeds,
rendering them at once aeolian harps and flutes. As soon as I
found out this magical pathway, I betook myself there every day
at the dawn, to read, to meditate, and to take notes till the
hour of dinner. The next day after this visit, I had the
curiosity to destroy one of the _arbre du voyageur_. It
inundated me with its fresh stream, but I came near being
punished for this profanation of nature, at the moment I expected
it the least. A most formidable centipede escaped from the
splinters which I made fly, and only lacked a little of falling
directly on my face. M. Desbassayns was greatly astonished to see
it; for it is generally believed, he said, that these venomous
insects avoid this beneficent tree.

The enchanting heavens of that privileged region are always
serene, and the air is so pure that no gray tint ever appears on
the horizon; the mountains, hills, meadows, every remote object
indeed, instead of fading away in a dim atmosphere, beam out
against a sky of cloudless azure. This is what renders the
equatorial nights so resplendent. The astonished eye thinks it
beholds a new heavens and new stars. How charming is the
moonlight that comes in showers of light through a thousand
quivering leaves which murmur in the breath of the perfumed
breeze! and when to that is joined the far-off moan of the sea,
and the sounds that escape from the ivory keys or resounding
chords, which accompany the sweet accents of a Creole voice, we
feel as if in one of those islands of bliss which surpass the
imagination of the poets.

One of the things that travellers have not sufficiently noticed,
and which gives us a kind of homesickness for that beautiful
region, is the enchanting harmony which results from the noise of
the sea and the murmur of the breeze in the different kinds of
foliage, a harmony which calms the agitation of the soul as well
as the fever of the body. As there is every variety of
temperature, so there is a great variety of trees. There is one
especially remarkable, namely, the _pandanus_, which
resembles both the pine and the weeping willow, Its summit is
lost in the blue sky, and its numerous branches, borne by a
pliant and elegant stem, support large tassels of leaves, long,
cylindrical, and fine as hair; and when the breeze makes them
tremble in its breath, they murmur in plaintive melancholy notes
that, when once heard, we long to hear again and again.

{83}

The cocoanut or palm-trees, with their leaves long, hard, and
shining like steel, give out a sound like the clash of arms. The
gigantic leaves of the banana are the echo of the voice of an
overflowing torrent, piercing the air like the vast pipes of an
organ. The bamboos, with their tall reeds which moan and grind as
they bend, uttering long groans which, mingling with the tones,
the wailing, and the murmurs of a thousand other kinds of
foliage, with the deep roar of the agitated sea afar off, and the
sound of the waves breaking on the shore, form an immense natural
orchestra, the varied sounds of which, rising toward heaven, seem
to bear with them, in accents without number, all the joys and
all the griefs of the world.

These trees with their tall, slender stems, and thick foliage,
are continually bending in the incessant breeze, In the brilliant
light of that climate their shadow looks black; and, as it is
continually moving, you would think everything animate, and that
sylphs and fairies were issuing forth on all sides.

There is a constant succession of flowers with the strongest
perfume; and when those of the wood are in bloom, you would think
that every blade of grass, every leaf and every drop of dew gave
out an essence which the wind, in passing, absorbed in order to
perfume with it the happy dwellers in this Eden.

Those enchanted regions have inhabitants worthy of their abode.
The hospitality of the Creoles is proverbial. Every family is
glad to receive the stranger and soon considers him as a friend
and brother. The Creole women have the elegance of their
palm-trees. They are as fresh and blooming as the corolla that
expands at the dawn. Their kind courtesy envelops you like the
penetrating odors which come from the wonderful vegetation that
surrounds them. A Frenchman who meets another Frenchman in these
far-off countries regards him as a part of France which has come
to smile an him, and the intimacy, which is formed, is
indissoluble.

The traveller can never forget the touching scenes of the
_varangue_, the enchanting evenings passed there, and the
joyous cup of friendship there interchanged; sweet emotions
contributing to longevity more than is commonly believed.

One finds one's self in that fortunate land surrounded by
hygienical influences which are most favorable to a long life.
Let us add that the alimentary productions are of the first
quality. The water in the stony basins is limpid, and the
succulent fruits are varied enough to almost suffice for the
nourishment of the inhabitants. How can one be a favorite of
fortune and a prey to spleen without going to visit these places,
which exhale a sovereign balm?

Nevertheless, under that sky brilliant with pure light, in that
atmosphere of freshness of perfume and of harmony, it seemed to
me that a tint of infinite melancholy was everywhere diffused. I
regarded the glorious sky, I listened to the trembling foliage, I
breathed the penetrating odors, but something was everywhere
wanting. When I sought what it was that I missed, I found it was
the trees of my native land, which do not grow in every zone, and
where they do grow are not so fine as here. I instinctively
sought the wide-spreading oak, the lofty walnut, the chestnut
with its tender verdure, the tall slender poplar, the modest
willow, and the birch with its light shadow. I recalled the odor
of their foliage, associated with my dearest remembrances, but in
vain. I felt then an immense and inexpressible void that nothing
could fill, and tears naturally sprang from these vague and
profound impressions.
{84}
I hungered, I thirsted for the odor of the trees that had
overshadowed my infancy--an insatiable hunger, a thirst nothing
could satisfy. On returning from that remote voyage, especially
during the first weeks, I went to the nursery of the Luxembourg,
(alas! poor nursery!) I sought the fresh shades of the Bois de
Boulogne, and there, during long rambles, I crushed the leaves in
my hands and inhaled the perfume they gave out. I felt my lungs
expand, as if a new life was infused into them with the odor I
breathed. This invisible aliment which we derive from the
exhalations of the plants to which we have been accustomed from
infancy, had become for me an absolute necessity, a condition of
health.

A climate, a country may not at all times be favorable to
longevity, or at all times unhealthy. The predominance of one
industrial pursuit over another, the choice of one material
instead of another for building houses, or a sudden change in the
general habits, necessarily modifies, in a great degree, the
conditions of longevity. This is what has happened in the Isle of
Bourbon. Till within a few years, no epidemic or contagious
malady was known in that fortunate island; no fever, no cholera,
no throat complaints, no small-pox, etc. But all these diseases
have attacked its inhabitants since our manures, our materials
for building, and our products in general, have been used by them
in large quantities.

The drying up of a marsh, the cutting down of a forest, the
substitution of one crop for another, may effect atmospheric
changes through an extended radius, which will strengthen or
weaken the vitality of the people. Some years since, there was a
marsh behind the city of Cairo, which was separated from the
desert by a hill. It was always noticed that the pestilential
epidemics appeared to spring from that unhealthy spot and finally
to spread throughout the east. The Pacha of Egypt, without
thinking of this coincidence, noticed, on the other hand, that
the hill behind the marsh entirely concealed the fine view which
he would have from his palace, if it were removed. He gave orders
to cut the hill down and to fill up the marsh with its
_débris_, so that the winds which were formerly checked, had
free circulation and purified the atmosphere, while the soil,
thoroughly modified, ceased to emit the pestilential effluvia,
Since that event the plague has not reappeared. A caprice of the
Pacha effected more than all the quarantines and all the efforts
of science, He has freed the world, perhaps for ever, from the
most terrible of scourges.

It is known that the cholera comes from India. It is engendered
in the immense triangular space formed by two rivers: the Ganges
and the Brahmapootra. It is the East India Company according to
M. le Comte de Waren, that should be accused of treason to
humanity. It is that power which has destroyed the canals and the
derivations of the two finest rivers in the world. During the
last twenty-five years of English occupation the number of pools
in a single district, that of _Nort Arcoth_, which burst or
were destroyed, amounted to eleven hundred. In the time of the
Mogul conquerors, a fine canal, the Doab, extending from Delhi,
fertilized two hundred leagues in its course. This canal is
destroyed, and the lands, once so fertile and healthy, are now
the infectious lair of wild beasts, having been depopulated by
disease and death.

{85}

The hygienic condition of different countries, then, may be
modified in various ways. In 1698, Bigot de Molville, president
_à mortier_ of the Parliament of Normandy, found, after
careful research, that, of all the cities of France, Rouen
possessed the greatest number of octogenarians and centenarians.
Toward the middle of the last century this superiority was
claimed by Boulogne-sur-mer, which retained it for nearly fifty
years, and was then called the _patrie des vieillards_.

In a recent communication to the Academy, M. de Garogna remarked
that, in the printed or manuscript accounts we possess respecting
the former eruptions of Santorin, many very interesting details
are found concerning the different maladies occasioned by these
eruptions, and observed at that epoch in the island, which
support what we have said of the variable hygienic state of
different places. According to these reports, the pathological
result of the different eruptions included especially alarming
complications, serious cerebral difficulties, suffocation, and
derangement in the alimentary canal. He proved that morbid
influences were only manifest when the direction of the wind
brought the volcanic emanations. The parts of the island out of
the course of the wind showed no trace of the maladies in
question. Moreover, the sanitary condition of the places within
reach of the wind became worse or improved according to the rise
and fall of the wind. It should also be noticed that the morbid
influence of the volcanic emanations extended to islands more or
less remote from Santorin.

From this report the following conclusions are to be drawn:

  1. The eruption in the Bay of Santorin, while in action, had a
  manifest influence on the health of the people in that
  island.

  2. It especially occasioned complicated diseases, throat
  distempers, bronchitis, and derangement of the digestive
  organs.

  3. The acidiferous ashes were the direct cause of the
  complications, while the other morbid complaints should be
  attributed to sulphuric acid.

  4. Vegetation was likewise affected by the eruption while
  active, and particularly plants of the order _Siliaceae_.

  5. The changes in the vegetation were probably produced by
  hydrochloric acid, at the beginning of the eruption.

  6. The hydro-sulphuric emanations appear, on the contrary, to
  have had a beneficial effect on the diseases of the grape-vine.
  It perhaps destroyed the _oidium_.

It is evident that the question of local influences upon the
duration of life is a most comprehensive and fruitful one. Nature
gives us some formal indications, in dividing the maladies of the
human race; and the study of places and climates in a hygienic
point of view, although in its infancy, has already brought to
our notice many valuable facts. This study is full of interest.
We shall doubtless arrive at a knowledge of the exact relation
between such a malady, such an epidemic, and such a place, or
site, or position with respect to the points of the compass, as
well as of the beneficial and special influence exercised upon
our principal organs by the exhalations from different places,
which might well be called the genii of those regions.

----------

{86}


    The Bishops of Rome. [Footnote 42]

    [Footnote 42: _Harper's New Monthly Magazine. The Bishops
    of Rome._ New York: Harper and Brothers, January, 1869.]


_Harper's Magazine_, we are told, has a wide circulation,
and some merit as a magazine of light literature; but it does not
appear to have much aptitude for the scholarly discussion of
serious questions, whatever the matter to which they relate, and
it is guilty of great rashness in attempting to treat a subject
of such grave and important relations to religion and
civilization, society and the church, as the history of the
bishops of Rome. The subject is not within its competence, and
the historical value of its essay to those who know something of
the history of the popes and of mediaeval Europe is less than
null.

Of course, _Harper's Magazine_ throws no new light on any
disputed passage in the history of the bishops of Rome, and
brings out no fact not well known, or at least often repeated
before; it does nothing more than compress within a brief
magazine article the principal inventions, calumnies, and
slanders vented for centuries against the Roman pontiffs by
personal or national antipathy, disappointed ambition, political
and partisan animosity, and heretical and sectarian wrath and
bitterness, so adroitly arranged and mixed with facts and
probabilities as to gain easy credence with persons predisposed
to believe them, and to produce on ignorant and prejudiced
readers a totally false impression. The magazine, judging from
this article, has not a single qualification for studying and
appreciating the history of the popes. It has no key to the
meaning of the facts it encounters, and is utterly unable or
indisposed to place itself at the point of view from which the
truth is discernible. Its _animus_, at least in this
article, is decidedly anti-Christian, and proves that it has no
Christian conscience, no Christian sympathy, no faith in the
supernatural, no reverence for our Lord and his apostles, and no
respect even for the authority of the Holy Scriptures.

The magazine, under pretence of writing history, simply appeals
to anti-Catholic prejudice, and repeats what Dr. Newman calls
"the Protestant tradition." Its aim is not historical truth, or a
sound historical judgment on the character of the Roman pontiffs,
but to confirm the unfounded prejudices of its readers against
them. It proceeds as if the presumption were that every pope is
antichrist or a horribly wicked man, and therefore every doubtful
fact must be interpreted against him, till he is proved innocent.
Everything that has been said against a pope, no matter by whom
or on what authority, is presumptively true; everything said in
favor of a Roman pontiff must be presumed to be false or unworthy
of consideration. It supposes the popes to have had the temper
and disposition of non-Catholics, and from what it believes,
perhaps very justly, a Protestant would do--if, _per
impossibile_, he were elevated to the papal chair, and clothed
with papal authority--concludes what the popes have actually
done. It forgets the rule of logic, _Argumentum a genere ad
genus, non valet_. The pope and the Protestant are not of the
same genus. We have never encountered in history a single pope
that did not sincerely believe in his mission from Christ, and
take it seriously.
{87}
We have encountered weakness; too great complaisance to the civil
power, even slowness in crushing out, in its very inception, an
insurgent error; sometimes also too great a regard to the
temporal, to the real or apparent neglect of the spiritual, and
two or three instances in which the personal conduct of a pope
was not much better than that of the average of secular princes;
but never a pope who did not recognize the important trusts
confided to his care, and the weighty responsibilities of his
high office.

We have studied the history of the Roman pontiffs with probably
more care and diligence than the flippant writer in _Harper's
Magazine_ has done, and studied it, too, both as an
anti-papist and as a papist, with an earnest desire to find facts
against the popes, and with an equally earnest desire to
ascertain the exact historical truth; and we reject as unworthy
of the most fanatic sectarian the absurd rule of judging them
which the magazine adopts, if it does not avow and hold that the
presumption is the other way, and that everything that reflects
injuriously on the character of a bishop of Rome is presumptively
false, and to be accepted only on the most indubitable evidence.
We can judge in this matter more impartially and disinterestedly
than the anti-catholic. The impeccability of the pontiff, or even
his infallibility in matters of mere human prudence, is no
article of Catholic faith. The personal conduct of a pontiff may
be objectionable; but unless he officially teaches error in
doctrine, or enjoins an immoral practice on the faithful, it
cannot disturb us. There are no instances in which a pope has
done this. No pope has ever taught or enjoined vice for virtue,
error for truth, or officially sanctioned a false principle or a
false motive of action. With one exception, we might, then,
concede all the magazine alleges, and ask, What then? What can
you conclude? But, in fact, we concede nothing. What it alleges
against the bishops of Rome is either historically false, or if
not, is, when rightly understood, nothing against them in their
official capacity.

The exception mentioned is that of St. Liberius. The magazine
repeats, with some variations, the exploded fable that this Holy
Pope, won by favors or terrified by threats, consented to a
condemnation of the _doctrine_ of Athanasius, that is,
signed an Arian formula of faith. It has not invented the
slander, but it has, after what historical criticism has
established on the subject, no right to repeat it as if it were
not denied. We have no space now to treat the question at length;
but we assert, after a very full investigation, that St. Liberius
never signed an Arian formula, never in any shape or manner
condemned the _doctrine_ defended by St. Athanasius, and
consequently never recanted, for he had nothing to recant. The
most, if so much, that can be maintained is, that he approved a
sentence condemning the special error of the Eunomians, in which
was not inserted the word "consubstantial," because it was not
necessary to the condemnation of their special error, and the
error they held in common with all Arians had already been
condemned by the council of Nicaea. Not a word can be truly
alleged against the persistent orthodoxy of this great and holy
pontiff, who deserves, as he has always received, the veneration
of the church.

The magazine repeats the slander of an anonymous writer, a bitter
enemy of the popes, against St. Victor, St. Zethyrinus, and St.
Callistus, three popes whom the Church of Rome has held, and
still holds, in high esteem and veneration for their virtues and
saintly character.
{88}
It refers to the _Philosophoumena_, a work published a few
years ago by M. E. Miller, of Paris, variously attributed to
Origen, to St. Hippolytus, bishop of Porto, near Rome, to Caius,
a Roman Presbyter, and to Tertullian. The late Abbé Cruice--an
Irishman by birth, we believe, but brought up and naturalized in
France, where he was, shortly before his death, promoted to the
episcopate--a profoundly learned man and an acute critic, has
unanswerably proved that these are all unsustainable hypotheses,
and that historical science is in no condition to say who was its
author. Who wrote it, or where it was written, is absolutely
unknown, but from internal evidence the writer was a contemporary
of the three popes named, and was probably some Oriental
schismatic, of unsound faith, and a bitter enemy of the popes.
The work is not of the slightest authority against the bishops of
Rome, but is of very great value as proving, by an enemy, that
the papacy was fully developed--if that is the word--claiming
and exercising in the universal church the same supreme authority
that it claims and exercises now, and was as regular in its
action in the last half of the second century, or within fifty or
sixty years of the death of the apostle St. John, as it is under
Pope Pius IX. now gloriously reigning. [Footnote 43]

    [Footnote 43: _Vide Histoire de l'Eglise de Rome sous les
    Pontificats de St. Victor, de St. Zephirin, et St.
    Calliste_. Par L'Abbé M. P. Cruice. Paris: Didot Frères.
    1856.]

When the magazine has nothing else to allege against the popes,
it accuses them of "a fierce, ungovernable pride."

  "The fourth century brought important changes in the condition
  of the bishops of Rome. It is a singular trait of the corrupt
  Christianity of this period that the chief characteristic of
  the eminent prelates was a fierce and ungovernable pride.
  Humility had long ceased to be numbered among the Christian
  virtues. The four great rulers of the Church, Bishop of Rome,
  and the Patriarchs of Constantinople, Antioch, and Alexandria,
  were engaged in a constant struggle for supremacy. Even the
  inferior bishops assumed a princely state, and surrounded
  themselves with their sacred courts. The vices of pride and
  arrogance descended to the lower orders of clergy; the emperor
  himself was declared to be inferior in dignity to the simple
  presbyter, and in all public entertainments and ceremonious
  assemblies the proudest layman was expected to take his place
  below the haughty churchman, As learning declined and the world
  sank into a new barbarism, the clergy elevated themselves into
  a ruling caste, and were looked upon as half divine by the rude
  Goths and the degraded Romans. It is even said that the pagan
  nations of the west transferred to the priest and monk the same
  awestruck reverence which they had been accustomed to pay to
  their Druid teachers. The Pope took the place of their Chief
  Druid, and was worshipped with idolatrous devotion; the meanest
  presbyter, however vicious and degraded, seemed, to the
  ignorant savages, a true messenger from the skies."

There was no patriarch of Constantinople in the fourth century,
and it was only in 330 that the city of Constantinople absorbed
Byzantium. The bishop of Byzantium was not a patriarch, or even a
metropolitan, but was a suffragan of the bishop of Heraclea. It
was not till long after the fourth century that the bishop of
Constantinople was recognized as patriarch, not, in fact, till
the eighth general council. There was no struggle in the fourth
nor in any subsequent century, for the supremacy, between Rome
and Antioch, or Rome and Alexandria; neither the patriarch of
Antioch nor the patriarch of Alexandria ever claimed the primacy;
but both acknowledged that it belonged to the bishop of Rome, as
do the schismatic churches of the East even now, though they take
the liberty of disobeying their lawful superior. In the fifth
Century, when St. Leo the Great was pope, the bishop of
Constantinople claimed the _second_ rank, or the first
_after_ the bishop of Rome, on the ground that
Constantinople was the new Rome, the second capital of the
empire.
{89}
St. Leo repulsed his claim, not in defence of his own rights, for
it did not interfere with his supremacy, or primacy, as they said
then, but in defence of the rights of the churches of Antioch and
Alexandria. He also did it because the claim was urged on a false
principle--that the authority of a bishop is derived from the
civil importance of the city in which his see is established.

It is not strange that the magazine should complain that the
pontifical dignity was placed above the imperial, and that the
simple presbyter took the step of the proudest layman; yet
whoever believes in the spiritual order at all, believes it
superior to the secular order, and therefore that they who
represent the spiritual are in dignity above those who represent
only the secular. When the writer of this was a Protestant
minister, he took, and was expected to take, precedence of the
laity. The common sense of mankind gives the precedence to those
held to be invested with the sacred functions of religion, or
clothed with spiritual authority.

That St. Jerome, from his monastic cell near Jerusalem, inveighs
against the vices and corruptions of the Roman clergy, as alleged
in the paragraph following the one we have quoted, is very true;
but his declamations must be taken with some grains of allowance.
St. Jerome was not accustomed to measure his words when
denouncing wrong, and saints generally are not. St. Peter Damian
reported, after his official visit to Spain, that there was but
one worthy priest in the whole kingdom, which really meant no
more than that he found only one who came, in all respects, up to
his lofty ideal of what a priest should be. Yet there might have
been, and probably were, large numbers of others who, though not
faultless, were very worthy men, and upon the whole, faithful
priests. We must never take the exaggerations of saintly
reformers, burning with zeal for the faith and the salvation of
souls, as literal historical facts. St. Jerome, in his ardent
love of the church and his high ideal of sacerdotal purity,
vigilance, fidelity, and zeal, no doubt exaggerated.

There can be nothing more offensive to every right and honorable
feeling than the exultation of the magazine over the abuse,
cruelties, and outrages inflicted on a bishop of Rome by civil
tyrants. The writer, had he lived under the persecuting pagan
emperors, would have joined his voice to that of those who
exclaimed, _Christianos ad leones;_ or had he been present
when our Lord was arrested and brought as a malefactor before
Pontius Pilate, none louder than he would have cried out,
_Crucifige eum! crucifige eum!_ His sympathies are uniformly
with the oppressor, never, as we can discover, with the
oppressed; with the tyrant, never with his innocent victim,
especially if that victim be a bishop of Rome. He feels only
gratification in recording the wrongs and sufferings of Pope St.
Silverus. This pope was raised to the papacy by the tyranny of
the Arian king Theodotus, and ordained by force, without the
necessary subscription of the clergy. But after his consecration,
the clergy, by their subscription, healed the irregularity of his
election, as Anastasius the Librarian tells us, so as to preserve
the unity of the church and religion. He appears to have been a
holy man and a worthy pope; but he was not acceptable to
Vigilius, who expected, by favor of the imperial court, to be
made pope himself, nor to those two profligate women, the Empress
Theodora and her friend Antonina, the wife of the patrician
Belisarius.
{90}
Vigilius and these two infamous women compelled Belisarius to
depose him, strip him of his pontifical robes, clothe him with
the habit of a monk, and send him into exile; where, as some say,
he was assassinated, and, as others say, perished of hunger. The
magazine relates this to show how low and unworthy the bishops of
Rome had become! Vigilius succeeded St. Silverus, and it
continues:

  "Stained with crime, a false witness and a murderer, Vigilius
  had obtained his holy office through the power of two
  profligate women who now ruled the Roman world. Theodora, the
  dissolute wife of Justinian, and Antonina, her devoted servant,
  assumed to determine the faith and the destinies of the
  Christian Church. Vigilius failed to satisfy the exacting
  demands of his casuistical mistresses; he even ventured to
  differ from them upon some obscure points of doctrine. His
  punishment soon followed, and the bishop of Rome is said to
  have been dragged through the streets of Constantinople with a
  rope around his neck, to have been imprisoned in a common
  dungeon and fed on bread and water. The papal chair, filled by
  such unworthy occupants, must have sunk low in the popular
  esteem, had not Gregory the Great, toward the close of sixth
  century, revived the dignity of the office."

We know of nothing that can be said in defence of the conduct of
Vigilius prior to his accession to the papal throne. His
intrigues with Theodora to be made pope, and his promises to her
to restore, when he should be pope, Anthemus, deposed from the
see of Constantinople by St. Agapitus for heresy, and to set
aside the council of Chalcedon, were most scandalous; and his
treatment of St. Silverus, whether he actually exiled him and had
a hand in his death or not, admits, as far as we are informed, of
no palliation; but his conduct thus far was not the conduct of
the pope; and after he became bishop of Rome, at least after the
death of his deposed predecessor, his conduct was, upon the
whole, irreproachable. He conceded much for the sake of peace,
and was much blamed; but he conceded nothing of the faith; he
refused to fulfill the improper promises he had made, before
becoming pope, to the empress, confessed that he had made them,
said he was wrong in making them, retracted them, and resisted
with rare firmness and persistence the emperor Justinian in the
matter of the three chapters, and fully expiated the offences
committed prior to his elevation, by enduring for seven long
years the brutal outrages an indignities offered him by the
half-savage Justinian, the imperial courtiers, and intriguing and
unscrupulous prelates of the court party--outrages and sufferings
of which he died after his liberation on his journey back from
Constantinople to Rome.

We have touched on these details for the purpose of showing that
the principal offenders in the transactions related were not the
bishops of Rome, but the civil authorities and their adherents,
that deprived the Roman clergy and the popes of their proper
freedom. If the papal chair was filled with unworthy occupants,
and had sunk low in the public esteem, it was because the emperor
or empress at Constantinople and the Arian and barbarian kings in
Italy sought to raise to it creatures of their own. They deprived
the Roman clergy, the senate, and people of the free exercise of
their right to elect the pope; and the pope, after his election,
of his freedom of action, if he refused to conform to their
wishes, usually criminal, and always base. Yet _Harper's
Magazine_ lays all the blame to the popes themselves, and
seems to hold them responsible for the crimes and tyranny, the
profligacy and lawless will of which they were the victims. If
the wolf devoured the lamb, was it not
the lamb's fault?

{91}

St. Gregory the Great was of a wealthy and illustrious family,
and therefore finds some favor with the magazine; yet it calls
him "a half-maddened enthusiast," and accuses him of "unsparing
severity," and "excessive cruelty" in the treatment of his monks
before his elevation to the papal chair. But his complaisance to
the usurper Phocas, which we find it hard to excuse, and
especially his disclaiming the title of "Universal Bishop,"
redeem him in its estimation.

  "A faint trace of modesty and humility still characterized the
  Roman bishops, and they expressly disclaimed any right to the
  supremacy of the Christian world. The patriarch of
  Constantinople, who seems to have looked with a polished
  contempt upon his western brother, the tenant of fallen Rome
  and the bishop of the barbarians, now declared himself the
  Universal Bishop and the head of the subject Church. But
  Gregory repelled his usurpation with vigor. Whoever calls
  himself Universal Bishop is Antichrist,' he exclaimed; and he
  compares the patriarch to Satan, who in his pride had aspired
  to be higher than the angels."

John Jejunator, bishop of Constantinople, did not claim the
primacy, which belonged to the bishop of Rome, nor did Gregory
disclaim it; but called himself "oecumenical patriarch." The
title he assumed derogated not from the rights and privileges of
the apostolic see, but from those of the sees of Antioch and
Alexandria. It was unauthorized, and showed culpable ambition and
an encroaching disposition. St. Gregory, therefore, rebuked the
bishop of Constantinople, and alleged the example of his
predecessor, St. Leo the Great, who refused the title of
"oecumenical bishop" when it was offered him by the Fathers of
Chalcedon. It is a title never assumed or borne by a bishop of
Rome, who, in his capacity as bishop, is the equal, and only the
equal, of his brother bishops. All bishops are equal, as St. John
Chrysostom tells us. The authority which the pope exercises over
the bishops of the Catholic Church is not the episcopal, but the
apostolical authority which he inherits from Peter, the prince of
the apostles. St. Gregory disclaimed and condemned the title of
"universal bishop," which was appropriate neither to him nor to
any other bishop; but he did not disclaim the apostolic authority
held as the successor of Peter. He actually claimed and exercised
it in the very letter in which he rebukes the bishop of
Constantinople. The magazine is wholly mistaken in asserting that
Gregory disclaimed the papal supremacy. He did no such thing; he
both claimed and exercised it, and few popes have exercised it
more extensively or more vigorously.

The magazine is also mistaken in asserting that St. Leo III.
crowned Charlemagne "Emperor of the West." Charlemagne was
already hereditary patrician of Rome, and bound by his office to
maintain order in the city and territories of Rome, and to defend
the Holy See, or the Roman Church, against its enemies. All the
pope did was to raise the patrician to the imperial dignity,
without any territorial title. Charles never assumed or bore the
title of Emperor of the West. His official title was "Rex
Francorum et Longobardorum Imperator." The title of "Emperor of
the West," or "Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire," which his
German successors assumed, was never conferred by the pope, but
only acquiesced in after it had been usurped. The pope conferred
on Charlemagne no authority out of the papal states.

We have no space to discuss the origin of the temporal
sovereignty of the bishops of Rome, nor the ground of that
arbitratorship which the popes, during several ages,
unquestionably exercised with regard to the sovereign princes
bound by their profession and the constitution of their states to
profess and protect the Catholic religion.
{92}
We have already done the latter in an article on _Church and
State_ in our magazine for April, 1867. But we can tell
_Harper's Magazine_ that it entirely misapprehends the
character of St. Gregory VII., and the nature and motive of the
struggle between him and Henry III., or Henry IV., as some
reckon, king of the Germans, for emperor he never was. Gregory
was no innovator; he introduced, and attempted to introduce, no
change in the doctrine or discipline of the church, nor in the
relations of church and state. He only sought to correct abuses,
to restore the ancient discipline which had, through various
causes, become relaxed, and to assert and maintain the freedom
and independence of the church in the government of her own
spiritual subjects in all matters spiritual.

  "His elevation was the signal for the most wonderful change in
  the character and purposes of the church. The pope aspired to
  rule mankind. He claimed an absolute power over the conduct of
  kings, priests, and nations, and he enforced his decrees by the
  terrible weapons of anathema and excommunication. He denounced
  the marriages of the clergy as impious, and at once there arose
  all over Europe a fearful struggle between the ties of natural
  affection and the iron will of Gregory. Heretofore the secular
  priests and bishops had married, raised families, and lived
  blamelessly as husbands or fathers, in the enjoyment of marital
  and filial love. But suddenly all this was changed. The married
  priests were declared polluted and degraded, and were branded
  with ignominy and shame. Wives were torn from their devoted
  husbands, children were declared bastards, and the ruthless
  monk, in the face of the fiercest opposition, made celibacy the
  rule of the church. The most painful consequences followed. The
  wretched women, thus degraded and accursed, were often driven
  to suicide in their despair. Some threw themselves into the
  flames; others were found dead in there beds, the victims of
  grief or of their own resolution not to survive their shame,
  while the monkish chroniclers exult over their misfortunes, and
  triumphantly consign them to eternal woe.

  "Thus the clergy under Gregory's guidance became a monastic
  order, wholly separated from all temporal interests; and bound
  in a perfect obedience to the church. He next forebade all lay
  investitures or appointments to bishoprics or other clerical
  offices, and declared himself the supreme ruler of the
  ecclesiastical affairs of nations. No temporal sovereign could
  fill the great European sees, or claim any dominion over the
  extensive territories held by eminent churchmen in right of
  their spiritual power. It was against this claim that the
  Emperor of Germany, Henry IV., rebelled. The great bishoprics
  of his empire, Cologne, Bremen, Treves, and many others, were
  his most important feudatories, and should he suffer the
  imperious pope to govern them at will, his own dominion would
  be reduced to a shadow. And now began the famous contest
  between Hildebrand and Henry, between the carpenter's son and
  the successor of Charlemagne, between the Emperor of Germany
  and the Head of the Church."

This heart-rending picture is, to a great extent, a fancy piece.
The celibacy of the clergy was the law of the church and of the
German empire; and every priest knew it before taking orders.
These pretended marriages were, in both the ecclesiastical courts
and the civil courts, no marriages at all; and these dispairing
wives of priests were simply concubines. What did Gregory do, but
his best to enforce the law which the emperors had suffered to
fall into desuetude? The right of investiture was always in the
pope, and it was only by his authority that the emperors had ever
exercised it.
{93}
The pope had authorized them to give investiture of bishops at a
time of disorder, and when it was for the good of the church that
they should be so authorized. But when they abused the trust, and
used it only to fill the sees with creatures of their own, or
sold the investiture for money to the unworthy and the
profligate, and intruded them into sees, in violation of the
canons, and sheltered them from the discipline of the
church--causing, thus, gross corruption of morals and manners,
the neglect of religious instruction, and dangers to souls--it
was the right and the duty of the pontiff to revoke the
authorization given, to dismiss his unworthy agents, and to
forbid the emperors henceforth to give investiture.

The magazine says that if the emperor should suffer the imperious
pope to be allowed to govern at will the great bishoprics of
Cologne, Bremen, Treves, and many others, which were the most
important feudatories of his empire, his own dominion would be
reduced to a shadow. But if the emperor could fill them with
creatures of his own, make bishops at his will, and depose them
and sequester their revenues if they resisted his tyranny, or
sell them, as he did, to the highest bidder--thrusting out the
lawful occupants, and intruding men who could have been only
usurpers, and who really were criminals in the eye of the law,
and usually dissolute and scandalous in morals--where would have
been the rightful freedom and independence of the church? How
could the pope have maintained order and discipline in the
church, and protected the interests of religion? At worst, the
imperious will of the pontiff was as legitimate and as
trustworthy as the imperious will of such a brutal tyrant and
moral monster as was Henry. The pope did but claim his rights and
the rights of the faithful people. It was no less important that
the spiritual authority should govern in spirituals than it was
that the secular authority should govern in temporals. The pope
did not interfere, nor propose to interfere, with the emperor in
the exercise of his authority in temporals; but he claimed the
right, which the emperor could not deny, to govern in spirituals;
and resisted the attempt of Henry to exercise any authority in
the church, which, whatever infidels and secularists may pretend,
is of more importance than the state, for it maintains the state.
He never pretended to any authority in the fiefs of the empire,
or to subject to his will matters not confessedly within his
jurisdiction.

Does the writer in the magazine maintain that the Methodist
General Conference would be wrong to claim the right of choosing
and appointing its own bishops, and assigning the pastors,
elders, and preachers to their respective circuits; and that it
could justly be accused of seeking to dominate over the state if
it resisted, with all its power, the attempt of the state to take
that matter into its own hands, and appoint for all the Methodist
local conferences, districts, and circuits, bishops and pastors,
itinerant and local preachers, and should appoint men of
profligate lives, who scorned the _Book of Discipline_,
Unitarians, Universalists, rationalists, and infidels, or the
bitter enemies of Methodism; those who would neglect every
spiritual duty, and seek only to plunder the funds and churches
to provide for their own lawless pleasures, or to pay the bribes
by which they obtained their appointment? We think not. And yet
this is only a mild statement of what Henry did, and of what
Gregory resisted. The pope claimed and sought to obtain no more
for the church in Germany than is the acknowledged right of every
professedly Christian sect in this country, and which every sect
fully enjoys, without any let or hindrance from the state. Why,
then, this outcry against Gregory VII.? Do these men who are so
bitter against him, and gnash their teeth at him, know what they do?
{94}
Have they ever for a moment reflected how much the modern world
owes for its freedom and civilization to just such great popes as
Hildebrand, who asserted energetically the rights of God, the
freedom of religion, and made the royal and imperial despots and
brutal tyrants who would trample on all laws, human and divine,
feel that, if they would wear their crowns, they must study to
restrain their power within its proper limits, and to rule justly
for the common good, according to the law of God?

What Germany thought of the conduct of Henry is evinced by the
fact that when Gregory struck him with the sword of Peter and
Paul, everybody abandoned him but his deeply injured wife and one
faithful attendant. The whole nation felt a sense of relief and
breathed freely. An incubus which oppressed its breast was thrown
off. The picture of the sufferings of Henry traversing the Alps
in the winter and standing shivering with cold in his thin garb,
as a penitent before the door of the pontiff, is greatly
exaggerated, and the attempt to excite sympathy for him and
indignation against the pontiff can have no success with those
who have studied with some care the history of the times. Henry
was a bad man; a capricious, unprincipled, tyrannical, and brutal
ruler, and his cause was bad. The pope was in the right; he was
on the side of truth and justice, of God and humanity, pure
morals and just liberty. Leo the historian, a Protestant, and
Voigt, a Protestant minister, both Germans, have each completely
vindicated Gregory's conduct toward Henry of Germany, though
Harper's historian is probably ignorant of that fact, as he is of
some others.

As to the pope's subjecting Henry to the discipline of the
church, and depriving him of his crown, all we need say is, that
all men are equal before God and the church, and kings and
kaisers are as much amenable to the discipline of the church,
acknowledged by them to be Christ's kingdom, as the meanest of
their subjects. The pope assumed no more than the kirk session
assumed when it sent their King Charles II. to the "cuttie
stool." The revolutionists of Spain have just deprived Isabella
Segunda of her crown and throne, with the general applause of the
non-Catholic world, and no pope ever deprived a prince who denied
his jurisdiction, or his legal right to sit in judgment on his
case, nor, till after a fair trial had been had, and a judicial
sentence was rendered according to the existing laws of his
principality. We see not why, then, the popes should be decried
for doing legally, and after trial, what revolutionists are
applauded for doing without trial and against all law, human and
divine--unless it be because the pope deprived only base and
profligate monsters, stained with the worst of crimes; and the
revolutionists deprive the guiltless, who violate no law of the
state or of the church, The pope deprived for crime; the
revolutionists usually for virtue or innocence, only under
pretence of ameliorating the state, which they subvert.

But our space is nearly exhausted, and we must hurry on. Innocent
III. is another of those great bishops of Rome that excite the
wrath of _Harper's Magazine_--probably because he was really
a great pope, energetic in asserting the faith, in removing
scandals, in enforcing discipline on kings and princes as well as
on their subjects; in repressing sects, like the Albigenses, that
struck at the very foundations of religion and society, or of the
moral order; in defending the purity of morals and the sanctity
of marriage, and in espousing the cause of the weak against the
strong, of oppressed innocence against oppressive guilt.
{95}
This is too much for the endurance of the magazine. It indeed
does not say that Innocent did not espouse the cause of justice
in the case of Philip Augustus and his injured queen, Ingeburga;
but it contends that he did it from unworthy motives, for the
sake of extending and consolidating the papal authority over
kings and princes. Though he admits John Lackland was a moral
monster, and opened negotiations with a Mohammedan prince to the
scandal of Christendom, offered to make himself a Mussulman, and
would have embraced Islamism if the infidel prince had not
repelled him with indignation and contempt; it yet finds that
Innocent was altogether wrong in taking effective measures to
restrain his tyranny, cruelty, licentiousness, and plunder of the
churches and robbery of his subjects. His motive was simply to
monopolize power and profit for the papal see. He also, for like
reasons, was wrong in resisting Frederic II. of Germany, who, he
says, preferred Islamism to Christianity, as itself probably
prefers it to Catholicity.

The article closes with a tirade against Alexander VI., and his
children, Caesar and Lucretia Borgia, Roscoe, a Protestant or
rationalist, has vindicated the character of Lucretia, that
accomplished, capable, and most grossly calumniated woman, who,
in her real history, appears to have been not less eminent for
her virtues than for her beauty and abilities. Caesar Borgia we
have no disposition to defend, though we have ample grounds for
believing that he was by no means so black as Italian hatred and
malice have painted him. Alexander was originally in the army of
Spain, and his manners and morals were such as we oftener
associate with military men than with ecclesiastics, He lived
with a woman who was another man's wife, and had two or three
children by her. But this was while he was a soldier, and before
he was an ecclesiastic or thought of taking orders. He was called
to Rome for his eminent administrative ability, by his uncle,
Pope Callixtus III.; took, in honor of his uncle, the name of
Borgia; became an ecclesiastic; was, after some time, made
cardinal, and finally raised to the papal throne under the name
of Alexander VI. After he was made cardinal, if, indeed, after he
became an ecclesiastic, nothing discreditable to his morals has
been proved against him; and his moral character, during his
entire pontificate, was, according to the best authorities,
irreproachable. The Borgias had, however, the damning sin of
being Spaniards, not Italians; and of seeking to reduce the
Italian robber barons to submission and obedience to law, and to
govern Italy in the interests of public order. They had,
therefore, many bitter and powerful enemies; hence, the
aspersions of their character, and the numerous fables against
them, and which but too many historians have taken for
authenticated facts. The alleged poisonings of Alexander and his
daughter Lucretia are none of them proved, and are inventions of
Italian hatred and malice. Yet, though Alexander's conduct as
pope was irreproachable, and his administration able and
vigorous, his antecedents were such that his election to the
papal throne was a questionable policy, and Savonarola held it to
be irregular and null.

The magazine indulges in the old cant about the contrast between
the poverty and humility of Peter and the wealth and grandeur of
his successors; the simplicity of the primitive worship, and the
pomp and splendor of the Roman service.
{96}
There is no need of answering this. When the Messrs. Harper
Brothers started the printing business in this city, we presume
their establishment was in striking contrast to their present
magnificent establishment in Cliff street. When the world was
converted to the church, and the supreme pontiff had to sustain
relations with sovereign princes, to receive their ambassadors,
and send his legates to every court in Christendom to look after
the interests of religion--the chief interest of both society
and individuals--larger accommodations than were afforded by that
"upper room" in Jerusalem were needed, and a more imposing
establishment than St. Peter may have had was a necessity of the
altered state of things. Even our Methodist friends, we notice,
find it inconvenient to observe the plainness and simplicity in
dress and manners prescribed by John Wesley their founder. He
forbids, we believe, splendid churches, with steeples and bells;
and the earliest houses for Methodist meetings, even we remember,
were very different from the elegant structures they are now
erecting. We heard a waggish minister say of one of them, "Call
you this the Lord's house? you should rather call it the Lord's
barn."

The Catholic Church continues and fulfils the synagogue, and her
service is, to a great extent, modelled after the Jewish, which
was prescribed by God himself. The dress of the pontiff, when he
celebrates the Holy Sacrifice, is less gorgeous than that of the
Jewish high-priest. St. Peter's is larger than was Solomon's
temple, but it is not more gorgeous; and the Catholic service,
except in the infinite superiority of the victim immolated upon
the altar, is not more splendid, grand, or imposing than was the
divinely prescribed temple service of the Hebrews. The magazine
appears to think with Judas Iscariot, that the costly ointment
with which a woman that had been a sinner anointed the feet of
Jesus, after she had washed them with her tears and wiped them
with her hair, was a great waste, and might have been put to a
better use. But our Lord did not think so, and Judas Iscariot did
not become the prince of the apostles. We owe all we have to God,
and it is but fitting that we should employ the best we have in
his service.

Here we must close. We have not replied to all the misstatements,
misrepresentations, perversions, and insinuations of the article
in _Harper's Magazine_. We could not do it in a brief
article like the present. It would require volumes to do it. We
have touched only on a few salient points that struck us in
glancing over it; but we have said enough to show its
_animus_ and to expose its untrustworthiness. Refuted it we
have not, for there really is nothing in it to refute, It lays
down no principles, states no premises, draws no conclusions. It
leaves all that to be supplied by the ignorance and prejudices of
its readers. It is a mere series of statements that require no
answer but a flat denial. It is not strange that the magazine
should calumniate the popes, and seek to pervert their history.
Our Lord built his church on Peter, being himself the chief
cornerstone; and nothing is more natural than that they who hate
the church should strike their heads against the papacy. The
popes have always been the chief object of attack, and have had
to bear the brunt of the battle. Yet they have labored, suffered,
been persecuted, imprisoned, exiled, and martyred for the
salvation of mankind. What depth of meaning in the dying words of
the exiled Gregory VII., "I have loved justice, and hated
iniquity; therefore I die in exile." Alas! the world knows not
its benefactors, and crucifies its redeemers!

----------

{97}

       March Omens. [Footnote 44]

    [Footnote 44: From _Irish Odes and other Poems_, by
    Aubrey De Vere, just Issued by the Catholic Publication
    Society.]


  ON ivied stems and leafless sprays
    The sunshine lies in dream:
  Scarcely yon mirrored willow sways
    Within the watery gleam.

  In woods far off the dove is heard,
    And streams that feed the lake:
  All else is hushed save one small bird,
    That twitters in the brake.

  Yet something works through earth and air,
    A sound less heard than felt,
  Whispering of Nature's procreant care,
    While the last snow-flakes melt.

  The year anon her rose will don;
    But to-day this trance is best--
  This weaving of fibre and knitting of bone
    In Earth's maternal breast.

----------

{98}


    Translated From The German
    By Richard Storrs Willis.

         Emily Linder.

         A Life-portrait.


The circle of those who were witness to the blossom-period of the
city of Munich, that glorious epoch of twenty or thirty years
which dawned upon the Bavarian capital when Louis I. ascended the
throne, is gradually narrowing, and every year contracts it still
further. The name of her to whom this sketch is dedicated
belonged to this circle, and is closely associated with the best
of those who aided in inaugurating this brilliant epoch, and
rendering Munich a hearthstone of culture which attracted the
gaze of the educated world. Sunny period of old Munich! They of
that time speak of it with the same enthusiasm as of their own
youth. Yet to a future generation will their testimony sound like
some beautiful tradition.

To not a few, the name of Miss Emily Linder appeared for the
first time, as the intelligence of her death passed through the
public journals of February, 1857. Yet was her life no ordinary
one; and though it never tended to publicity, she accomplished
more in her great seclusion than many a noisy and feted
celebrity. Hers was a quiet and unassuming nature; she belonged
to those who speak little and accomplish much. It is therefore
befitting, now that she has gone to her home, here to speak of
her. Not so much to praise her, for she shrank from all earthly
praise; but to keep her memory fresh among her friends and to
present to a selfish, distracted age, poor in faith, the
animating example of a pure, faith-inspired, and symmetrical
character a life full of fidelity, unselfishness, and enthusiasm.

Swiss by birth and unchangeably devoted to her circumscribed
home, Emily Linder little dreamed, probably, when in early life
she wandered to Munich, that she would yet close a long life
there. But over this life, swiftly as it glided along, there
watched a special, directing Providence; and no one could more
cheerfully have recognized this Providence than did she. What
originally attracted her to Munich was Art: she probably
contemplated, at first, only brief and transient visit there; but
the metropolis of German art became a second home to her--even
more than this.

Emily Linder belonged to a wealthy mercantile family of Basle,
and was born at that place on the 11th of October, 1797. She
received a careful religious education, (in the reformed faith of
her parents,) and that varied instruction which rendered her
unusually wakeful mind susceptible to topics of deeper import.
She seemed to have inherited from her grandfather, who was a
lover and collector of artistic objects, a fondness for fine art.
Following this predilection, the gifted girl decided to seize the
pallet and devote herself to painting as an occupation. Such was
her entirely independent position as to fortune, that nothing but
inward enthusiasm could have led her to this step, or have
confined her from thenceforth to the easel.

{99}

The home of Holbein's genius offered her at first, doubtless,
inspiration enough. But a new star had arisen in German art, and
the youthful Swiss was drawn powerfully by its leading away from
home--to Munich. The modest city on the verdant Iser began at
that period to prove the goal of pilgrimage to every ambitious
disciple of art. Miss Linder also heard of it, and, instead of
going to Dresden, as she had intended, she turned for her further
improvement to Munich. On her arrival in this city she had
attained to an age of twenty-seven years; but her devotion to her
chosen profession was so earnest, that she entered as a simple
pupil the Academy of Fine Arts. In the catalogue of the academy,
Emily Linder is inscribed as historical painter, on the 4th of
November, 1824. But she frequented the studios only a few weeks.
At that time it was customary to accept ladies as pupils; but she
soon perceived that the position was hardly a becoming one,
surrounded by so many young people of various characters, and all
beginners like herself. She therefore had recourse to Professor
Schlotthauer for private instruction. Under the guidance of this
excellent master, "a veritable house-father in the painter's
academy," as Brentano characteristically termed him, she pursued
her studies in good earnest, and, according to the representation
of her teacher, made rapid progress in the severer style of
drawing, in which she had hitherto been less practised than in
painting. She soon perfected herself to such an extent that she
was enabled to complete her own compositions, and thus derived
double satisfaction from her profession.

It was indeed a pleasure in those days, competing with so many
enthusiastic young artists and with the newly-appearing works in
constant view, to labor and strive onward with the rest. This was
the time, too, when Cornelius assumed the directorship of the
Munich Academy and inaugurated, in grand style, the new era of
German art. A wondrous life dawned upon Munich art at that
period. Cornelius himself, in his old age, recalled with emotion
and enthusiasm this youthful period of new German art. At Rome,
thirty years later, on the occasion of the Louis festival of
German artists, 20th May 1855, while he was delivering an address
so celebrated for its many piquant flashes, he thus painted the
joyous industry of those days:

  "But when King Louis ascended the throne of his fathers, then
  began the sport. Zounds! what moulding, building, drawing, and
  painting! With what eagerness, with what hilarity each went to
  his work! But it was an earnest hilarity: ... nor was Munich at
  that time a mere hot-house of art. The warmth was a healthy and
  vital one, born of the flaming fire of inspiration, the
  evidence of which every work, whatever its defects, bore upon
  its very face. Those men who worked together in brotherly unity
  knew that there confronted them the art tribunal of posterity
  and of the German nation. It concerned them, now, that German
  genius should open a new pathway in art, as it had already so
  gloriously done in poetry, in music, in science."

In this glorious time of youthful aspiration, bold conception,
and joyful industry, Miss Linder began her artistic career in
Munich. Is it a wonder then that the city pleased her daily
better, and imperceptibly gained a home-like power over her? Nor
had she, by any means, a lack of intellectual incitement. Her
independent position and rare culture secured to her the most
agreeable social position. In the family of Herr von Ringseis, to
which she had brought an introduction from Basle, and where
gathered the nobility of the entire fatherland, she came into
contact with the most eminent artists and scholars.
{100}
Chief among these was Cornelius, who welcomed her to his family
circle. The old master of German art remained a life-long friend
of hers and warmly attached to her. Among her more intimate
companions, she numbered also the two Eberhards, Heinrich Hess,
Franz von Baader. Somewhat later, by the transfer of the
university to Munich, were added to these Schubert, Görres,
Schelling, Lasaulx. Also the two Boiseree, who in the autumn of
1827 came to Munich with their art collection, which had been
purchased by King Louis, were soon numbered among her nearer
acquaintances.

Amid so choice a circle there unfolded itself for the young
artist a spiritual and intense life, to which she abandoned
herself with all the joyous simplicity and freshness of an
artistic nature; a nature which was susceptible also to the
beautiful and the grand in other things--in poetry, in music, and
in science. The quiet, friendly lady-artist became everywhere a
favorite.

But, amid all these manifold occupations, there was ever a
certain earnestness, a striving out of the temporal into the
eternal. Even art was not to her a mere amusement. Genuine art
possesses an ennobling power, and she experienced what Michael
Angelo once said to his friend Vittoria Colonna, "True painting
is naturally religious and noble; for even the struggle toward
perfection elevates the soul to devotion, draws it near to God
and unites it with him." Attracted by the pure and lofty in art,
Miss Linder gave preference to religious painting, a taste which
was encouraged by her sterling master: and it caused her, though
a Protestant, special gratification, while ever seeking the best
studies, to paint or copy, whenever she could, devotional church
pictures.

In order to become acquainted, through actual observation, with
the principal works of Christian art, she determined on a journey
to Italy. Her first visit she decided to confine to the cities of
upper Italy, and in company with Professor Schlotthauer and his
wife, this plan was carried out during the summer and autumn of
1825. Milan, Verona, Padua, Venice, Bologna, were visited, and,
led by the hand of her intelligent master, they all passed under
her examination. The goal of her travel was to be Florence. But
the long-continued, fine autumn weather attracted the travellers
further and further, and at length they came to Perugia, the
middle point of the Umbrian school, and thence to the
neighboring, picturesque-lying Assisi. At this place a little
circumstance occurred which became of deep significance in the
after life of the artist.

The vetturino, familiar with the land and the people, called the
attention of the travellers to the fact that in Assisi there was
a monastery of German Franciscan nuns. A colony of poor German
women in the middle of Italian lands! That was enough to decide
the party to visit the monastery and greet their pious
countrywomen in the language of home. But they found the
sisterhood in evident distress. As they stood before the lattice,
the history of the monastery was briefly related to them by the
superior. It owed its origin to the patrician family Nocker of
Munich, and according to the terms of its establishment was
intended only for Germans, and more particularly for Bavarian
maidens. Under Napoleon I. it was suspended, and the nuns were
cared for in private dwellings, where, hoping for better times,
they still continued, as well as they could, the practice of
their vocation. These better times came. After the fall of the
Napoleonic dynasty, the purchasers of the monastery consented to
relinquish it, and the poor Franciscans could at least reoccupy
the building.
{101}
But it went so hard with them, that they were sometimes obliged
to ring the distress-bell, and the number of inmates diminished.
At the time of the arrival of our three travellers, they numbered
but twelve. An increase of numbers under such circumstances was
hardly to be hoped for, and the existence of the monastery seemed
again endangered. Municipal abolishment was threatened, with the
unavoidable prospect to the nuns of being distributed among the
various Italian monasteries. Now to maintain themselves as a
German order was everything to these Franciscans; and thus the
superior represented it to her travelling country-people, with
all simple-heartedness, closing her narration with the entreaty
that, on their return to Munich, they would not forget the little
German monastery in Assisi, but care for it as they might be
able, and cause younger sisters to come to them from Bavaria, in
order to save the establishment from utter extinction.

The three travellers took their leave filled with sympathy, and
promising to bear in mind the petition of the superior. They
commenced their homeward travel from Assisi, passed through Genoa
and reached Munich again in November. Miss Linder vigorously
recommenced her artistic occupations, filled with animation at
her new experiences. But during the winter evenings the Italian
trip often formed the topic of conversation in the Schlotthauer
family, and generally closed with the question, How shall we
manage to increase the number of candidates in the monastery at
Assisi? But at that period this was not so easy. The secular
spirit had spread itself broadly in German lands: the current of
fresh, Catholic life flowed mostly in hidden courses. But with
surprise they soon learned of its continued activity. Through one
of those invisible channels which Providence avails itself of, in
its own good time--in every-day life termed accident--the cry for
help of the superior at Assisi penetrated to to a village where
pious hearts were prepared for it. One day there came a letter
for Professor Schlotthauer from Landshut, addressed to him by an
unknown maiden of the humbler class named Therese Frish, stating
that she had heard of the monastery at Assisi, and the request of
the superior: in Landshut was a goodly number of young girls who
had long cherished the desire in their hearts for convent life,
and only waited for an opportunity to realize their wishes:
several of them, some possessed of means, were ready at any
moment to leave for Assisi. This was welcome intelligence, and
the friends of the superior in Munich were not backward in
performing their part. Thus in the spring they had the happiness
of seeing a little band of candidates departing for Assisi. The
monastery was rescued, and commenced from that time, through the
ever-increasing sympathy in Germany, a new and beneficent career.
From year to year, assisted by the people of Munich, there
wandered true-hearted though indigent maidens to this quiet
asylum of piety, to reach which, as Brentano wrote twelve years
later, (1838,) was the dearest wish of these pious children.

Her art trip had thus recompensed the maiden of Basle in a manner
little dreamed of or counted on. The impression which this
peculiar experience made upon her susceptible nature could not
well be a transient one. The little monastery at Assisi--what
could be more natural?--from thenceforth lay very closely to her
heart, and its memories became most dear to her. The personality
of the superior herself, her simple worth and naturalness,
gratefully appealed to her; and several years later, on making
her second Italian trip, she gladly revisited Assisi.
{102}
A friendly relation resulted, which, fostered by a regular
correspondence, became more intimate every year. She now began to
understand the true meaning of a voluntary Christian poverty: the
contemplation of which must naturally make a profound impression
upon a nature like hers. She had frequent occasion, by active
assistance, to prove herself a warm friend of the monastery.
Particularly at the time of the great earthquake, (1831,) when
this monastery of women was in great want and distress, she stood
by the nuns most generously. Ever after, indeed, she remained a
constant benefactress of the German daughters of the holy St.
Francis; and there, in the birth-place of the saint, was she most
assiduously prayed for. In Assisi lay the earliest germ of her
quietly-ripening, late-maturing conversion.

In the year 1828, Miss Linder returned to her native city, Basle,
in order to prepare for a more lengthened visit to Rome. Like
every genuine artist-heart, a powerful influence attracted her to
the ancient capital of art, to the eternal city. On her journey
thither, she touched at Assisi, having the happiness to escort to
the monastery of the Franciscans a new candidate from Munich and
to find the nuns there in happiest tranquillity. Cornelius and
Schlotthauer reported the same of them, when they passed through,
a year and a half later. They received permission from the bishop
to hold an interview with the German sisters in the claustral.
The innocent joyousness and deep peace of the German nuns was
very touching to them. The bishop gave the two artists the best
testimony of them in his assurance that he constantly presented
these pious Germans to their Italian sisters as an example for
imitation.

Accompanied with the nuns' blessing Miss Linder hastened toward
the eternal city, where a new world opened itself to her. Bright,
blissful days did she pass in Rome, and so well did it please
her, that she remained there nearly three years. Here again her
associates were the brightest spirits of the German art circle,
and their similarity of aim induced a friendly geniality which in
many ways enhanced the pleasure of her stay. Scholars and artists
of the German colony sought her society with equal delight. Here
she met Overbeck--that St. John among the artists--whose
friendship to her and to her subsequent life was of such
significance. Neher and Eberle received from her commissions.
With the painter Ahlborn she read Dante. The venerable Koch was
charmed with the society of the genial Swiss, and passed many a
winter's evening with her. Also Thorwaldsen, Bunsen, and Platen
were among her intimate acquaintance in Italy.

From Rome Miss Linder made a trip to Naples and Sorrento. With a
party of Germans, among whom was Platen, she passed there the
summer of 1830. The wondrous poetry of the landscape and skies of
Sorrento impressed with their fullest power the sensitive soul of
the artist. All three arts, poetry, music, and painting, were
brought into requisition to give adequate expression to her
enchantment and delight. She became herself a poetess under the
influence of all these glories, and described to her friends, who
remained behind at Rome, with veritable southern warmth of
coloring, her "captivating paradise." As in Rome she listened
with the veneration of an intelligent musician to the ancient
classic music of the Sistine chapel, so at the Bay of Naples she
bestowed her attention upon the popular Italian ballads. Theirs
was a genial company, and they sang much together; of their songs
and melodies she made a collection, and took home with her.
{103}
Platen, in his subsequent letters, reminded her of those days,
and, writing from Venice, requested of her the music of "triads
and octaves," which they had sung together in Sorrento.

On her return to Rome, late in the autumn of the same year, she
found Cornelius and his family there, and the friendly relations
which subsisted in Munich were warmly renewed. The presence of
the honored master created, in the Roman art world, an animated
and exhilarating activity, and the rest of her stay was thus
enlivened in the most agreeable manner. The following year, in
company with Cornelius, she started for home. It was hard
parting, as finally, in July, 1831, with a wealth of beautiful
and deep impressions, she bade farewell to the Hesperian land
which had become so dear to her, to return to Basle; and we must
not censure the artist that she found it difficult, as her
letters indicate, to forget the blue skies of Italy and accustom
herself again to the gray hues of the German heaven. The
sharpness of the contrast gradually softened, however, and the
old home feeling asserted itself. But the life in Rome remained a
bright spot in her memory, and even in later years, when the
conversation turned upon it, the habitually quiet lady became
warm and animated.

In Rome, on the other hand, the artists were equally loth to part
with the aesthetic Swiss. The venerable Koch sent her word,
through the the painter Eberle, how much he regretted that he
could no longer pass his winter evenings with her. Overbeck and
others held with her an animated correspondence. But she remained
in hallowed remembrance with the German art-colony, from the
assistance she rendered to youthful talent, and her encouragement
by actual commissions. The historical painter Adam Eberle,
particularly, a pupil of Cornelius, friend and countryman of
Lasaulx--a highly gifted and lofty mind, but struggling in the
deepest poverty--to him she proved a generous benefactress; and
we can truly say, that through her goodness his last days--he
died at Rome, 1832--were illumined with a final gleam of
sunshine. The letters which she received from the youthful
departed, partly during her stay in Rome, partly after her
departure, give ample testimony of this, and indicate the manner,
generally, of her benevolence in such cases. Immediately on their
first meeting in Rome, and learning of his condition, she gave
him a commission for an oil painting; with deep emotion he
thanked the friendly lady "for the confidence she had thus
reposed in a nameless painter." Subsequently she purchased also
several drawings of Eberle, each, like the oil painting, of a
religious nature; among others, one that she particularly prized,
and afterward caused to be engraved, "Peter and Paul journeying
to the Occident."

On forwarding this drawing to Basle, together with another, the
subject of which was taken from the Old Testament, "as the
product of his muse since her departure," Eberle thus writes:

  "What chiefly attracts me to these Bible subjects is the
  healthy and unaffected language, which I endeavor to translate
  into my art. Regard this work of mine as a study which is
  necessary for my taste. That which is lacking in it, I know
  full well, without the power of supplying it. Accept it,
  therefore, as it is. Altogether bad it is not. At a very sad
  period was it undertaken, and many a tear has fallen upon it,
  which, like a vein of noble metal, seven times purified in its
  earthen crucible, glistens through it. I have, indeed, some
  assurance that I have not fruitlessly worked, in Overbeck's
  judgment upon it, whom you saw at Bunsen's: and this not a
  little cheers me."

{104}

Her generous watchfulness wearied not in rescuing him, at the
times of his greatest need, and Eberle, with overflowing
gratitude, testified to these constant proofs of her goodness,
and, even more, to the great delicacy and the kindly words which
accompanied every act.

Her personal intercourse at Rome seemed also to have exerted a
favorable influence upon his religious sentiments. The taste for
mystical writings which, encouraged by Baader, she was
cultivating at that period, grew also upon him; and when, shortly
after her departure, Lasaulx came to Rome, Eberle was very happy
that he could continue with him this favorite and elevating
study. He writes to her at Basle on the 25th of September, 1831:

  "An old friend of my youth and countryman of mine, C. Lasaulx,
  is now my almost exclusive companion: he will probably remain
  the winter here and share my dwelling with me. He is, as you
  know, a zealous disciple of Schelling, is deeply versed in the
  new philosophy, and, what to me is of still more value, in the
  mysticism of the middle ages. I rejoice to have gained in him
  some compensation for the loss of your society; yet I cannot
  share the expectations which he bases upon the new philosophy.
  Although my acquaintance with him has divested me of many a
  former prejudice, I find myself, nevertheless, attracted only
  the more to the 'one thing needful,' assured that only at the
  fountain of living waters, Jesus Christ, can our thirst be
  quenched."

He adds, however, concerning his friend:

  "Lasaulx has nevertheless a very substantial Christian basis,
  and if ever his _Knowing_ goes hand in hand with his
  _Willing_, and his _Willing_ with his _Knowing_,
  we may certainly expect something very sterling from him."

It was Lasaulx himself who communicated the news to their mutual
friend, in Germany, of the sudden death of Eberle. Eberle's plan
had been to pass yet a year in Rome, then return to Germany, and,
seeking again the sheltering wing of his master, Cornelius, in
Munich, there to close his art-wanderings. Thus he himself wrote
in a letter of the 7th of March, 1832. But a month later he was
no more. He succumbed to a disease of the stomach. Shortly before
his death, Miss Linder had cheered the invalid by a remittance.
On the 24th of April, 1832, Lasaulx thus wrote from Rome:

  "Our friend Adam Eberle, at five o'clock in the afternoon of
  the 15th of April, after a hard death-struggle, recovered from
  the malady of this life. Good-Friday morning we bore him home.
  Three days before his death he had the great joy of receiving
  your last letter, and that which your love enclosed with it. He
  was one of the few whose souls are washed in the blood of the
  Lamb, offered from the beginning of the world. The Lamentations
  and the Miserere of the divine old masters Palestrini and
  Allrgri which you begged our friend to listen to for you, I
  have listened to for both of you."

Munich had now so grown upon the affections of the artiste that
she again removed thither from Basle in 1832. After her life in
Rome, a residence in the German art-metropolis could not but be a
necessity to her, and the Bavarian capital was thenceforth her
home. Her house became more and more the peaceful abode of the
fine arts. Her fortune enabled her, by a succession of
commissions, gradually to collect a wealth of pictures and
drawings in which the Corypheans of Christian art were
represented. Among these Overbeck took the foremost place with a
series of subjects from the Evangelists, the choicest of
drawings, which during a period of thirty years gradually came
into her possession. A beautiful oil painting by Overbeck, which
she esteemed most highly, "The death of St. Joseph," was also
produced at this time, an elevated delineation of the death of
the just. From Cornelius she secured three cartoons of the wall
pictures in the Louis-church, ("The Creation,") in which this
mighty intellect was worthily represented.
{105}
In like manner an altar-piece by Conrad Eberhard, one of the most
thoughtful compositions of this admirable master, and intended
originally for one of the new church edifices of King Louis, took
its place among the gems of this house--just as the venerable
master himself, in all his purity of soul and pious simplicity,
took his place high in the friendship of the hostess.

Next to painting, the two sister arts, poetry and music, were
specially cultivated in the home of the artist. She had a clear
perception of the true and elevated in poetry, and kept pace,
even to old age, with the literary productions of the new era.
Her own poetic effusions were confined to the eye of her more
intimate friends; but there were some poems upon which Brentano
himself placed high value. Her library was a choice one, and her
knowledge of languages kept her acquainted with the best
productions of the modern cultivated nations. Her aesthetic and
scientific acquirements became her well, inasmuch as the
cultivation of the mind and of the heart with her kept even pace.

Miss Linder applied herself to music in full earnest. She not
only practised several instruments--the aeolodicon and harp were
always seen in her drawing-room--but she had herself instructed
by Ett in thorough-bass and the history of music. She followed
his instructions in harmony with practical exercises. In musical
history it was the religious department again which most appealed
to her: her researches went back to the earliest times, the
development of the true church style, and for the unfolding of
this subject she had found in Ett the right man. Moreover, she
stood in friendly exchange of views with Proske of Regensburg, a
profound student of ancient church music. Sometimes musical
gatherings were held, to which Ett brought singing-boys from the
choir of St. Michael's Church: ancient religious cantatas, the
compositions of Orlando di Lasso, Handel, Abbé Vogler's hymns,
and the like, were performed. Conrad Eberhard, an enthusiastic
admirer of music and of the master Ett, who with Schlotthauer
regularly attended the historical lectures on music, in his
ninetieth year spoke with loving recollection of these ennobling
evenings at Miss Linder's.

By this varied and earnest devotion to art, as well as artistic
and scientific enterprises, to which she constantly brought
willing and generous offerings, her life began to assume more and
more an ideal significance, and to gain that expansiveness of
horizon and completeness which secured for her a position in
society as peculiar as it was agreeable. If we would ask what it
was that identified this quiet spirit with so distinguished a
circle and made her house a rendezvous for scholars and artists,
in which the most brilliant and the most profound so gladly met,
the explanation would be just this--it was the awakened
intelligence which she brought to all intellectual topics, the
simple-hearted abandonment to the views of great minds, the
readiness with which she recognized and admired the true and the
beautiful in all things. It was equally the unselfish,
uncalculating enthusiasm, and the perfect purity of soul, which
compelled the respect of all. An unvarying geniality blended with
a quiet earnestness; a clear intelligence with a golden goodness;
a profound view of life in all its phases, from the very heights
of a sunny existence--herein resided the gentle attractiveness
with which she drew to herself the sympathies of the noblest
souls and held them fast.

{106}

A character of such a type is best reflected in its friends. Her
life for the most part flowed on so quietly and evenly that it
rose clearly to the view of only those who were nearest to her.
It seems, therefore, befitting that from among her many friends
we should select a few who, like her, are now at rest, and
mention some of their salient characteristics.

The foremost place is due to the painter-prince of the new
art-epoch himself, Cornelius--who was a friend from her very
youth, and only a few months after her, even in these latter
days, closed his earthly pilgrimage. The fame of the man and the
sense of his loss, still so freshly felt, will justify us in
dwelling somewhat more at length on him and his letters. It was,
indeed, the opinion of Emily Linder, toward the close of her
life, that the letters which she had received from Cornelius
might some day be of use in his biography.

At the time Miss Linder started from Munich upon her journey to
Switzerland and Italy, her relations with the family of the
celebrated painter had already become so intimate, that it was
continued in correspondence. Ordinarily it was an Italian-German
or double letter, from Carolina and Peter Cornelius, which
greeted her; they both recall, with friendly warmth, her
residence in Munich, and the message, "We miss you!" was
repeatedly wafted after her as she remained longer away. Frau
Carolina Cornelius evinced for her a very tender attachment. The
genial master himself honored her with confidences from time to
time, as to his artistic plans and undertakings. Particularly was
this the case when he was commissioned to prepare designs for the
Louis-church in Munich, whereby he saw the early realization of a
long-cherished and favorite idea of his; when the history of
mankind in grand outline, the creation, the redemption, the
sending of the Holy Ghost to the church, the last judgment,
presented itself to his mind. Then he felt impelled to open his
heart to his absent friend, and the postscript, which he appended
to a letter of his wife, rises into a veritable dithyrambic. He
writes on the 20th of January, 1829:

  "I cannot better close this letter than by communicating a
  thing which transports me and in which you, my dear friend,
  will sympathize. Fancy my good fortune! After completing the
  _Glyptothek_, I am to paint a church. It is now sixteen
  years that I have been going about with the idea of a Christian
  epic in painting--a painted _comoedia divina_--and I have
  had hours, and longer periods, when it seemed I had a special
  mission for this. And now my heavenly love comes like a bride
  in all her beauty to me--what mortal after this can I envy? The
  universe opens itself before my eyes: I see heaven, earth, and
  hell; I see the past, the present, and the future; I stand on
  Sinai and gaze upon the new Jerusalem; I am inebriated and yet
  composed. All my friends must pray for me, and you, my dear
  Emily. With brotherly love greets you CORNELIUS."

The artistic heroism of this soul--this man whose ideas grasped
the world--breathes in these lines with certainly wonderful
freshness. In other letters of this happy period his natural
humor gains the ascendant, and he indulges in sallies of mirth,
afterward begging her indulgence and a friendly remembrance of
"the crazy painter Peter Cornelius." Her replies were in a
simpler and graver tone, but full of that refreshing
independence, which appeared to a nature like his more than aught
else. She allowed his geniality full play without compromising
her sincerity, or her dignity. He is thus both "charmed and
edified" by her letters, and once made the remark of them, "All
that your personality led me to fancy of the beautiful and the
good finds more artless, more forcible and vivid expression in
your letters.
{107}
It becomes you uncommonly well, whenever you fairly assert
yourself."

In the year 1831 the cholera threatened, for a time, to visit
Munich. The preparations of the sanitary authorities to meet this
uncomfortable guest were already completed. Miss Linder was in
Basle, and sent thence a friendly invitation to Cornelius and his
family to take refuge at her domestic hearth. The knightly
response of the master, dated Munich, 15th of November 1831, is
as follows:

  "Your friendly suggestion from the shelter of your hospitable
  hearth to laugh at the cholera, and by the same opportunity,
  perhaps, to reproduce a _Decameron_, corresponding
  thereto, has an indescribable attraction for me, and I should
  have acted upon it had I not been afraid to be afraid. From
  sheer cowardice at the possible death of my honor, I must stand
  the cartridges of the cholera. From the spot where my king and
  so many admirable and honorable men stand their ground, must
  Cornelius never run away. You will take in good part the
  informality of this letter from your fanciful friend, yet he
  craves of you an _indulgenza plenaria_ while he ends with
  the bold declaration that he indescribably loves and honors you.
                                        P. V. CORNELIUS."

At this period an idea seized Cornelius, which long occupied his
attention, namely, to record the noteworthy incidents of his own
eventful artist-life; a plan which certainly would have enriched
literature by at least one original work and have proved of
inestimable value to the history of modern art. Unfortunately,
the plan was never carried out; but it affords a proof of his
high esteem for his friend that Cornelius intended the memoirs to
be written in the form of letters addressed to her, as will
appear from the two following letters. They are written under the
influence of the same exuberant spirits in which the grand
conception of his "Christian epic" had placed him:

       "Munich, February 12, 1832.
  "Very Dear Friend: This is not meant as an answer to the
  welcome and beautiful letter which you sent me through H.
  Hauser; it is only a slight expression of my gratitude and my
  great delight at the kindliness and the loyal friendship which
  your dear letter breathes for me, unworthy. I have lately been
  asking myself why this letter-writing, which, as you and all
  the world knows, is a horror to me, since my correspondence
  with you has set me back into that happy period when one can
  write an entire library and yet not be satisfied. Had I more
  leisure, I would carry out an old project to write the history
  of my life in letter-form, after the manner of many French
  memoirs, and addressed to you. Although for the present this is
  not to be thought of, I by no means abandon the plan.

  "Heroes and artists--in the most liberal way of viewing
  it--have their truest and clearest appreciation in the pure
  souls of women. Only Hebe might serve the nectar to Alcides;
  only Beatrice conducts the singer into Paradise; Tasso's
  delirium is a vague searching in a labyrinth where Ariadne's
  thread is broken; Michael Angelo would have been as great a
  painter as was Dante a poet had Beatrice opened heaven to him;
  Raphael's thousand-feathered Psyche bore a material maiden into
  the realm of the stars; her human blood enkindled his and slew
  him. When I write my memoirs, you will see how it has gone with
  me in this respect. In the mean time I allow you a peep through
  the keyhole of my private drawer--it is a poor poem of my
  youth, which as penance you must read, because you mockingly
  called me a poet. [Footnote 45]

    [Footnote 45: It is truly a very youthful poem,
    addressed "To the Muse," commencing:
      "Confided have I alone
       in thee, O Muse," etc. ED.]

  "I know not why I send these poor stanzas to you; it appears to
  me as though you exercised some charm over the spirits of my
  life, who must perforce appear before you. Perhaps one of these
  days this letter might serve for a dedication to the book in
  question, because, like an overture, it contains in itself the
  leading motive. Now farewell, and take no offence at this gay
  carnival-arabesque, The ladies of my family heartily greet you:
  we have good news from Rome. Heaven bless you, vouchsafe you
  cheerfulness and bliss, and bring you soon to us. Meantime,
  however, write soon, and often send tidings
  to your most devoted friend,
                           "P. Cornelius."

{108}

Four months later, he reverts to the same subject, on the
occasion of sending to her, while at Basle, a sketch of his
latest composition for the walls of the Louis-church, ("The
Epiphany,") accompanying which he writes:

                                        Munich, June 21, 1832.
  "Herewith you find a little sketch of a drawing just completed
  for a large cartoon (the corresponding piece to the
  Crucifixion,) and instead of interpreting it to you, I beg your
  own interpretation of it; it would have such a charm for me to
  read in your mind my own conceptions ennobled and beautified.
  What coquetry! I hear you laughingly say; and yet I hope to be
  pardoned. If it be true that artists have many feelings in
  common with women, those which prompt us to try to please those
  we love should meet with some indulgence.

  "I occupy myself often, on my lonely walks, with the plan of my
  intended memoirs; the material begins to assume shape; but
  unless you apply to it the finishing touch, it will not be
  presentable. I never could bring myself to entrust it to other
  hands. In the retrospect of my life I find the material more
  abundant than I had supposed. Very difficult will be the
  shaping of much of it. How easily does many a tie and relation
  in this life lose its true coloring and significance by
  omissions; and yet must these very often occur, if the work is
  to appear during my lifetime. Before beginning to write, I
  shall communicate to you, orally, dearest friend, some portions
  of the memoirs, and we can then discuss them at leisure--a
  welcome plan to me, for thus will the undertaking fairly ripen.
  With inmost respect and love, your devoted
                                      "Peter Von Cornelius."

Finally, it may be allowable to make mention of a letter which he
addresses to her from Rome, on the 12th of October, 1833, while
he was working on his drawing of the Last Judgment. In this
letter we recognize his playful, working humor--and does he not
term these periods of creative activity his wedding time? In
several remarks, however, we discern both sides of his nature.

  "My Noble Friend: It is really too bad! has he not yet written?
  not even answered that charming letter from Salzburg? Well, I
  must say, I am curious to see how he will justify himself.

  "Thus I hear Schlotthauer exclaim; even Schubert ominously
  shakes his head; but you are silent and thoughtful. I should be
  in despair for an excuse for myself, having already shot off my
  best arrows at you on similar occasions, exhausted my adroitest
  terms--my best rhetoric. I say I should be in despair, if that
  stupendous, that tremendous thing, 'The Last Judgment,' did not
  take me under its protecting wing. Never has a man, probably,
  with more sublimity asked pardon of a lady! And now, laying the
  universe at your feet, I await composedly my sentence. From
  this moment is my tongue loosed; and I can say to you that I am
  celebrating my blissfullest time--my wedding time--the harvest
  season of my holiest aspirations. How few mortals attain to
  such happiness! and how ill-calculated is this world to afford
  it!

   "Gladly would I show you the work I am at present engaged
   upon. Yet for a nature so quiet as yours, you appear to me far
   too forcible and positive. Overbeck must love you a thousand
   fold more than I: with me you suffer indulgence to take the
   place of impartial justice. How I once fretted about such
   things!

  "What a treasure is a deep, positively incurable pain! Better
  than the most unalloyed bliss which this poor world has to
  offer, it brings us near to the Holy One. It is more faithful,
  far less variable. It draws us into solitude, into ourselves.

  "You surmise, doubtless, what I mean. Daily do I thank Heaven
  that through you such knowledge was to come to me. This is
  bitter medicine; administered, to a child, upon sweet fruit.
  But why do I entertain you with such trivialities? In all books
  of all nations we read the same thing; and yet when the poor
  human heart is pressed with its heavy burthen, it feels just as
  profoundly and acutely as in the very days of Troy itself; and
  the utterances of joy and of love, like those of pain, are ever
  new and their method inexhaustible; ever does one cast himself
  upon the breast of a loving, sympathetic soul.

{109}

  "Accept for the moment this confused scribble and remain
  friendly and well-disposed toward me. Continue to peep through
  my fingers, and leave me just five of them. I claim to myself,
  however, the privilege of an unlimited love and veneration for
  you. My entire household and all your friends send heartfelt
  greeting; foremost of all, however, your
                                           P. V. CORNELIUS."


The correspondence was interrupted when Cornelius removed to
Berlin; but not the friendship, which endured to the end. Nor did
the exchange of letters cease entirely; so that the ink-shy
master once asserted in Berlin, that he had written to no lady so
often as to her.

Among the earliest acquaintances of Emily Linder, was Father
Franz von Baader; as the nine letters indicate, which were
addressed to her, and published in the complete works of Baader.
The first of these was dated as early as the 25th of May, 1825,
therefore at the commencement of her residence in Munich; and the
contents indicate the immediate cause of their mutual attraction.
This letter has somewhat the nature of a memorial, in which the
philosopher draws a parallel between the art of painting and the
God-like art of benevolence; closing with the following words:

  "Herewith commends himself to Miss Emily Linder--she who
  rendered her memory so dear, so imperishable to him by an act
  kindness performed at his request to a poor family--
                                                  Franz Baader."

The tie between them therefore lay in the admirable activity of
that quality by which Emily Linder quietly accomplished so
much--a high-hearted love for her neighbor.

From that time forward Baader regularly sent her his pamphlets
and works, and we can appreciate to what extent he tasked her
intellect when he forwarded her a copy of his _Speculative
Dogma or, Social-Philosophic Treatise_. He regarded it as a
pleasant duty to acquaint her from time to time with his literary
labors: and she spared herself to no trouble to follow even such
grave and abstruse topics. He succeeded in specially interesting
her in Jacob Böhme. Her intelligent remarks on Baader's article
upon the doctrine of justification led him to remark that her
letter afforded him a more satisfactory proof than many a
criticism that he had succeeded in reaching both the head and the
heart. In the year 1831, Baader dedicated to her a philosophic
paper entitled _Forty Propositions from a Religious
Exotic_," (Munich: Franz, 1831.) In the brief dedication of
this "little work on great subjects" we read, "While you in
ancient Rome are dedicating heart, soul, eye, and hand to art, it
may not be unwelcome to you to hear over the stormy Alps a
friendly voice, reminding you of that holy alliance of the three
graces of a better and eternal life, Religion, Speculation, and
Poetry, adding to these also, Painting." In the letter which
accompanies this pamphlet he places before her the leading
thoughts of the little work in a lucid manner:

  "When the teachers of religion say that the whole Christian
  faith rests upon the knowledge and conviction that God is love;
  and that in this religion the love of God, of man, of nature,
  is made a duty; so that, in fact, a oneness of love and duty is
  announced, it would seem seasonable this unloving and
  duty-forgetful age so to present the identity of these two,
  love and duty, that mankind can discern the laws of religion in
  those of love, and those of love in religion; which, I trust,
  has been done in this pamphlet in a new, albeit rather a
  homoeopathic manner."

Next to Baader is to be named his intellectual son-in-law, Ernst
von Lasaulx. He started, in the same year that Emily Linder left
Rome, upon his long journey through Italy and Greece, to the
Orient. They met in Florence, the 27th of July, 1831, and he
promised the artist a description of his travels.
{110}
In conformity with this promise ensued a series of letters
recording his experiences and impressions in Greece and the
promised land, fresh and warm to a degree seldom found, and full
of classic beauty. By whom could antiquity be better realized to
this art-enthusiast than by Lasaulx, the zealous student of
Grecian art-history, and equally a master of artistic prose!
Poetic sensibility and literary clearness go refreshingly hand in
hand in these letters; now in a description of his rides to that
"eloquent rock-architecture" of Cyclopean edifices, the Titanic
walls of the Acropolis of Tiryns and Mikene; or his solitary
wanderings among the prostrate, ruined glories strewn from
Corinth to Magara and Athens. At the first view of distant
Athens, the Acropolis and the Parthenon, the temple of Theseus
and the city behind the dark olive-woods he exclaims:

  "Here is Greece, all of a departed glory worthy of the name,
  which the noiseless waste of time and the insane fury of man
  has left to the after-world. Never in my experience, and in no
  other city, have I known such emotions. It is as though my
  heart were turned into an AEolian harp, and the night winds
  were sighing through its broken strings."

Despite all his predilections, however, for the classic land, he
did not suffer himself to be deceived as to a new Greece by the
occasion of the 12th of April, 1833, when he was present at the
formal surrender of the Acropolis to the Bavarian troops, when
Osman Effendi withdrew the Turkish forces, and the Bavarian
commander, Baligand, planted the Greek flag upon the northern
rampart. He remarks, in this description:

  "It was a remarkable spectacle; the noisy, confused crowd of
  Turks, Greeks, Bavarians and whatever other inquisitive Franks
  had collected in the dusky colonnades of the Parthenon. As I
  could not bring myself to any faith in the regeneration of
  Greece, the rampant irony of this insane funeral wake only
  added to my deep depression."

Written in the year 1833, and, hardly ten years later, what
confirmation!

Glorious passages does the traveller indite to his distant friend
over his pilgrimage through Palestine; profound melancholy at the
present condition of the holy land; devout emotions amid holy
places. On entering Jerusalem, Sunday, September 15. 1833, he
says:

  "Burning tears and a cold shudder of the heart were the first,
  God grant not the only, tributes which I offered for his love
  and that of his Son."

His delineations inspired his friend with a holy longing, and she
entertained for some time afterward the idea of a journey to the
holy land. She had, indeed, made preparations (1836) for a
pilgrimage thither in company with Schubert, and only
considerations of health compelled her at last to abandon the
plan.

Subsequently, at the close of his life, Lasaulx crowned his
friendship for Miss Linder with a special literary tribute. He
dedicated to her his last great work, _The Philosophy of the
Fine Arts, Architecture, Sculpture, Painting, Music, Poetry,
Prose_, (Munich, 1860.) As though from a presentiment of his
death, he felt impelled to bring his esthetic studies to a close,
sensible as he was that here and there were still omissions to
supply. But the book is the thoughtful labor of many years, and a
masterwork of style. In the dedication, which serves as preface,
and which was written in the Bavarian inn, at Castle Lebenberg,
in the Tyrol, on the 25th of September, 1859, after speaking of
the origin of the work, he refers, in the following words, to his
friend:

{111}

  "That I dedicate this work particularly to you will be found
  natural enough on a moment's self-examination. I met you, for
  the first time, thirty years ago, at Munich, in a delightful
  circle of friendly men and women, so many of whom are
  constantly departing from us, that those who are still left
  have to move nearer and nearer to each other at your hospitable
  table. A few years later, I saw you in Florence again, as you
  came from Rome and I went thither. The death of our
  early-maturing friend, Adam Eberle, resulted in an association
  with you as a correspondent, and since then you have proved to
  me, my wife and daughter, both in bright and gloomy days, so
  dear and true a friend, that it is now a necessity with me to
  express my gratitude to you, even with this very work, whose
  subjects are so akin to your own studies, and in writing which,
  at this fortress of Lebenberg, I have so often thought of you
  and our mutual friends, dead and living, chiefest among whom
  should to yourself this book be a tribute."

A year and a half later, the noble and true soul of Lasaulx had
passed, and his grateful friend founded for him a memorial after
her own peculiar taste, the pious memorial of a stated mass for
his soul.

An early friend, also, and one true till death, was Gotthilf
Heinrich von Schubert, who met Miss Linder shortly after he was
called to the University of Munich. The amiable personality of
this _savant_ of child-like nature particularly appealed to
her. His fundamental views of religion accorded with her own; and
therefore, the elements of a spiritual harmony were already at
hand. Miss Linder was associated with his family during the
period of an entire human life, in the closest and purest
friendship, which particularly one test safely withstood--that of
her conversion. In his autobiography, Schubert alludes, in a few
words, to this friend of his household; and the comparison he
draws between her and the Princess Gallitzin shows how high a
position he accorded her. Speaking of the circle of friends in
which he chiefly moved, he mentions the names of Roth, Puchta,
Schnorr, Cornelius, Ringseis, Schlotthauer, Boisseree,
Schwanthaler, and then remarks:

  "The gathering-point of many of these friends was the house of
  the noble Swiss, Emily. At all times and in all places, in
  larger as in smaller social circles, will each with pleasure
  thus recall that grand life-picture, which was similarly
  presented to a former generation at Münster, in the fair friend
  of Hamann, of Stolberg, of Claudius."

Emily Linder was certainly the first, in her deep humility, to
deprecate such a comparison; but it is for both equally
creditable that the venerable sage felt constrained to bear such
testimony, even after her union with the Catholic Church.

Next to the testimony of scholars and artists, we will finally
quote an opinion from a female writer, a literary lady of the
higher walks of life. In the summer of 1841, came Emma von
Niendorf to Munich. She was in friendly relation with Schubert
and Brentano, and, several years later, recorded her
reminiscences of those sunny days at Munich in a lively and
imaginative little work. At Schubert's she formed the
acquaintance of Emily Linder, and was attracted closely to her.
She refers to her in glowing and expressive terms, depicting this
art-loving woman in the repose of her home:

  "A noble Swiss, and for this reason remarkable, that, fortified
  by exterior means and the most positive convictions, she
  presented to me an ideal existence in a ripe and unwedded old
  age, having achieved happiness. She lived only for science, for
  art, for all that is beautiful and good. But everything was
  illumined with the glory of a genuine Christian spirit. And how
  this spirit reflected itself in all her surroundings!
{112}
   I shall never forget it; the sitting-room, with work-basket,
   books, flowers, harp, drawings by Overbeck; a drawing-room
   separating these from a little house-chapel, which a painting
   of Overbeck also embellished. And, where the organ awaited the
   skilful fingers, a Madonna of the school of Leonardo da Vinci
   smiled from the wall, while the little side-altar encased a
   drawing of Albrecht Dürer. I found, also, in the house of this
   lady a portrait of Maria Mori, in the Tyrol, admirably drawn
   by her friend, the well-known lady artist, Ellenrieder,
   somewhat idealized; a profile, with folded hands; long, brown,
   down-flowing hair; the large, dark eye full of devotion, full
   of sensibility, the _stigmata_ in the hands not to be
   forgotten. ... This lady is a Protestant. The deepest coloring
   of her soul is, perhaps, shading toward Catholicism; yet she
   doubtless finds satisfying harmonies in the Gospel. By one of
   those wonderful providences which life is so full of, this
   earnest soul was planted between two strongly pronounced
   natures--two opposite polarities of friendship, both deep and
   sincere--Clemens Brentano and Schubert, who were on equal
   terms of intimacy with her."

At the very time Emma von Niendorf put her work to press, she
knew not that the lady to whom these lines referred had already
attained that toward which "the deepest coloring of her soul
seemed to be shading." Emily Linder had sought and found
"satisfying harmonies" in the faith of the one, universal,
apostolic church.

          Conclusion In The Next Number.

----------

     Xavier De Ravignan. [Footnote 46]

    [Footnote 46: _The Life of Father de Ravignan, of the
    Society of Jesus_. By Father de Ponlevoy, of the same
    Society. Translated at St. Beuno's College, North Wales.
    12mo, pp. 693. New York: The Catholic Publication Society.
    1869.]


Father De Ponlevoy's life of his friend and colleague, the
celebrated orator of Notre Dame, violates many of the canons of
biographical composition, and is nevertheless an admirable book.
As a narrative, it lacks clearness and symmetry; but as a picture
of the interior of a great and beautiful soul, it is wonderfully
vivid. It could only have been written by one who sympathized
completely with the subject, and understood the interior
illuminations and trials, and the complete detachment from the
world, which distinguished the illustrious preacher whose fame at
one time filled all Catholic Europe. Father de Ponlevoy has given
us therefore a valuable work. He has looked at De Ravignan's life
from the right point of view--the only point in fact from which
it offers any important material to the biographer. In a worldly
sense, the life was not an eventful one. He came of a noble yet
hardly a distinguished family, who preserved their faith in the
midst of the storm of revolution, and brought up their children
to love the church. Gustave Xavier was born at Bayonne on the 1st
of December, 1795. As a child he was remarkable for a gravity and
intelligence far beyond his years, a warm affection for his
parents, and a very pious disposition. After completing his
school and college education in Paris, he resolved to devote
himself to the law, and at the age of eighteen entered the office
of M. Goujon, a jurist of some distinction at the capital. He had
scarcely begun his studies, however, when France was thrown into
confusion by the return of Napoleon from Elba.
{113}
The young man threw down his books, enlisted in a company of
royalist volunteers, and after preparing himself for the campaign
by receiving holy communion, marched with his command toward the
Spanish frontier. His company belonged to that unlucky detachment
under General Barbarin, which was surprised and cut to pieces at
Hélette, in the Lower Pyrénées. General Barbarin fell, severely
wounded, and would have fallen into the enemy's hands, when De
Ravignan rushed forward through the fire and attempted to carry
him off the field. It was a generous but desperate act, which
would have led to the sacrifice of both. Barbarin saw the danger
of the young hero, and, freeing one of his arms, shot himself
through the head. Covered with the blood of his unfortunate
commander, Gustave sought safety in flight, wandered afoot and
alone through the Basque country, in the disguise of a peasant,
and, after many hardships and escapes, rejoined the army on
Spanish soil. He now received a commission as lieutenant of
cavalry, and was attached to the staff of the Count de Damas, who
sent him on a confidential mission to Bordeaux. Before he had any
further opportunity of winning distinction, the war was over, and
although tempting offers were made him to continue in the army,
he determined to adhere to the law, and was soon hard at work
again. The indomitable resolution, amounting even to sternness,
which distinguished him in after life, was already one of his
most remarkable characteristics. Whatever he did, was done with
all his might. He studied with the most intense application, and,
not satisfied with the reading necessary for his profession,
applied himself closely to the German and English languages, and
such lighter accomplishments as drawing and music. In due time he
was appointed a _conseiller auditeur_ in the royal court of
Paris, then under the presidency of Séguier. The influence of the
Duke d'Angoulême got him the appointment--not, however, without
some difficulty--and his colleagues received him coldly. He
awaited his time in patience, beginning each day by hearing Mass,
and studying thoroughly, systematically, and indefatigably. At
last, one day when the advocates happened to be out of court, a
civil cause of a very tedious nature was unexpectedly called. The
president turned, rather maliciously, to De Ravignan, and handed
him the papers, saying, "Let us see for once what can be done by
this young gentleman, whose acquaintance we have yet to make." On
the appointed day the "young gentleman" presented a clear and
logical report, and delivered it with a perfection of utterance
which caused the whole court to listen with astonishment. His
success at the bar was assured from that moment, and soon
afterward he was appointed deputy _procureur général_.

His life at this time presents a curious and instructive study.
He devoted a part of each day regularly to religious exercises;
he was a zealous member of a Sodality of the Blessed Virgin; he
had already in fact formed the idea of entering the priesthood,
if not of joining the Society of Jesus. But while he remained in
the world, he never neglected his professional pursuits, he
mingled freely in society, and showed himself, in the true sense
of the term, an accomplished gentleman. He was a great favorite
in company. "In him," says Father de Ponlevoy, "interior and
exterior were in perfect harmony. It would be impossible to
imagine a more perfect type of a young man: the expression of his
countenance was excellent, his forehead high and full of dignity,
his features fine and characteristic, his eyes deep and blue, by
turns animated and affectionate, his figure slight and graceful.
{114}
To this picture must be added scrupulous attention to person and
dress, perfect politeness, and a nameless something, the
reflection of a lofty mind, a great intellect, and a pure and
affectionate heart." Many years afterward, when he visited
London, to preach at the time of the World's Fair, one of the
principal Protestant noblemen of England said of him, "He is the
most finished gentleman I ever saw." His modesty, like many of
his other virtues, leaned toward severity. At a great
dinner-party one day, before he had embraced the religious life,
he was placed next a young lady whose dress was rather too
scanty. He sat stiff and silent until the unlucky girl ventured
to ask, "M. de Ravignan, have you no appetite?" He replied in a
half-whisper, "And you, Mdlle., have you no shame?"

He was twenty-six years of age when, after a retreat of eight
days, he entered the Seminary of Saint Sulpice. The resolution
had been gradually formed, yet it took everybody except his
mother and his spiritual director by surprise. His professional
friends and associates did all they could to draw him back to the
world. They sought out his retreat, and went after him in crowds.
"Ah!" he exclaimed, when he saw them, "I have made my escape from
you."

De Ravignan remained only six months in the seminary, and then
removed to the novitiate of the Society of Jesus, for which he
had made no secret of his preference. The life of a novice offers
little matter for the biographer. We are only told that his
course here was distinguished by a devotion which approached
heroism, a zeal that tended toward excess, and a strictness that
was often too hard and stern. Throughout his life, severity
toward himself, far more than toward others, was his principal
defect; but as years went on, this rigidity of character, always
more apparent than real, disappeared little by little in the
sunshine of divine love. He never spared himself in anything. He
surpassed all in his ambition for humiliation and suffering; the
only trouble was, that he sometimes went too far in attempting to
lead weaker brethren by the hard path he himself had trodden. A
novice once asked somebody for advice, and was recommended to
apply to Brother de Ravignan. "In that case," he rejoined, "I
know beforehand what I must do: I have only to choose the most
difficult course." In the scholasticate, he was known by the
_sobriquet_ of "Iron Bar." When the time came for his
admission to holy orders, after nearly four years passed in the
scholasticate at Paris and at Dôle, he was sent with five other
candidates to the Diocesan Seminary at Orgelet, where the
sacrament of ordination was to be administered. Before the party
set out, Brother de Ravignan was appointed superior for the
journey. His companions were seized with fear when they heard who
had been placed in charge over them; but their alarm was
groundless. "Nothing," said one of the company, "could exceed the
kindness, the affability, the attentiveness to small wants, the
simple joy of the young superior. He availed himself of his
character only to claim the right of choosing the last place, and
of making himself the servant of all." He was ordained priest on
the 25th of July, 1828.

The war against the Jesuits in France was approaching its crisis,
and the ordinance which deprived them of the liberty of teaching
and shut up all their colleges was promulgated just about the
time of Father de Ravignan's ordination.
{115}
Cut off from the privilege of secular instruction, the society
resolved to devote itself more zealously than ever to the
theological training of its own members. Father de Ravignan was
assigned a chair of theology at Saint Acheul, near Amiens; for he
was not only a thorough scholar, but he possessed a rare talent
for teaching, and according to the testimony of his pupil, Father
Rubillon, fully realized "the idea of a professor of theology
such as is depicted by St. Ignatius." The poor fathers, however,
were not to be left here in peace. In 1829, they received notice
to suspend their classes; but Father de Ravignan hastened to
Paris, saw the Minister of Public Instruction, and caused the
order to be set aside. The next year came the revolution of July.
Late in the evening of the 29th, a mob, led by an expelled pupil,
attacked the college, burst in gates, and with cries for "The
King and the Charter!" "The Emperor!" "Liberty!" and "Down with
the priests!" and "Death to the Jesuits!" proceeded to sack the
building. While some of the fathers took refuge in the chapel,
and others, expecting death, were busy hearing one another's
confessions, Father de Ravignan went upon a balcony, and tried to
make himself heard by the rioters. He persisted until a stone
struck him on the temple, and he was led away bleeding. To what
lengths the fury of the mob would have gone it is impossible to
say; but fortunately, in the course of their devastation they
stumbled into the wine-cellar, and all got drunk. The arrival of
a troop of cavalry dispersed the reeling crowd in the twinkling
of an eye, and the Jesuits were left to mourn over the ruins. The
next day it seemed certain that the attack would be renewed. The
college was deserted, and its inmates scattered in different
directions, Father de Ravignan being sent to Brigue in
Switzerland to resume his courses of theological instruction.

It was not until the close of 1834 that he came back to France.
Then we find him once more at Saint Acheul, where, since classes
were prohibited, a house had been opened for fathers in their
third year of probation. Three years later, he was appointed
superior of a new house at Bordeaux. There he remained until
1842.

In the mean time he had entered, imperceptibly, so to speak, upon
the great work of his life. He had preached many retreats at
different times to his own brethren, and to other religious
communities, but had rarely been heard in a public pulpit until,
during the Lent of 1835, while he was living at Saint Acheul, he
was selected to preach a series of conferences in the cathedral
of Amiens. He was forty years of age when he began this
apostleship, and he had been withdrawn from the world ever since
he was twenty-seven; yet he had not been forgotten. There was a
lively curiosity among his old friends to hear him; the members
of the bar in particular were constant in their attendance; and
the impression produced in Amiens was not only deep, but rich in
spiritual fruit. In Advent, he was appointed to preach a similar
course at the same place; and in Lent of the next year, we find
him preaching in the church of St. Thomas Aquinas, in Paris.
Nothing exactly like these conferences and courses of sermons, so
common in France, has ever been known to our country, and some of
our readers may find it difficult to appreciate the magnitude and
importance of the labor in which Father de Ravignan was now
engaged.
{116}
The audiences whom he had to address were not only poor,
unlettered sinners, whose consciences needed arousing; to these
of course he must speak, but with them came hundreds of the most
cultivated and critical listeners, who studied the speaker's
language and manner as they would a literary essay or an exercise
in elocution. The court, the army, the learned professions, and
the leaders of fashionable society crowded around the Lent and
Advent pulpits. The appearance of a new preacher was the
sensation of the metropolis. The newspapers criticised the
performance as they would criticise a play at the theatre. To
satisfy the exactions of such an audience as this, and yet to
preserve that unction without which preaching is a waste of
breath--to please the critical ear, and yet to move the callous
heart, required qualifications which few men combined. The most
famous of all the series of conferences had been those in the
great cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris. Father Lacordaire had
there roused an extraordinary enthusiasm, and at the height of
his fame had abandoned the pulpit and gone to Rome for the
purpose of restoring the Dominican order to France. He earnestly
desired that Father de Ravignan should be his successor at Notre
Dame, and it is interesting to know that it was partly through
Lacordaire's agency, that the Jesuit was obliged in 1837 to begin
that grand series of discourses, extending over ten years, by
which he will be chiefly remembered. "No one could claim to be
the apostle of such an assembly as met in Notre Dame," says
Father de Ponlevoy,

  "unless he were first of all a philosopher. The subject chosen
  for the first year was accordingly a kind of Catholic
  philosophy of history, depicting the broad outlines of the
  struggle between truth and error. This idea is analogous to
  that which inspired the _City of God_ of St. Augustine; it
  was carried on in the station of 1838 by an explanation of
  fundamental doctrines, beginning with the personality and
  action of God, in opposition to the abstractions of the
  pantheists, the ill-defined forms of deism and fatalism;
  proceeding on to liberty, the immortality of the soul and the
  end of man, against materialism. For all this, it was necessary
  to go to first principles, to recall slumbering belief to life,
  and again to establish doctrines which had been corrupted by
  numberless errors. Some portion of the hearers were from this
  time forward led to embrace the last practical conclusions, and
  already F. de Ravignan had some consoling returns to the faith
  to report. At the end of the station of 1838, he wrote:

  "'The attendance has been large and remarkable for the great
  number of distinguished persons, members of the present and
  former ministries, peers, deputies, academicians, well known
  Protestants, foreigners of rank, and a troop of young men.

  "'There have been symptoms of approval, sometimes too freely
  manifested; conversions, a few, but not many. Moreover, no
  expressions of hostility, either in the newspapers or among the
  audience. God be praised!

  "'I have been forced to have some intercourse with a great many
  people, and some of them persons of note. M. de Chateaubriand
  paid me a visit; two interviews were arranged for me with M. de
  Lamartine; several physicians and men of science have sought to
  see me; some have been to confession. How many great men there
  are ignorant of the faith, and sick in mind and heart.

  "'God has supported me. I have felt his grace, his help to our
  society, and the benefit of the prayers offered for my work. I
  took care that none of the journals should employ short-hand
  writers, that my words might not be published in a distorted
  form.'"

From the very outset, Father de Ravignan had contemplated the
establishment of an annual retreat by way of a complement to his
conferences; but wishing to give his influence time to work
before he carried out this plan, he waited until 1841, and then
resolved to begin in the small church of the Abbaye-aux-Bois,
which with great crowding holds no more than 1000 or 1200 people.
{117}
Should the attendance be too large for this church, it was
arranged that he should remove to St. Eustache. He describes the
result of his experiment as follows:

  "I gave notice of a retreat for men during Holy Week, only on
  Palm-Sunday at Notre Dame before the conference; an instruction
  every evening at eight o'clock till Holy Saturday inclusively.
  On the Monday evening I went to the Abbaye-aux-Bois about
  half-past seven. I found an extraordinary crowd, and difficulty
  in getting places; and there was not a single woman. I had kept
  them all out. For nearly two hours the whole church had been
  full, and already a hundred people had gone away unable to get
  in. I wanted to cross the bottom of the church, but I could not
  get along. I was recognized, and with great earnestness, but
  without uproar, I was asked to adjourn elsewhere. I promised to
  do so. From the pulpit I was struck by this throng of men,
  almost all young, who filled the doorways, the altars and no
  disturbance. After having warmly congratulated them, I
  appointed Saint-Eustache for the next day. Then I bade them all
  rise for prayer. They all rose like one man. We recited the
  _Veni Creator_, and the instruction followed on these
  words: _Venite seorsum et requiescite pusillum--Come aside,
  and rest a little_. I advised them all to remain for
  benediction. All remained.

  "Next day Saint-Eustache was filled five hours before the
  service, and the following days they came even earlier.

  "My heart is full of gratitude to God. His help has been plain.
  I do not know that such a churchful of men was ever seen. The
  iron gates at the doors, the bases of the pillars, the rails,
  everything, was covered with people hanging on; the nave and
  aisles filled and crowded beyond conception, and the deepest,
  most religious silence--not one disturbance, no police--3000 or
  4000 men's voices singing the _Miserere_, the _Stabat
  Mater_. The sight affected me deeply.

  "I at once adopted perfect apostolic freedom of language, and,
  without preface, began to speak of sin, of hell, of confession,
  etc. I delivered my address, and appointed six hours every day
  which I would devote to men who might wish to see me. They have
  come in shoals. I have been hearing confessions all the week,
  six or seven hours a day, of men of all ages and positions in
  life--all very much behindhand. God has given me consolation.
  The prayers offered on all sides for this work have had a
  visible effect. There has been a marked movement in Paris. More
  Easter Communions everywhere. Our fathers have received many
  more confessions of men. I have not declined a single one, and
  I am still busy in finishing them.

  "A good many came to tell me of their difficulties, and I said
  to them, 'Well, believe me, there is but one way; take your
  place there;' and all, with a single exception, made their
  confessions.

  "On Good-Friday the Passion sermon exhausted my strength; the
  following day I had no voice left. I was unable to give the
  closing instruction of the retreat on Holy Saturday. I wrote a
  scrap of a note to inform the Curé of Saint-Eustache, and he
  bethought him of reading it from the pulpit. All went off
  quietly; the people waited for benediction and went home."

Lacordaire was a far more brilliant and poetical preacher than De
Ravignan, but the styles of the two men were so entirely
different that there can be no comparison between them. The
conferences of the Jesuit orator, studied in the cold light of
print, lack color and imagination; but they can only be judged
fairly by those who heard them delivered. The principal
characteristic of his delivery we should judge must have been
force--a force which amounted to majesty. He spoke with a
commanding air of authority, as one whose convictions were as
fixed as the everlasting hills. His power of assertion was
tremendous; with all this he was animated and impassioned,
although he generally commenced with a slow and measured cadence.
His style was a little rough, but nervous and striking. He did
not captivate, but he conquered. His gestures were dignified and
impressive; his attitude was modest but commanding; his personal
presence was noble. When he entered the pulpit, he remained a
long time motionless, with eyes cast down, waiting until the
assemblage became perfectly still. Then he made the sign of the
cross with a pomp and stateliness which became famous.
{118}
A Protestant minister who witnessed this solemn exordium
exclaimed, "He has preached without speaking a word!" It used to
be said, "When Father de Ravignan shows himself in the pulpit, no
one can tell whether he has just ascended from earth or come down
from heaven." One day he had been describing the wilful misery of
the unbeliever--his doubts, fears, melancholy, repinings, and
despair; the picture was drawn with a terrible force; the
audience sat as if paralyzed. Suddenly, want of breath compelled
the orator to pause. He folded his arms, and with inimitable
emphasis brought the climax to an end with these words: "And we--
we are believers!" The effect was overpowering. The people forgot
themselves, and a signal of applause ran through the church. The
priest was indignant. With glowing countenance and arm raised in
air, he cried, "Silence!" in a voice of awful reproof, and the
assembly was instantly hushed.

Still more effective, though less celebrated than the
conferences, were Father de Ravignan's retreats. In these he was
unapproached. He followed strictly the exercises of St. Ignatius,
to which he gave such unremitting study that he might well be
called a man of one book. His conferences were prepared with
great elaboration, but the retreats were improvisations. As years
went on, he devoted himself more and more closely to these latter
exercises, until they became at last his proper work in the
ministry; and when sickness, and the loss of his voice had
compelled him to abandon formal preaching, he continued to
conduct the retreats at Notre Dame, while Lacordaire resumed his
place in the pulpit.

It must not be supposed that the success of the Jesuit's oratory
was any indication of a growing favor for the society in France.
The opposition to its existence was still active, and the
government refused to acknowledge that as a society it had any
existence in the kingdom at all. The wildest stories about it
were published and believed. One day, in the midst of a
distinguished party assembled at the Tuileries to celebrate the
king's birthday, a person of influence disclosed a horrible plot:
the Jesuits had arms stored in the cellars of Saint Sulpice, and
only the day before, Father de Ravignan had been there concerting
measures with his accomplices. "Oh! yes," interrupted a lady of
the court, "I was at that meeting. We were drawing a raffle for
the poor. There were two or three hundred families so lucky as to
be set up with a coffee-pot or a sauce-pan." As a general thing,
however, whatever might be said of the society, Father de
Ravignan was treated with respect. Guizot made no secret of his
esteem for him, and Royer-Collard used to say, "Father de
Ravignan is artless enough to imagine himself a Jesuit." In the
little book which De Ravignan accordingly wrote about this
time--_On the Existence and the Institute of the
Jesuits_--there was a double purpose to be gained. He wished
to identify himself as thoroughly and as publicly as he could
with the society to which he had given his heart, and he wished
to share in the gallant battle which Lacordaire was fighting for
the right of the religious orders to exist in France under the
protection of the laws. The opposition in the legislative
chambers had been insisting that they ought not to exist; the
ministry replied that they did not exist; and right in the midst
of the dispute appears Father de Ravignan, like the poor prisoner
who called a lawyer to get him out of jail.
{119}
"But this is preposterous," said the counsel; "you can't be
arrested on such a charge as that!" "I don't know," said the
prisoner, "but I _am_ arrested." "Why, I tell you, you
_can't_ be: it is not legal; they have no right to put you
in jail." "Well, I only know that I _am_ in jail, and I want
you get me out." Father de Ravignan showed clearly enough that
they did exist, and had a right to legal protection. If they were
to be driven out of the kingdom, the government must face the
responsibility, and do it openly. A few days after the appearance
of the book, Lacordaire, being present at a meeting of the
Catholic Club under the presidency of the Archbishop of Paris,
exclaimed, "If we were in England, I should propose three cheers
for Father de Ravignan." The cheers were given with a will.

We have no space to follow Father de Ravignan in the varied
occupations of the next ten years. His health, always precarious,
broke down completely in 1847, and for the rest of his life he
was condemned to alternations of intense suffering, and of forced
inaction which was worse to him than pain. He was tormented with
chronic neuralgia, with dropsy on the chest, and a severe
affection of the larynx, that for long periods deprived him
entirely of the power of preaching. During these ten years of
suffering, he wrote his history of "Clement XIII. and Clement
XIV," a book which under the guise of an apology for the course
of the latter pontiff in the suppression of the Jesuits was in
reality an apology for the society, and a reply to the recently
published work of Father Theiner on the same subject. He founded
the sodality known as the Children of Mary, assisted in the
establishment of the Congregation of the Oratory, and was
zealously and constantly employed in the direction of souls and
the guidance of converts--gathering up, as Father de Ponlevoy
well expresses it, the fruit of his ten years' preaching. There
is hardly a distinguished name in the history of France at that
day which does not appear in connection with his. Madame
Swetchine was one of his co-laborers. Madame de la Ferronnays,
whose charming life has recently been told under the title of
_A Sister's Story_, was his devoted friend. Chateaubriand,
Count Molé, Walckenaër, Camper the celebrated navigator, Marshal
St. Arnaud, General Cavaignac, Prince Demidoff, Montalembert, De
Falloux, and Bishop Dupanloup--these are some of the illustrious
names which occur most frequently in his correspondence. A
celebrity of a very different sort with whom he had some
intercourse is thus alluded to in Father de Ponlevoy's Life:

  "We cannot conclude this chapter without making some mention of
  that well-known American _Medium_, who possessed the
  unfortunate talent of turning other things besides tables, and
  of calling up the dead for the amusement of the living. Much
  has been said, even in the newspapers, about his close and
  pious intimacy with F. de Ravignan; and it seems that an
  attempt has been made to use an honored name as a passport to
  introduce into France, and establish there, these wonderful
  discoveries of the new world.

  "The facts, in all their simplicity, are as follows: It is
  quite true that, after the young foreigner had been converted
  in Italy, he was furnished at Rome with an introduction to F.
  de Ravignan; but by this time he had given up his magic at the
  same time that he gave up his Protestantism, and he was
  received with the interest which is due from a priest to every
  soul ransomed with the blood of Jesus Christ, and especially,
  perhaps, to a soul which is converted and brought back to the
  bosom of the church. On his arrival in Paris, he was again
  absolutely forbidden to return in any way to his old practices.
  F. de Ravignan, agreeably to the principles of the faith which
  proscribe all superstition, prohibited, under the severest
  penalties he could inflict, all participation in or presence at
  these dangerous and sometimes guilty proceedings.
{120}
   Once the unhappy _Medium_, beset by I know not what man
   or devil, was unfaithful to his promise; he was received with
   a severity which prostrated him; I chanced at the time to come
   into the room, and I saw him rolling on the ground, and
   writhing like a worm at the feet of the priest, so righteously
   indignant. The father was touched by a repentance which led to
   such bodily agony, raised him up, and pardoned him; but,
   before dismissing him, exacted a written promise confirmed by
   an oath. But a notorious relapse soon took place, and the
   servant of God, breaking off all connection with this slave of
   the spirits, sent him word never again to appear in his
   presence."

We shall not undertake, in the brief space that remains, to
describe the beauty of Father de Ravignan's character--his
touching humility, his rare sweetness of soul, his complete
detachment from earth, his patience, his charity, and his
unflagging zeal. He was once asked how he had attained such
mastery over himself. "There were two of us," he replied; "I
threw one out of the window, so that only I remained where I
was." Father de Ponlevoy applies to him the description which St.
Francis Xavier gave of St. Ignatius: "His character is made up of
three elements; a humility of mind which we can scarcely
understand, a force of soul superior to all opposition, and an
incomparable kindness of heart."

In the spring of 1857, a severe attack of sickness obliged him to
remove to Saint Acheul. He came back to Paris in the autumn,
apparently restored to as good health as he had experienced of
recent years, but he was already far gone in consumption. On the
3d of December, he passed a long time at the Convent of the
Sacred Heart, conversing with a poor person who wanted to enter
the church. Then he went into the confessional, and remained
there until physically exhausted. One of his penitents on that
occasion remarked that he spoke more than ever like a man who no
longer belonged to this world. He got home with great difficulty.
This was the last of his ministry. On the Feast of the Immaculate
Conception, he celebrated mass for the last time; but it was not
until the 26th of February that he passed to that blessed rest
for which he had yearned so long with an eagerness that he used
to call "homesickness." The account of his last days is too
beautiful to be abridged. With the awe inspired by the sublime
narrative, we prefer to drop our pen at the opening of this final
chapter, wherein the gates of heaven seem to stand ajar, and our
eyes are dazzled by the awful light which streams from the divine
presence.

----------

{121}


         The Educational Question.


The articles upon popular education which have heretofore
appeared in this journal seem to have produced the effects which
were anticipated by the writer. The public interest has been
unusually excited by the discussion; and two classes of
antagonists have ventured to make an issue with the advocates of
a just distribution of the school fund. The first in order, but
much the least important in all other respects, is that confessed
fossil, the "no-popery" party, which ever and anon intrudes
itself upon the unwilling attention of our republican society,
braying itself hoarse with rage because it can neither command
the confidence of enlightened and liberal Protestants nor escape
the galling ridicule of six millions of its Catholic
fellow-citizens. This class is well represented in an elaborate
tract lately issued from the office of the American and Foreign
Christian Union, 27 Bible House, New York City, and purporting to
be a review of the article in the January number of _The
Educational Monthly_, presenting _The Roman Catholic View of
Education in the United States_. It requires no great amount
of logical acumen to enable the least intelligent of men to see
that this tract affords the most apt illustration of one of the
principal arguments we have advanced in support of the Catholic
claim. We have remained silent for the last three months, resting
satisfied that it would be impossible for "the stereotyped class
of saints and philosophers" to rush to the rescue of a cherished
injustice, without forthwith exposing its odious features in
their struggle to carry it victoriously through the battle-field
of a public controversy. The veil of Mokanna has fallen even
before the false prophet had time to secure a victim! or, to
speak more in accordance with scriptural analogies, the cloven
foot has discovered itself under the clerical robe and the
wickedness of the heart has burst out from the tongue. _Quare
fremuerunt gentes!_ Why, indeed, shall they rage and devise
vain things? Have they not fulfilled this prophecy of the royal
David for three hundred years; and have they not suffered the
derision threatened in the fourth verse of the second Psalm?
Where shall we find a more convincing proof than this very tract
of what the enemies of the Catholic faith and people design to
accomplish by a school system which they insincerely profess to
advocate on account of its intrinsic merits, in the face of the
historical fact that, wherever and whenever they have had the
power to control the state--as the early days of all New England
and of several of the other American States--they never failed to
use the school-room as an ante-chamber to the conventicle! After
they had been stripped of this power by such men as Jefferson,
Madison, Hamilton, and the liberal founders of American
institutions, they still struggled for many years to accomplish
by indirect means the injustice and iniquity which could not be
openly maintained under the constitutions and the laws of the
federal government and the several States. We all well remember
how the poor Catholic boys and girls of the free schools were
harassed by colporteurs and proselytizers, who carried baskets
filled, not with bread for the hungry children of poverty, but
with oleaginous tracts, cunningly devised to destroy in those
little pupils of the state the faith of their fathers and the
religious practices of their devout mothers.
{122}
Teachers were selected with especial regard to their bitter
hatred of the Catholic Church and their zeal for "Evangelical"
propagandism. When this failed to make any very perceptible
impression upon the numerical strength of the Catholic people,
then commenced the wholesale child-stealing, under the pious
pretext of cleaning out the moral sewers of society; and tens of
thousands of little children, stolen or forcibly wrested from the
arms of Catholic parents--too poor and friendless to protect the
natural and legal rights of themselves and their offspring--were
hurried off to the far West, their names changed, and their
temporal and eternal hopes committed to the zealous charge of
pious and vigorous haters of the popish anti-Christ! In spite of
all this, the Catholic population of the United States continued
steadily to rise like a flood tide, not only through foreign
immigration, but by reason of virtuous wedlock and the watchful
and severe faith and discipline of a church which forbids and
effectually prevents child-murder! The reader will find this
matter discussed in an article elsewhere in this number,
entitled, "Comparative Morality of Catholic and Protestant
Countries."

The writer of the tract issued from 27 Bible House is annoyed by
the comparison which the author of the article in _The
Educational Monthly_ instituted between the violent crimes of
our ancestors and the stupendous sins which have supplanted them
in modern times. The comparison was close-fitting as the shirt of
Nessus, and quite as uncomfortable. The Bible House replies to
this with a contrast between the intellectual, material, moral,
and religious advancement of the masses in England, the United
States, and every other Protestant country, in the nineteenth
century, and the debasement of the people of Spain, Italy,
Mexico, and South America. In the first place, we reply that our
present controversy concerns popular education in the United
States now and for a hopeful future, and not the past nor the
present of European or South American nations. In the next place,
we say that this is but another evidence of the malignant spirit
to which we are required to intrust the training of our Catholic
youth. They are to be taught that the church of their fathers is
the nursery of ignorance and vice; and that all the knowledge,
civilization, and virtue which the world enjoys are the offspring
of the so-called Reformation. They are to learn nothing of the
true history of Spain, Portugal, France, Italy, Belgium,
Switzerland, Austria, Bavaria, and the Catholic principalities of
Continental Europe. They are never to hear of the vast libraries
of Catholic learning; the rich endowments of Catholic education
all over the world for ages; the innumerable universities,
colleges, academies, and free schools established by their
church, or by governments under her auspices, throughout
Christendom. They are not to be told how Oxford and Cambridge
were founded by their Catholic forefathers and plundered from
their lawful possession. The Bible House tractarian would not
willingly read to them from the _Notes of a Traveller_ by
that eminent Scotch Presbyterian, Samuel Laing, such passages as
these:

  "The comparative education of the Scotch clergy of the present
  generation, that is to say, their education compared to that of
  the Scotch people, is unquestionably lower than that of the
  Popish clergy compared to the education of their people. This
  is usually ascribed to the Popish clergy seeking to maintain
  their influence and superiority by keeping the people in gross
  ignorance.
{123}
   But this opinion of our churchmen seems more orthodox than
   charitable or correct. The Popish clergy have in reality less
   to lose by the progress of education than our own Scotch
   clergy; because their pastoral influence and their church
   services being founded on ceremonial ordinances, come into no
   competition or comparison whatsoever in the public mind with
   anything similar that literature or education produces; and
   are not connected with the imperfect mode of conveying
   instruction which, as education advances, becomes obsolete and
   falls into disuse, and almost into contempt, although
   essential in our Scotch church. In Catholic Germany, in
   France, Italy, and even Spain the education of the common
   people in reading, writing, arithmetic, music, manners, and
   morals is at least as generally diffused, and as faithfully
   promoted by the clerical body, as in Scotland. It is by their
   own advance and not by keeping back the advance of the people,
   that the Popish priesthood of the present day seek to keep
   ahead of the intellectual progress of the community in
   Catholic lands; and they might, perhaps, retort on our
   Presbyterian clergy, and ask if they, too, are in their
   countries at the head of the intellectual movement of the age?
   Education is in reality not only not repressed but is
   encouraged by the Popish Church, and is a mighty instrument in
   its hands and ably used. In every street in Rome, for
   instance, there are at short distances public primary schools
   for the education of the children of the lower and middle
   classes in the neighborhood Rome, with a population of 158,678
   souls, has 372 public primary schools with 482 teachers; and
   14,099 children attending them. Has Edinburgh so many public
   schools for the instruction of those classes? I doubt it.
   Berlin, with a population about double that of Rome, has only
   264 schools. Rome has also her university with an average
   attendance of 660 students; and the Papal States with a
   population of 2,500,000 (in 1846) contain seven universities.
   Prussia with a population of 14,000,000 has but seven."

Neither would our Bible House tractarian teach his Catholic
pupils to discriminate between times, circumstances,
opportunities, characteristics of race, influences of climate,
ancient traditional habits, and the complicated causes which
affect the life and development of each nation; so as to contrast
Protestant England with Protestant Denmark, and Catholic France
with Catholic Portugal; or, again, to compare each of these with
itself at different epochs of its own history. They are not to be
told that Spain was never as powerful, covering the seas with her
commerce and the earth with her conquests, and lighting up Europe
by her genius, as at the time when she was the most thoroughly
Catholic and the least tainted with that revolutionary infidelity
which was born of Calvin and has grown to be a giant destroyer
under Mazzini and Garibaldi. They are to be told, however, that
the glory of a Christian nation is to be measured by its national
debt, its fleets and armies, its opium trade, its Coolie traffic,
its bankrupt laws, its work-houses, its prodigious fortunes
mocking squalid poverty, its twenty millions of people who own no
foot of land and its vicious nobles and gentry who firmly grasp
it all, its telegraphic wires and cables, its huge ships and
thundering factories, its luxurious merchants who toil not, and
its starving able-bodied paupers who can find no work to do, its
grotesque mixture of the beautiful and the vile, of the grand and
the infamous, of the light of the skies and the darkness of the
obscene coal-pits, of the pride of science and the ignorance of
barbarism, of the perfume of fashionable churches and the stench
of gin-shops, of the industrial slavery of great towns and the
rotting idleness of vast lazar-houses, which make up the boasted
civilization of haughty England, and extort from the Bible House
the prayerful cry, "_Thank God, we are not like unto these
Romish Publicans!_" Happy Pharisees! we certainly do not
desire to disturb their self-complacency; but we wish to teach
our Catholic children that the simple habits, the earnest piety,
the manly truth and courage of the little Catholic Republic of
San Marino, which has preserved its liberties and independence
for over eight hundred years without losing its religion, are for
the citizens of this great democratic empire a more profitable
study than the doctrines of Malthus or the history of
cotton-gins.
{124}
As we have said in our former articles, we already have here
quite enough of the material, and a superabundance of animal
spirits and vigor; and that what we stand in need of is a
well-defined faith, moral duties clearly understood, and habits
of practical virtue firmly fixed in the daily life of all the
people, Without that, even temporal prosperity must be
evanescent; as it was with all heathen nations that have
successively ruled the world and perished. Without that, temporal
prosperity is a curse, and not a blessing; for what will it
profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul?
Men make nations; and nationalities are of no value before God,
except only in so far as they conduce to the end of each
individual man's creation. The Indian who goes to heaven from his
wigwam in the forest attains his end. The philosopher who goes to
hell from his palace in London or Paris has wofully miscalculated
the worth of all human philosophy, statesmanship, and national
grandeur, as the idols of his worship. The pagans measured human
life and society by the standard of the Bible House, No. 27, if
we are to judge it by this tract!

So also, according to this tract, our Catholic children should be
taught in the schools that Voltaire became an infidel
_because_ he had been a Catholic and was trained at a Jesuit
college. It will nowhere appear in the lesson that he became an
infidel because he rebelled against the teachings of his church,
and renounced the maxims of his Jesuit tutors. When he so
zealously defended his thesis in vindication of Julian the
Apostate, his own apostasy was foretold by his master. His death
was the answer to his life. In his agony he called for a priest;
but three-score years of blasphemy had won to him the avenging
disciples who then encircled his bed like a wall of fire; and no
priest could reach the dying enemy of Christ!

This tract would also teach our children in the schools that it
was the teachings of the "Romish Church" which drove
revolutionary France from the altars of God. It would not be
explained to them how that revolutionary rage was but the
outburst of a volcano of passion which had smouldered during ages
of long suffering under the rule of kings and nobles; and that
the instincts of the people remained so true, that in the very
same generation they returned, like the people of Israel, to the
worship of God; and rushed to the altars of their fathers with
tears of repentance and joy. _They did not become
Protestants!_ How has it been with the descendants of the
godly men of Plymouth Rock? Quietly and with exquisite decorum
they have settled down into deists, pantheists, freethinkers,
free-lovers, spiritualists, and philosophers! Will they go back
to Puritanism?

  "Facilis descensus Averni!"

The tract tells our children that Gibbon left the Protestant
Church for the Catholic, and finally landed in infidelity. Why
did he not go back to Protestantism?

The tract also tells our children that this is a Protestant
country; which means that all its glories are Protestant, and
that the Catholic, with Italy and Spain before his eyes, should
be thankful that he is tolerated here. Are our children to learn
this lesson at the schools?
{125}
Now, in the first place, if Bishop Coxe and other Protestant
witnesses are reliable,[Footnote 47] our Bible House friends may
as well begin to prepare their nerves to see our great country
become Catholic, at least as much of it as will remain Christian
at all. Perhaps they will then value the wisdom and liberality of
that admonitory sentence in the article of _The Educational
Monthly_ which reads thus:

    [Footnote 47: See page 61 of this number.]

  "We are quite sure that if the Catholics were the majority in
  the United States, and were to attempt such an injustice," (as
  that involved in this school question.) "our Protestant
  brethren would cry out against it, and appeal to the wise and
  liberal examples of Prussia and England, France and Austria!
  Now, is it not always as unwise as it is unjust to make a
  minority taste the bitterness of oppression? Men governed by
  the law of divine charity will bear it meekly and seek to
  return good for evil; but all men are not docile; and
  majorities change rapidly and often, in this fleeting world! Is
  it not wiser and more politic, even in mere regard to social
  interests, that all institutions intended for the welfare of
  the people should be firmly based upon exact and equal justice?
  This would place them under the protection of fixed habit,
  which in a nation is as strong as nature; and it would save
  them from the mutations of society. The strong of one
  generation may be the weak of the next; and we see this
  occurring with political parties within the brief spaces of
  presidential terms. Hence we wisely inculcate moderation and of
  retribution."

In the next place, although the present majority of the American
people are non-Catholic, we deny that they are Protestants, as a
nation, in a political sense. The institutions of the country are
neither Catholic nor Protestant. They recognize no one faith more
than another. Christian morality is accepted as the basis of
public and private duties by common consent; that is all.
Religious liberty was not born of the theocracy of New England.
Hancock and Adams, under the lead of Jefferson, departed very far
from the instincts of Calvinism and the traditions of Plymouth
Rock when they laid the foundations of this government; and this
is one of the things which we certainly intend to have our
children taught. We do not intend that they shall be "poor boys
at the feast," humbly thankful for such crumbs as our Bible House
friends may magnanimously bestow upon the "Romish aliens;" but
they shall be told to hold up their heads, with the full
consciousness that they are American citizens, the peers of all
others, and in no way disqualified, by the doctrines or morals of
their church, to perform every duty as faithfully and as ably as
any other men of any other creed. They shall not be terrified
with the "_raw head and bloody bones_" of "degraded Italy,"
"besotted Spain," and the other terrible examples of the
destroying influence of their old mother church. We shall teach
them not to trust any morality which does not rest upon a clear
faith; and we shall show them how that faith commands obedience
to lawful authority, purity of motive in all public acts, and
universal charity for all men.

Some of our readers may be surprised that we have devoted so much
space to this tract. Our motive should be apparent. We said, in
the beginning of this article, that this tract sounds like the
voice of one of the two classes of opponents who are arrayed
against us on this question; and that in itself it affords a
perfect illustration of our main argument, which is this, clearly
stated in the following paragraph from the article in _The
Educational Monthly_:

   "And more than this, Catholics know by painful experience that
   history cannot be compiled, travels written, poetry, oratory,
   or romance inflicted upon a credulous public, without the
   stereotyped assaults upon the doctrines, discipline, and
   historical life of their church.
{126}
   From Walter Scott to Peter Parley, and from Hume, Gibbon, and
   Macaulay to the mechanical compilers of cheap school
   literature, it is the same story told a thousand times oftener
   than it is refuted; so that the English language, for the last
   two centuries, may be said without exaggeration to have waged
   war against the Catholic Church. Indeed, so far as European
   history is considered, the difficulty must always be
   insurmountable; since it would always be impossible for the
   Catholic and Protestant to accept the same history of the
   Reformation or of the Papal See, or the political, social, and
   moral events resulting from or in any degree connected with
   those two great centres and controlling causes. Who could
   write a political history of Christendom for the last three
   hundred years and omit all mention of Luther and the pope? And
   how is any school compendium of such history to be devised for
   the use of the Catholic and Protestant child alike?"

Now, it is very well understood that, with all their doctrinal
differences and sectarian antipathies, all the Protestant sects
can nevertheless, as a general rule, accept any Protestant
history of the so-called Reformation, and of the wars,
diplomacies, public events, and moral results springing from or
connected with that episode in the religious annals of our race;
but can Catholics accept such? Will you compel Catholic parents
to accept for their children histories written in the spirit of
this Bible House tract, which tells us (p. 3.) that the Catholic
faith "_taught the people that a Romish priest is to them in
the place of God; that a Romish priest can create his
Creator!_"

The very encyclopedia, quoted by our tractarian is another
Roundhead trooper armed against the papal anti-Christ! And so,
the bright Catholic boy will be amused with the antics of the
feasting and fighting monk in _Ivanhoe_; whilst graver
calumnies will convince him that the church of his fathers, and
of the great-grandfathers of her modern revilers, is truly a den
of thieves and a house of abominations.

It may as well be distinctly understood, once and for all, that
we cannot consent that our children shall receive secular
education without religious training; and that we understand very
well that such religious knowledge as we desire them to possess
cannot be imparted by those who are hostile to us. We intend also
to teach them to respect and uphold all the rights, social,
political, and religious, of their fellow-citizens, upon the
plain injunction of the Scriptures that they shall do unto others
precisely as they would have others do unto themselves. At the
same time we will teach them to love and revere their ancient
mother church, as the custodian for fifteen hundred years of that
Bible which she is falsely accused by this tract of
"_fearing;_" as the munificent patroness of every art and
the mistress of every science; as the friend and supporter of
liberty when united to order and justice; as the enemy of pride,
license, and disobedience to lawful authority; as the guardian of
the sanctity of marriage against the pagan concupiscence of the
divorce courts; as the sword of vengeance uplifted over the heads
of the child-murdering destroyers of populations; in fine, as the
hope and future salvation of this republic and all its precious
endowments of personal manhood, honor, virtue, and faith, and all
its national institutions of self-governing popular sovereignty,
equal rights, and faithful citizenship, based, not upon infidel
revolutionary "_fraternity_," but upon a noble Christian
brotherhood. Certainly, even if we were mistaken in our estimate
of the fruitfulness and power of the Catholic faith, it would be
no less an evidence of our sincere patriotism, that we are
anxious to impress upon the children of the church the conviction
that in faithfully serving their country they are only obeying
the commands of their religion.

{127}

As we do not intend that our children shall be either untaught or
mistaught in regard to this sublime knowledge and duty, we shall
insist on educating them ourselves, with or without receiving our
just share of the public taxes, to which we do contribute very
largely, the declaration of the Bible House tract to the contrary
notwithstanding.

We have devoted more space to this first, class of objectors than
they could claim from our courtesy, because we believe that they
nominally represent many honest men who will cheerfully admit the
truth when they see it.

There is another and a far different class of persons who take
issue with us upon this question, and for whom we entertain a
perfect respect--first, because they treat the subject with
evident fairness and commendable civility; and secondly, because
from their stand-point, there would appear to be much good reason
in their objections to our claim. It gives us very great pleasure
to use all our honest endeavors to remove their difficulties.
This class is represented by the editorial articles which
appeared in _The Chicago Advance, The Troy Daily Press_, and
several other papers, criticising the article of _The
Educational Monthly_. The objections may be summed up as
follows:

_First_, (and the most important.) That denominational
education would prevent the complete amalgamation or
"unification" of American citizenship, and tend to increase
sectarian bitterness, to the prejudice of republican
institutions.

_Secondly_. That it would destroy the harmony and efficiency
of the general school system.

_Thirdly._ That the Catholic people are richer in the jewels
of the Roman matron, _their children_, than they are in the
_images of Caesar_, the coin of the country! and that
therefore they would draw from the common fund an amount much in
excess of the taxes paid by them; which would not be just.

We shall candidly consider these objections in the order in which
we have stated them.

As to the first: It would be fortunate, in a temporal point of
view, if all the people were of one mind in religion, especially
if they happen to have the true faith; inasmuch as nothing so
conduces to the general harmony and good will as the total
absence of all religious strife. But we see that such a state of
things cannot be hoped for here. Not only is the community
divided into Protestants, Catholics, and a large body of citizens
professing no faith at all, but the Protestant community itself
is subdivided into innumerable conflicting sects. In defiance of
any system of public education, these various religious
organizations will always be widely separated from each other,
and from the Catholic Church, on questions of doctrinal belief.
The issue then remains nakedly before us, Shall public education
be entirely divorced from revealed religion, and shall we commit
the morals of our children to the saving influences of a little
"_reading, writing, and arithmetic;_" or, shall we have them
educated in some form or another of practical Christianity? The
arguments on this point have been so fully elaborated in our
articles heretofore published, that it would be superfluous to
repeat them now. We may, however, recall to mind the conclusive
evidence afforded us of the correctness of our theory by the
actual experience of such governments as those of England,
France, Prussia, and Austria; under which, as we have shown in
those articles, the denominational system is carried out to the
fullest extent, producing harmony, instead of discord, in
populations composed, as here, of numerous religious bodies. It
is an old adage that one fact is worth a dozen arguments.

{128}

We find that, after long years of earnest study of this difficult
question, and after exhausting every half-way expedient, the
statesmen of the countries we have named adopted with singular
unanimity the views which we are presenting for the serious and
candid consideration of the American public. We shall quote
briefly from a few of those statesmen who are well-known leaders
of opinion in the European Protestant world.

Lord Derby: "Public education should be considered as inseparable
from religion;" the contrary system is declared by him to be "the
realization of a foolish and dangerous idea."

Mr. Gladstone: "Every system which places religious education in
the background is pernicious."

Lord John Russell insisted that in the normal schools, which he
proposed to have established, "religion should regulate the
entire system of discipline."

M. de Raumer: "They have acquired in Prussia a conviction, which
becomes daily more settled, that the fitness of the primary
school depends on its intimate union with the church." In 1854,
he writes that "education should repose upon the basis of
Christianity, the true support of the family, of the commune, and
of the state."

M. Guizot, the former very eminent Protestant prime minister of
France, deserves to be specially quoted, although we are but
repeating the extracts which we gave in another article. His
words should be written in letters of gold. Let the enemies of
religious education, if they can, present a satisfactory answer
to this superb declaration:

  "In order to make popular education truly good and socially
  useful, it must be fundamentally religious. I do not simply
  mean by this, that religious instruction should hold its place
  in popular education, and that the practices of religion should
  enter into it; for a nation is not religiously educated by such
  petty and mechanical devices. It is necessary that national
  education should be given and received in the midst of a
  religious atmosphere, and that religious impressions and
  religious observances should penetrate into all its parts.
  Religion is not a study or an exercise to be restricted to a
  certain place, and a certain hour; it is a faith and a law,
  which ought to be felt everywhere, and which after this manner
  alone can exercise all its beneficial influence upon our minds
  and our lives."

The first Napoleon, the restorer of order and religion in France,
influenced, at the time, merely by human considerations, and
speaking only as a wise lawgiver, and not as a practical
Christian, insisted upon the necessity of making the precepts of
religion the basis of education in the university, whose halls
had echoed the blasphemous unbelief of the disciples of Voltaire.

At our very door, we have likewise the judgment and example of
our Canadian neighbors, demonstrating the feasibility of
connecting secular education with the most thorough instruction
in the doctrines and practices of the different churches. Such
opinions and facts should have some weight with our friends here
who are fearful of the proposed experiment.

{129}

We know, by our own personal experience, that young men educated
at the exclusively Catholic College of Mt. St. Mary's, in
Maryland, and other young men, graduates of Yale and Princeton,
where Catholics are rarely if ever seen, meet afterward in the
world of business or politics, and immediately learn to value
each other according to intrinsic personal worth, and to exchange
all the mutual courtesies and discharge all the reciprocal duties
of social life. It is the same with Catholics and Protestants
educated together at the many Catholic colleges in the United
States, where the Catholic pupils are nevertheless invariably
instructed, with the utmost exactness, in all the doctrines and
practices of their church. There are thousands of such living
witnesses throughout the country, ready to attest the correctness
of our statement. It proves this, (what _we_ know to be true
without the proof,) that the education received by Catholics at
their own schools, whilst rigidly doctrinal, uniformly inculcates
charity, urbanity, and every duty of good citizenship. There is
not, therefore, and never can be any difficulty, on the part of
Catholics, to meet their Protestant fellow-citizens in all the
relations of life, private and public, with the utmost frankness,
fraternity, and confidence, provided that they are not repelled
by harshness or chilled by distrust. Their religion teaches them
that such is their duty. Certainly, if such happy results are
realized even in England, Prussia, and Austria, where all
barriers, whether social or religious, are traditionally more
difficult to surmount, how can it be that we must expect
animosities to be engendered under the free action and the
liberal intercourse of our republican society?

We must, therefore, consider the fear expressed by this first
objection as wholly groundless. But even were it otherwise, what
then? Should we, therefore, sacrifice to such an apprehension the
far more momentous considerations that our republican,
self-governing community can never safely trust itself in the
great work of perpetuating the liberties of a Christian nation
without planting itself upon the morality of the Gospel; that the
revealed doctrines of Christ are the foundation of his moral
code, and that to practise the one faithfully the people must be
taught to believe the other firmly; and that religion so taught,
as M. Guizot admirably expresses it, "is not a study or an
exercise, to be restricted to a certain place and a certain hour;
it is a faith and a law which ought to be felt everywhere;" and
that "national education should be given and received in the
midst of a religious atmosphere!"

What would the advantage of a more perfect amalgamation or
unification of citizenship avail us, if, to obtain it, we were to
strike from under our institutions the only solid basis upon
which they can rest with any hope whatever of being able to
withstand the rude shocks of time, to which all mortal works are
subject, and which destroyed the grandest structures of pagan
power, solely because they rested upon human wisdom and human
virtue, unaided by revealed religion and supernatural grace? We
cannot, therefore, admit any force in the first objection.

As to the second: How can the harmony or efficiency of the school
system be disturbed by permitting a school to be organized for
Catholic children in any district or locality where the requisite
number may be found to render it practicable, in accordance with
the general policy of the law? It is presumed that the law
contemplates the education of all these children, and we cannot
see that the harmony of the system consists in putting them into
any one school-room rather than another. It is not proposed to
withdraw them from the general supervision of the state, or to
deny to the state the authority to regulate the standard of
education, and to see that its requirements are complied with.
This is done in every one of the countries of which we have
spoken.
{130}
No one is so unreasonable as to expect that separate schools
shall be organized where the number of pupils may be below a
reasonable uniform standard; as it is not proposed to increase
the expense of the system. On the contrary, as far as concerns
the education of our Catholic children in the city of New York,
we propose to reduce the cost considerably, as we shall explain
before we close this article. It is said that the several
Protestant denominations may demand the same privilege. Suppose
that they do. If they have a sufficient number of children in any
particular locality for the proper organization of a separate
school under the law, and are willing to fulfil its requirements,
how can the general system be impaired by allowing them to do so?
This is the condition annexed to the privilege in all those
countries which have adopted this liberal policy. The proposition
seems too plain for argument. When a college contains five
hundred boys, two hundred may be classed in the higher division,
three hundred in the lower, and each may have separate
playgrounds and recitation halls. So, if a district contains two
hundred of one faith, and three hundred of another, or of several
other creeds, surely the two hundred may be organized into one
school and the three hundred into another, or into several
others, according to the standard of numbers, as may be required
by the law. The whole question, therefore, is purely one of
distribution, not at all above the capacity of a drill-sergeant!
The same number of children would be educated, probably in the
same number of schools, and at the same cost, as now. The course
of secular education prescribed by the state could be rigidly
enforced in all such schools without assailing the conscience of
any one, because we suppose that the state would not object that
Catholics should learn English history from Lingard, whilst
others might prefer Hume and Macaulay. We presume that there
would be no disagreement in regard to reading, writing,
arithmetic, mathematics, natural philosophy, and those things
which constitute the general studies of primary and high schools.
It is only with such that the state has any right to intermeddle,
and it is only such that the state professes to secure to its
pupils. The state may say, "The public welfare requires that the
citizens of a self-governing nation shall receive sufficient
intellectual culture to enable them to discharge their duties
understandingly;" but the state has no right to say that its
pupils shall take their knowledge and form their opinions of the
great moral events of history from D'Aubigné or from Cardinal
Bellarmin. It was this that troubled the great Catholic and
Protestant governments of Europe, until experience discovered to
them the simple solution of the difficulty which we are so
earnestly endeavoring to commend to the acceptance of the
American people. Have we not at least a right to expect that our
motives will not be misrepresented; and that we shall be believed
when we say that we are not hostile to the public schools, but,
on the contrary, most earnestly anxious to secure for them the
widest usefulness and the greatest efficiency. We know that that
cannot be if religion be excluded; and that it must be excluded
where so many conflicting creeds confront each other.

As to the third: If it were true that the Catholic people
contributed almost nothing to the school fund, as is no doubt
sincerely believed by some who are not disposed to do us
injustice, a very serious question would, nevertheless, be
suggested by such a statement as this, which we copy from the
article in _The Chicago Advance_ already referred to:
{131}
"Our American population is principally Protestant, partly
Romish, slightly Jewish, _and increasingly rationalistic or
infidel_." Now, it is unquestionably true that the infidels in
this country can count but very few amongst their number who ever
knelt at a Catholic altar. Still, it is the theory of our
opponents that ignorance is, in itself, the source of all evil,
and the parent of impiety. It would certainly, therefore, be a
terrible calamity for the country if the children of six millions
of Catholics were deprived of education because their fathers
paid no taxes! To educate them would be unanimously regarded as a
public necessity; just as our police authorities remove contagion
at the public expense. If this view of public economy be true,
(and we need not dispute it in this argument,) then it follows
that the question of educating the Catholics is altogether
independent of what they do or do not contribute to the treasury.
Educated they must be; but suppose that they steadily refuse to
receive the knowledge offered, except upon the condition that
their consciences shall not be violated, and their parental
responsibilities disregarded, by subjecting their children to a
training inconsistent with the spirit of their religion; how
then? Will you consign the six millions to what you call the
moral death of ignorance, and suffer their carcasses to putrefy
upon the highway of your republican progress, poisoning the
fountains of your national life? Or will you prefer, in the
spirit of your institutions, to respect their conscientious
opinions, and to enable them, in the manner we have already
indicated, to coöperate with you in the full development of your
great and noble policy of universal popular education?

But, is it true that the Catholic people have no substantial
claim as tax-payers? Such might have been the case twenty-five
years ago; but every well-informed man knows that it is not so
now. Wealth, amongst the Catholic population, may perhaps be less
perceptible, because it is more diffused than it is amongst some
other bodies of our citizens; but no man who is familiar with the
cities of New York, Brooklyn, Baltimore, St. Louis, Chicago,
Milwaukee, and all others, from the sources of the Mississippi to
the Gulf, and from the Atlantic to the Pacific, or with the
Catholic farm-settlements of the Western States, can shut his
eyes to the fact that our Catholic people are thrifty and
well-to-do in the world; and that very many of them possess large
wealth. A member of the British Parliament, in a recent work upon
the Irish in America, has demonstrated this by undeniable
statistics. The same is true of Catholics here of all other
nationalities. We have not the time nor space, neither is it
necessary, to go into the details of this question. We suppose
our readers to be intelligent and well-informed, and that they
can readily recall to their minds the facts which substantiate
the truth of our assertion.

Are there those, sharp at a bargain, who will say, "Well! the
Catholics have the resources to educate themselves, and are doing
so now; let them continue the good work without calling upon the
state for any portion of the public funds, to which they
contribute by their taxes"? The dishonesty of such a proposition
is shown in the simple statement of it. It is true, as we have
said over and over again, that the Catholic people, after paying
their taxes to the state, have, with a generous self-sacrifice
amounting to heroism, established all over this country more
universities, colleges, academies, free schools, and orphan
asylums than have ever been founded by all the rest of the nation
through private contributions.
{132}
A people capable of such great deeds in the cause of civilization
and religion are not to be despised, _can never be
repressed_, and certainly should not be denied justice, when
they ask no more!

We hope that we have satisfactorily answered the objections of
those honest adversaries, with whom we will always be happy to
interchange opinions in a spirit of candor and sincere respect.

In order that our readers may obtain some idea of what the
Catholic people, unaided by the state, have done and are doing
for popular education in this country, we shall now present a
brief summary or synopsis from Sadlier's _Catholic
Directory_ for 1868-9.

In the archdiocese of Baltimore, there are ten literary
institutions for young men, twelve female academies, and nine
orphan asylums. We shall include the latter, in all instances,
because they invariably have schools attached for the instruction
of the orphans. There are in the same archdiocese about fifty
parish and free schools, the average attendance at which, male
and female, exceeds ten thousand.

In the archdiocese of Cincinnati, comprising a part of the State
of Ohio, there are three colleges, nine literary institutes for
females, two orphan asylums, and seventy-six parochial schools,
at which the average attendance is about twenty thousand.

In the archdiocese of New Orleans, there are twenty academies and
parochial schools for females, and ten academies and free schools
for males; attended by seven thousand five hundred scholars; and
one thousand four hundred orphans in the asylums.

The archdiocese of New York comprises the city and county of New
York, and the counties of Westchester, Putnam, Dutchess, Ulster,
Sullivan, Orange, Rockland, and Richmond. We have lately examined
a carefully prepared list of schools, more complete than that
given in the directory, by which it appears that there are
forty-nine, with a daily attendance of upward of twenty-three
thousand children. Of these schools, twenty-six are in the city
and county of New York, and have a daily attendance of over
nineteen thousand pupils. We shall have occasion to speak more
particularly of New York City at the close of this article.

In the archdiocese of San Francisco, there are three colleges,
three academies, thirty-two select and parochial schools, and two
orphan asylums, providing for nearly seven thousand children, of
whom about four hundred are orphans in the asylums, and upward of
three thousand are free scholars.

In the archdiocese of St. Louis, there are three literary
institutions for males, nine for females, and twenty parochial or
free schools, with seven thousand five hundred pupils in daily
attendance, besides nine hundred orphans in four asylums.

In the diocese of Albany, comprising that part of the State of
New York north of the forty-second degree and east of the eastern
line of Cayuga, Tompkins, and Tioga counties, there are six
academies for males, and six for females, seven orphan asylums,
ten select schools, and fifty-eight parochial schools, with an
average attendance of between ten and eleven thousand.

{133}

The diocese of Alton, comprising a portion of the state of
Illinois, has two colleges for males and six academies for
females, one orphan asylum, and fifty-six parochial schools, with
an attendance of about seven thousand five hundred scholars.

The diocese of Boston comprises the State of Massachusetts, and
has two colleges, three female academies, thirteen parochial or
free schools, five thousand eight hundred scholars, and five
hundred and fifty orphans in the asylums.

The diocese of Brooklyn comprises Long Island, and has one
college in course of erection, eight female academies, nineteen
parish schools, attended by over ten thousand scholars, and three
asylums, and one industrial school, containing seven hundred
orphans.

The diocese of Buffalo comprises twelve counties of the State of
New York, and has five literary institutions for males, sixteen
for females, three orphan asylums, and twenty-four parochial
schools, the attendance on which is specifically set down at
something over eight thousand; but it is stated (page 137) that
between eighteen and twenty thousand children attend the Catholic
schools of that diocese.

The diocese of Chicago comprises a portion of the State of
Illinois, and has eight academies for females, seven colleges and
academies for males, two orphan asylums, and forty-four parochial
schools, attended by over twelve thousand children.

The diocese of Cleveland, comprising a part of Ohio, contains one
academy for males and six for females, four asylums sheltering
four hundred orphans, and twenty free schools educating six
thousand scholars.

The diocese of Columbus, comprising a part of Ohio, has one
female academy, twenty-three parochial schools, with over three
thousand pupils; the exact number is not given.

The diocese of Dubuque comprises the State of Iowa, and
contains twelve academies and select schools, and parochial
schools at nearly all the churches of the diocese, educating ten
thousand children.

The diocese of Fort Wayne comprises a part of Indiana, and has
one college, one orphan asylum, eleven literary institutions, and
thirty-eight parish schools.

The diocese of Hartford comprises Rhode Island and Connecticut,
and contains three literary institutions for males and six for
females, twenty-one male and twenty-three female free schools,
the former attended by forty-two hundred, and the latter by
fifty-one hundred scholars, besides four hundred orphans in four
asylums.

The diocese of Milwaukee has two male and four female academies,
and thirty-five free schools, attended by between six and seven
thousand children, and four orphan asylums, containing over two
hundred orphans.

The diocese of Philadelphia contains eight academies and
parochial schools, under the charge of the Christian Brothers,
with twenty-five hundred scholars; forty-two other parochial
schools, attended by ten thousand pupils; twenty-four academies
and select schools for females; three colleges for males; and
five asylums, now containing seven hundred and seventy-three male
and female orphans.

The above statement embraces but nineteen of the fifty-two
dioceses and archdioceses in the United States, as it would
extend this article to an unreasonable length were we to
undertake to give the statistics of each; which, in regard to
many of them, are not sufficiently full in the _Directory_
to enable us to present satisfactory results.
{134}
Although in many of them the Catholic population is small and
sparse, our readers would nevertheless be surprised, no doubt, to
see how each one has struggled to supply itself with schools and
charitable institutions; and how amazingly they have succeeded,
when we consider the comparative scantiness of their resources.
We have, however, given enough to afford some idea to our
Protestant brethren of the vast interest which their Catholic
fellow-citizens have in this question of the public-school fund,
and of the great claim to the sympathy and good-will of the
country which they have established by their unparalleled efforts
in the cause of popular education.

As we have shown above, the Catholics of the archdiocese of New
York are educating twenty-three thousand of their children,
nineteen thousand within the city limits. The value of their
school property is placed at eleven hundred and fifty thousand
dollars. For the education of these twenty-three thousand, it is
estimated that their annual expense does not exceed one hundred
and thirty thousand dollars. The actual cost of the Catholic free
schools in New York City is put down at $104,430 for nineteen
thousand four hundred and twenty-eight scholars; which is about
five dollars and a half for each. We have before us the _Report
of the Board of Education for 1867_, from which it appears
that "the cost per head for educating the children in the public
schools under the control of the Board of Education for the year
ending 1867, based upon the cost for teachers' salaries, fuel and
gas, was $19.75 on the average attendance, or $8.50 on the whole
number taught." Adding the cost of books and stationery, each
pupil cost $21.76 on the average attendance, or $9.40 on the
whole number taught. The basis of the above calculation is:
_Teachers' salaries_, $1,497,180.88; _fuel_, (estimated
in a gross amount of expenses,) $163,315.12, and _gas_,
$13,998.96, making a total of $1,674,496.96. But in fact the
_actual expenditures_ for 1867 were $2,973,877.41; which
cover items that enter equally into the estimate we have given of
the Catholic expenditures for school purposes. In that year New
York City paid to the state as its proportion of school tax
$455,088.27; out of which it received back by apportionment
$242,280.04, a little more than one half, the rest being its
contribution to the counties; at the same time the city raised
for its own schools nearly $2,500,000; being the ten-dollar tax
for each scholar taught, and the one twentieth of one per cent of
the valuation of the real and personal property of the city. From
this our readers will gather some idea of what popular education
can cost, even with the best management.

It is well known that the Catholic people, through their church
organizations, and by the unpaid assistance of their religious
orders, such as the Christian Brothers, possess peculiar
advantages, which enable them to conduct the largest and
best-arranged schools at the smallest possible cost. Why will not
the state permit us to do it? Or, rather, why will not the state
do us the justice to reimburse the actual expenses which we make
in doing it? For it is a thing which we have already accomplished
to a great extent. Suppose that the city of New York was now
educating the nineteen thousand children who attend our schools;
at $19.75 each, it would cost $375,250; or at $8.50 each it would
cost $161,500, this last sum being sixty thousand dollars more
than we pay for the same!
{135}
We have shown, however, that this calculation cannot be made to
rest upon the basis given by the board, when you come to
institute a comparison between the expenditures for the public
schools and for ours. We are willing, nevertheless, to rest our
claim even upon such a contrast as those figures show; and we ask
the tax-payers of New York whether they are willing to follow the
lead of our adversaries and add a few hundred thousand dollars
extra to the annual taxes, for the satisfaction of doing us
injustice?

It is universally conceded that the school-rooms of New York are
dangerously over-crowded; and the Board of Education finds it
almost impossible to meet the growing necessities of the city.
There are still thousands of Catholics and Protestants unprovided
for. Give us the means, and we will speedily see that there is no
Catholic child in New York left without the opportunity of
education. We will do this upon the strictest terms of
accountability to the state. We will conduct our schools up to
the highest standard that our legislators may think proper to
adopt for the regulation of the public school system. We shall
never shrink from the most rigid official scrutiny and
inspection. We shall only ask that, whilst we literally follow
the requirements of the state as to the course of secular
education, we shall not be required to place in the hands of our
children books that are hostile to their faith, or to omit giving
to their young souls that spiritual food which we deem to be
essential for eternal life.

In all sincerity and truth we must say, that we have not yet
heard an argument which could shake our faith in the justice of
our cause; and that it will ultimately prevail, by the blessing
of Providence, we cannot possibly doubt; for, we have an abiding
confidence in the integrity and generosity of the American
people.

----------


  The Omnibus Two Hundred Years Ago.

"I allays thought till to-day," remarked elegant John Thomas to
Jeames, as they were clinging to the back of their mistress's
carriage during a shopping drive in Bond street, London, "that
them 'air nuisances the 'busses was inwented in this 'ear
nineteen centry."

"I allays thinked so," responded Jeames sententiously.

"Not a bit," resumed John Thomas, "them air celebrated people the
Romans, the same as talked Lat'n, you know, 'ad plenty of 'em.

"'Ow d'you know that?" inquired Jaemes.

"I seed it this blessed morning in one o' master's Lat'n books. I
was a tryin' what I could make out of Lat'n, and I seed that word
'_omnibus_' ever so many times; and that's the correc' name
for 'bus--' _bus_ is the wulgar happerlation."

"I know that," growled Jeames.

"'Ow true it is, as King David singed to 'is 'arp, there's
nothing new under the sun!" exclaimed John Thomas
enthusiastically.

The carriage stopped at this moment and the interesting
conversation was interrupted.

{136}

But although people who understand more Latin than John Thomas
have not yet discovered that the Romans were acquainted with that
cheap and convenient mode of conveyance, they may have believed,
like him, that omnibuses were a modern invention, and may be
surprised to learn that, more than two hundred years ago, in the
reign of Louis the Fourteenth, Paris possessed for a time a
regular line of these now indispensable vehicles.

Nicolas Sauvage, at the sign of St. Fiacre, in the Rue St.
Martin, had been accustomed for many years to let out carriages
by the hour or day; but his prices were too high for any but the
rich; and so in the year 1657, a certain De Givry obtained
permission to "establish in the crossways and public places of
the city and suburbs of Paris such a number of two-horse coaches
and caleches as he should consider necessary; to be exposed there
from seven in the morning until seven in the evening, at the hire
of all who needed them, whether by the hour, the half-hour, day,
or otherwise, at the pleasure of those who wished to make use of
them to be carried from one place to another, wherever their
affairs called them, either in the city and suburbs of Paris, or
as far as four or five leagues in the environs," etc., etc.

This was a decided step in advance; but the prices of these
hackney coaches were still too high for the public generally, and
they consequently did not meet with the success anticipated. At
length, in 1662, appeared the really cheap and popular
conveyance--the omnibus--under the patronage of the Duke of
Roanès the Marquis of Sourches, and the Marquis of Crenan. These
noblemen solicited and obtained letters patent for a great
speculation--carriages to contain eight persons, at five sous the
seat, and running at fixed hours on specified routes.

"On the 18th of March, 1662," says Sauval, in his _Antiquities
of Paris_, "seven coaches were driven for the first time
through the streets that lead from the Porte St. Martin to the
palace of the Luxembourg; they _were assailed with stones and
hisses by the populace_."

This last assertion is much to be doubted; more especially as
Madame Perier, the sister of the great Pascal, has described in
an interesting letter to Arnauld de Pomponne, the general joy and
satisfaction that the appearance of these cheap conveyances gave
rise to in the people; a state of feeling which seems far more
probable than that which _stones and hisses_ would manifest.

Madame Perier writes as follows:

  "PARIS, March 21, 1662.
  "As every one has been appointed to some special office in this
  affair of the coaches, I have solicited with eagerness and have
  been so fortunate as to obtain that of announcing its success;
  therefore, sir, each time that you see my writing, be assured
  of receiving good news.

  "The establishment commenced last Saturday morning, at seven
  o'clock, with wonderful pomp and splendor. The seven carriages
  provided for this route were first distributed. Three were sent
  to the Porte St. Martin, and four were placed before the
  Luxembourg, where at the same time were stationed two
  commissaries of the Chatelet in their robes, four guards of the
  high provost, ten or twelve of the city archers, and as many
  men on horseback. When everything was ready, the commissaries
  proclaimed the establishment, explained its usefulness,
  exhorted the citizens to uphold it, and declared to the lower
  classes that the slightest insult would be punished with the
  utmost severity; and all this was delivered in the king's name.
{137}
  Afterward they gave the coachmen their coats, which are
  blue--the king's color as well as the city's color--with the
  arms of the king and of the city embroidered on the bosom; and
  then they gave the order to start.

  "One of the coaches immediately went off, carrying inside one
  of the high provost's guards. Half a quarter of an hour after,
  another coach set off, and then the two others at the same
  intervals of time, each carrying a guard who was to remain
  therein all day. At the same time the city archers and the men
  on horseback dispersed themselves on the route.

  "At the Porte Saint Martin the same ceremonies were observed,
  at the same hour, with the three coaches that had been sent
  there, and there were the same arrangements respecting the
  guards, the archers and the men on horseback. In short, the
  affair was so well conducted that not the slightest confusion
  took place, and those coaches were started as peaceably as the
  others.

  "The thing indeed has succeeded perfectly; the very first
  morning the coaches were filled, and several women even were
  among the passengers; but in the afternoon the crowd was so
  great that one could not get near them; and every day since it
  has been the same, so that we find by experience that the
  greatest inconvenience is the one you apprehended; people wait
  in the street for the arrival of one of these coaches, in order
  to get in. When it comes, it is full; this is vexatious; but
  there is a consolation; for it is known that another will
  arrive in half a quarter of an hour; this other arrives, and it
  also is full; and after this has been repeated several times,
  the aspirant is at length obliged to continue his way on foot.
  That you may not think that I exaggerate I will tell you what
  happened to myself. I was waiting at the door of St. Mary's
  Church, in the Rue de la Verrerie, feeling a great desire to
  return home in a coach; for it is pretty far from my brother's
  house. But I had the vexation of seeing five coaches pass
  without being able to get a seat; all were full: and during the
  whole time that I was waiting, I heard blessings bestowed on
  the originators of an establishment so advantageous to the
  public. As every one spoke his thoughts, some said the affair
  was very well invented, but that it was a great fault to have
  put only seven coaches on the route; that they were not
  sufficient for half the people who had need of them, and that
  there ought to have been at least twenty. I listened to all
  this, and I was in such a bad temper from having missed five
  coaches that at the moment I was quite of their opinion. In
  short, the applause is universal, and it may be said that
  nothing was ever better begun.

  "The first and second days, there was a crowd on the Pont-Neuf
  and in all the streets to watch the coaches pass; and it was
  very amusing to see the workmen cease their labor to look at
  them, so that no more work was done all Saturday throughout the
  whole route than if it had been a holiday. Smiling faces were
  seen everywhere, not smiles of ridicule, but of content and
  joy; and this convenience is found so great that every one
  desires it for his own quarter.

  "The shopkeepers of the Rue St. Denis demanded a route with so
  much importunity that they even spoke of presenting a petition.
  Preparations were being made to give them one next week; but
  yesterday morning M. de Roanès, M. de Crenan, and M. the High
  Provost (M. de Sourches) being all three at the Louvre, the
  king talked very pleasantly about the novelty, and addressing
  those gentlemen, said,' And _our_ route, will you not soon
  establish it?'
{138}
  These words oblige them to think of the Rue St. Honoré, and to
  defer for some days the Rue St. Denis. Besides this, the king,
  speaking on the same subject, said that he desired that all
  those who were guilty of the slightest insolence should be
  severely punished, and that he would not permit this
  establishment to be molested.

  "This is the present position of the undertaking. I am sure you
  will not be less surprised than we are at its great success; it
  has far surpassed all our hopes. I shall not fail to send you
  exact word of every pleasant thing that happens, according to
  the office conferred on me, and to supply the place of my
  brother, who would be happy to undertake the duty if he could
  write.

  "I wish with all my heart that I may have matter to write to
  you every week, both for your satisfaction and for other
  reasons that you can well guess. I am your obedient servant,
                                             G. PASCAL."

Postscript in the handwriting of Pascal, and very probably the
last lines he ever traced: he died in August of the same year:

  "I will add to the above, that the day before yesterday, at the
  king's _petit coucher_, a dangerous assault was made
  against us by two courtiers distinguished by their rank and
  wit, which would have ruined us by turning us into ridicule,
  and would have given rise to all sorts of attacks, had not the
  king answered so obligingly and so dryly with respect to the
  excellence of the undertaking, so that they speedily put up
  their weapons. I have no more paper. Adieu--entirely yours."

Sauval affirms that Pascal was the inventor of this cheap coach,
and Madame de Sévigné seems to allude to the enterprise in a
passage of one of her letters which commences "_apropos_ of
Pascal." It is certain that he and his sister were pecuniarily
interested in the speculation, and it is more than probable that
it was he who induced his rich friend the Duke of Roanès, to take
so prominent a part in the undertaking. But we must not consider
Pascal in the light of a vulgar speculator--earthly interests
affected him but little personally--deeds of charity, the many
ills and pains of premature old age, and the sad task of watching
over a life always on the brink of extinction, almost wholly
engrossed his thoughts during his last years. He saw in this
affair an advantage to the public in general, and if any
pecuniary profits resulted, his share was intended for the
benefit of the poor, as is very evident by the following extract
from the little work Madame Perier dedicated to the memory of her
brother.

  "As soon as the affair of the coaches was settled, he told me
  he wished to ask the farmers for an advance of a thousand
  francs to send to the poor at Blois. When I told him that the
  success of the enterprise was not sufficiently assured for him
  to make this request, he replied that he saw no inconvenience
  in it, because, if the affair did not prosper, he would repay
  the money from his estate, and he did not like to wait until
  the end of the year, because the necessities of the poor were
  too urgent to defer charity. As no arrangement could be made
  with the farmers, he could not gratify his desire. On this
  occasion we perceived the truth of what he had so often told
  me, that he wished for riches only that he might be able to
  help the poor; for the moment God gave him the hope of
  possessing wealth, even before he was assured of it, he began
  to distribute it."

{139}

In the ninth volume of the _Ordonnances de Louis XIV._, we
find, concerning the establishment of coaches in the city of
Paris, that these cheap conveyances are permitted "for the
convenience of a great number of persons ill-accommodated, such
as pleaders, infirm people, and others, who, not having the means
of hiring chairs or carriages because they cost a pistole or two
crowns at least the day, can thus be carried for a moderate price
by means of this establishment of coaches, which are always to
make the same journeys in Paris from one quarter to another, the
longest at five sous the seat, and the others less; the suburbs
in proportion; and which are always to start at fixed hours,
however small the number of persons then assembled, and even
empty, if no person should present himself, without obliging
those who make use of this convenience to pay more for their
places," etc.

These regulations are similar to those of our modern omnibus; but
the quality of the passengers was more arbitrary; for in the
tenth volume of this same _Register_, we find it enacted
that "Soldiers, Pages, Lacqueys and other gentry in Livery, also
Mechanics and Workmen shall not be able to enter the said
coaches," etc., etc.

The first route was opened on the 18th of March; the second on
the 11th of April, running from the Rue Saint Antoine to the Rue
Saint Honoré, as high as St. Roch's church. On this second
opening, a placard announced to the citizens that the directors
"had received advice of some inconveniences that might annoy
persons desirous of making use of their conveyances, such, for
instance, when the coachman refuses to stop to take them up on
the route, even though there are empty places, and other similar
occurrences; this is to give notice that all the coaches have
been numbered, and that the number is placed at the top of the
moutons, on each side of the coachman's box, together with the
fleur de lis--one, two, three, etc., according to the number of
coaches on each route. And so those who have any reason to
complain of the coachman, are prayed to remember the number of
the coach, and to give advice of it to the clerk of one of the
offices, so that order may be established."

The third route, which ran from the Rue Montmartre and the Rue
Neuve Saint Eustache to the Luxembourg Palace, was opened on the
22d of May of the same year. The placard which conveys the
announcement to the public, gives notice also, "that to prevent
the delay of money-changing, which always consumes much time, no
gold will be received."

Every arrangement having thus been made to render these cheap
coaches useful and agreeable, they very soon became the fashion;
a three act comedy in verse, entitled, "The intrigue of the
coaches at five sous," written by an actor named Chevalier, was
even represented in 1662 at the Theatre of the Marais. An extract
from this play is given in the history of the French Theatre, by
the Brothers Parfaict.

But the ingenious and useful innovation on the old hackney-coach
system, though so well conducted and so well administered, so
highly protected, and so warmly welcomed, was not destined to
live long. After a very few years, the undertaking failed, and
the omnibus was forgotten for nearly two centuries! Sauval tells
us that Pascal's death was the cause of this misfortune; but the
coaches continued to prosper for three or four years after that
event.

{140}

"Every one," says Sauval, in a curious page of his
_Antiquities_, "during two years found these coaches so
convenient that auditors and masters of _comptes_,
counsellors of the Chatelet and of the court, made no scruple to
use them to go to the Chatelet or to the palace, and this caused
the price to be raised one sou; even the Duke of Enghien
[Footnote 48] has travelled in them. But what do I say? The king,
when passing the summer at Saint-Germain, whither he had
consented that these coaches should come, went in one of them,
for his amusement, from the old castle, where he was staying, to
the new one to visit the queen-mother. Notwithstanding this great
fashion, these coaches were so despised three or four years after
their establishment that no one would make use of them, and their
ill success was attributed to the death of Pascal, the celebrated
mathematician; it is said that he was the inventor of them, as
well as the leader of the enterprise; it is moreover assured that
he had made their horoscope and given them to the publicunder a
certain constellation whose bad influences he knew how to turn
aside."

    [Footnote 48: Henri-Jules de Bourbon-Condé, son of the great
    Condé.]

We can give no description of this ancient omnibus; no drawing or
engraving of it is believed to exist; but it is probable that it
resembled the coaches represented in the paintings of Van der
Meulan and Martin.

It is impossible to attribute to any other cause than that of the
arbitrary choice of passengers, the failure of an undertaking
which appeared to possess every element of success. The people
who _needed_ the cheap coach were debarred from the use of
it; the tired artisan returning from his hard day's work; the
jaded soldier hurrying to his barrack before the beat of the
tattoo that recalled him had ceased; the pale seamstress with her
bundle; each was refused the five sous lift, and had to foot the
weary way; while the aristocracy and rich middle class enjoyed
the ride, not as a social want, but as a fashionable diversion,
and tired of it after a time, as fashionable people even now tire
of everything fashionable. It was reserved for the marvellous
nineteenth century, so fruitful in good works, to endow us with
the true omnibus, that is, a carriage for the use of every one
indiscriminately, in which the gentleman and the laborer, the
rich man and the poor man can ride side by side. This really
_popular_ conveyance has now become in all highly civilized
communities so veritable a _necessity_ and habit that it can
never again fall and be forgotten like its faulty forerunner, or
the omnibus of two hundred years ago.

----------

      New Publications.


  TRAVELS IN THE EAST-INDIAN ARCHIPELAGO.
  By Albert S. Brickmose, M.A.
  With Illustrations. 1 vol. 8vo, pp. 553.
  New York: D. Appleton & Co. 1869.

This elegantly got up volume of travel the author tells us, in
his preface, is taken from his journal, "kept day by day," while
on a visit to the islands described, the object of which visit
was to re-collect the shells figured in Rumphen's _Pariteit
Kamer_. The author travelled from Batavia, in Java, along the
north coast of that island to Samarang and Surabaya; thence to
Macassar, the capital of Celebes; thence south through Sapi
Strait, between Sumbawa and Floris, and eastward to the southern
end of Timur, (near the northwestern extremity of Australia;)
thence along the west coast of Timur to Dilli, and north to the
Banda Islands and Amboina.
{141}
Having passed several months in the Moluccas, or Spice Islands,
he revisited the Bandas, and ascended their active volcano.
Returning to Amboina, he travelled in Ceram and Buru, and
continued northward to Gilolo. Thence he crossed the Molucca
Passage to the Minahassa, or northern end of the Island of
Celebes, probably the most beautiful spot on the surface of our
globe.

Returning to Batavia, he proceeded to Padang, and thence made a
long journey through the interior of the island to the land of
the cannibals. Having succeeded in making his way for a hundred
miles through that dangerous people, he came down to the coast
and returned to Padang. Again he went up into the interior, and
examined all the coffee-lands. From Padang he came down to
Bencoolen, and succeeded in making his way over the mountains and
down the rivers to the Island of Banca, and was thence carried to
Singapore. This work opens a new field, hitherto but little
known, to the reader of books of travel and adventure. His
descriptions, if not always very vivid, are told in a clear,
unaffected manner, without that egotism so often found in books
of travel.

----------

  The Instruments Of The Passion Of Our Lord Jesus Christ.
  By the Rev. Dr. J. E. Veith,
  Preacher at the Cathedral of Vienna.
  Translated by Rev. Theodore Noethen,
  Pastor of the Church of the Holy Cross. Albany, N. Y.
  Boston: Patrick Donahoe.

Dr. Veith, a convert from Judaism, is one of the most
distinguished writers and preachers of Vienna. The present work
is rich in thought and original in style. It is one of a series
which the translator proposes to bring out in an English dress,
if he receives encouragement, as we hope he may. F. Noethen,
although a German, writes English remarkably well, and deserves
great credit for his zeal and assiduity in translating so many
excellent and practical works of piety. In point of excellence in
typography and mechanical execution, this book deserves to be
classed with the best which have been issued by the Catholic
press.

----------

  The Life And Works Of St. AEngussius Hagiographus,
  or Saint AEngus the Culdee, Bishop and Abbot at
  Clonenagh and Dysartenos, Queens County.
  By the Rev. John O'Hanlon.
  Dublin: John F. Fowler,
  3 Crow street. 1868.
  For sale by the Catholic Publication Society, New York.

This tract is a treatise on the life and writings of an humble
and laborious monk of the early ages in Ireland, who published,
if we may use the expression, his _Felire,_ Fessology, or
Calendar of Irish saints, as long ago as 804. From the
biographical and historical value of this poetical work, St.
AEngus ranks among the very earliest of the historical writers of
modern Europe. In this view, no less than to draw attention to
one whose holy life induced the Irish church to ascribe his name
on the dyptics, it is well that the present generation should be
asked to pause and look upon this life, so humble, laborious, and
holy, and which so strongly commended him to the veneration of
succeeding ages. The Rev. Mr. O'Hanlon treats his subject
systematically, displaying great research and sound criticism,
and it is to be hoped that his treatise will induce some of the
publishing societies in Ireland to issue an edition of the works
of this venerated father of the Irish church.

The _Felire_ of St. AEngus consists of three distinct parts:
the first, the Invocation, containing five stanzas, implores the
grace of Christ on the work; the second, comprising 220 stanzas,
is a preface and conclusion to the main poem; the third part
contains 365 stanzas, one for each day of the year. They comprise
not only the saints peculiar to Ireland, but others drawn from
early martyrologies. This poem was regarded in the early Irish
church with great veneration, and the copies that have descended
to us have a running gloss or commentary on each verse, making it
a short biography of the saint briefly mentioned in the poem.
{142}
In this form its value has long been known to scholars, whose
frequent use of it shows the light it frequently helps to throw
on Irish history and topography. We trust that the work of the
Rev. Mr. O'Hanlon will not be fruitless.

----------

  Essays And Lectures on,
  1. The Early History of Maryland;
  2. Mexico and Mexican Affairs;
  3. A Mexican Campaign;
  4. Homoeopathy;
  5. Elements of Hygiene;
  6. Health and Happiness.
  By Richard McSherry, M.D., Professor of Principles and Practice
  of Medicine, University of Maryland.
  Baltimore: Kelly, Piet & Co. 1869. Pp. 125.


  The Early History Of Maryland.

The sketch of colonial Maryland is drawn with a masterly hand,
showing, in the first place, the author's thorough knowledge of
its history; and, secondly, the poetic language in which his
ideas are couched tell plainly how completely his heart is imbued
with love for his native Terra Mariae.

Dr. McSherry is right when he calls his State "the brightest gem
in the American cluster." To the Catholics of this broad land it
is surely so; and the names of Sir George Calvert and his noble
sons, the founders of this "Land of the Sanctuary," should be
enshrined with love and reverence in the hearts of all who
profess the old faith and appreciate our religious liberty.


  Mexico And Mexican Affairs.

The article on "Mexico and Mexican Affairs" was written at the
suggestion of the editor of _The Southern Review_, and is a
synopsis of the political history of Mexico from the time of the
conquest to the tragical end of the ill-fated Prince Maximilian.

As a colonial possession of Spain, Mexico enjoyed a more quiet
existence and a more stable government than either before or
since that period of its history. "Churches, schools, and
hospitals were distributed over the land; good roads were made,
and, without going into detail, industrial pursuits were
generally in honor, and were rewarded with success."

Political revolution again agitated the country in the
commencement of this century, followed by the establishment of an
empire under Iturbide; this in turn gave place to a republican
form of government in 1824.

No stronger proof of the belief of our order-loving and
law-abiding neighbors in the republican doctrine of rotation in
office can be given than the fact that during the forty years of
the Republican government "_the record shows forty-six changes
in the presidential chair._" The accounts of revolution and
counter-revolution among the dominant spirits of that time beggar
description, and leave us to conclude that a frightful condition
of strife, desolation, and misery reigned throughout the entire
period. "The rulers of Mexico kept no faith with their own
people; none with foreigners or foreign nations. They gave
abundant cause for the declaration of war made against them by
England, France, and Spain, and for the provocation of the war by
France, when the other powers withdrew." The author describes the
inducements held out by the assembly of notables to Maximilian,
after the French occupation, to accept the throne; and how at
last he unfortunately acceded to the request, and sailed for Vera
Cruz in May, 1864. The subsequent career of this nobleman, who
had thus linked his fate with that of Mexico is feelingly
depicted. It was but a short period of three years from his
"splendid reception at Guadalupe, when about entering his
capital, to his fall by Mexican treachery, and subsequent murder
on the 19th of June, 1867." The author blames ex-Secretary Seward
for not preventing this tragical end of the amiable and highly
cultivated prince, and thinks that as the Indian Juarez had been
enabled to prosecute his illegal claim to the presidency by the
support and comfort derived from the United States, he would not
have dared refuse a claim for this boon, made in a proper spirit,
by Mr. Seward.

The names of Maximilian and his devoted, beautiful Carlotta will
always bring moisture to the eyes of those who can sympathize
with the afflictions and sufferings of their fellow-beings.

Mexico has commenced a new chapter of her history. True, the
preface so far is not encouraging; but let us hope her experience
in the past may cause a better record for the future.

{143}

       A Mexican Campaign Sketch.

This is an interesting account of the author's travels, as
surgeon, with the army which, in 1847, under General Scott,
fought its way through the historical battles of Contreras,
Churubusco, Molino del Rey, to Chapultepec: and the final
entrance, on the 14th of September, to the Mexican capital. The
description of the appearance of the valley of Mexico, as the
army descended the mountain side, is very beautiful. The author
says, "The valley or basin of Mexico lay spread out like a
panorama of fairy land; opening, closing, and shifting, according
to the changing positions of the observers. At times nothing
would be visible but dark recesses in the mountain, or the grim
forest that shaded the road; when in a moment a sudden turn would
unfold, as if by magic, a scene that looked too lovely to be
real. It was an enchantment in nature; for, knowing as we did
that we beheld _bona fide_ lakes and mountains, plains and
villages, chapels and hamlets, all so bright, so clear, and so
beautiful, it still seemed an illusion of the senses, a dream, or
a perfection of art--nay, in the mountain circle we could see the
very picture-frame."

How long the mixed races of this beautiful country are to
continue their tragical and at times ludicrous efforts at
self-government is a problem to be solved in the future.

         An Epistle On Homoeopathy.

The doctor's logical arguments in this article we would recommend
to the perusal of our friends who prefer the more palatable
medicine of that school,

         Lecture On Hygiene.
         A Lecture On Health And Happiness.

These lectures contain many sound practical hints for the general
reader whereby he may avoid many causes of disease, and prolong
his life to a natural limit. We give the doctor's testimony on
two interesting points. He says:

  "Excesses at table are disastrous enough, and in this they are
  worse than over devotion to Bacchus; namely, that they
  undermine more slowly and more insidiously; but otherwise,
  strong drinks are vastly worse. There are persons who think
  wines and liquors essential to health; but as the rule, they
  are useless at best; and at worst, destructive to soul, and
  body, and mind. Strict total abstinence is generally, I might
  say universally safe; while even temperate indulgence is rarely
  safe or salutary." (P. 119.)

  "Tobacco deserves the next place. It is most marvellous how
  this nauseous weed has taken hold upon the affections of man.
  It surely is of no benefit to health, but I dare not say it
  conduces nothing to happiness. When I see an old friend take
  his pipe, or cigar, after the labors of the day, and the
  evening meal; when his good honest face beams beneath the
  fragrant smoke which rises like incense, making a wreath around
  his gray hairs; when his heart expands, and he becomes genially
  social and confidential, I can hardly ask Hygeia to rob him of
  his simple pleasure. A good cigar is almost akin to the 'cup
  that cheers, yet not inebriates.' But honestly, tobacco is
  pernicious in all its forms; not like whiskey, indeed, but
  still pernicious." (P. 121.)

As an entirety, the doctor's book presents a charming diversity
of subjects, each in itself of sufficient interest to chain the
earnest attention of the reader, and well repay him for its
perusal.

----------

  John M. Costello; Or, The Beauty Of
  Virtue Exemplified In An American Youth.
  Baltimore: John Murphy & Co. 1869.

This neat little volume contains a well-written memoir of a young
aspirant to the priesthood who died a few years ago at the
preparatory seminary of St. Charles.

There is a peculiar charm about the life of a pious Catholic boy
whose heart has always yearned after the realization of the
highest type of Christian virtue. Such a life presents a picture
of simple beauty, in which the smallest details present points of
more than common interest. One sees here how truly the
supernatural life of grace illumines and adorns the commonest
actions of the Christian, and clothes them with a merit that
purely human virtue would never gather from them. There is
nothing in the life of a St. Aloysius or a St. Stanislaus,
however insignificant or commonplace in the eyes of the world,
that can be deemed trivial or unworthy of record.
{144}
Whatever they do is a saintly act. Their words are the words of a
saint. This is the secret of the wonderful influence which the
history of these pure souls has exerted on the minds and hearts
of the thousands and tens of thousands to whom it has become
known. This thought was constantly before us while perusing the
present beautiful tribute to the memory of young Costello. It is
impossible to read the description of the most ordinary events of
the life of this holy child of God without emotion. What in
others of his age and general character might justly be unworthy
of note in him becomes worthy to be written in letters of gold.
We would say to all Catholic parents, among the hundreds of
volumes standing on the bookseller's shelves inviting purchase by
their gay bindings and prettily illustrated pages, and almost
forcing themselves into your hands as birthday or holiday
presents to your darling children, choose this one, and teach
them, by the winning example of such virtue as they will here see
presented to them, to emulate, not the daring exploits of some
lion-killer or wild adventurer, or, it may be, the imaginary
success of some fortunate youth in the pursuit of riches, but
rather the heroism, the piety, the humility, the chastity, the
self-renunciation of the Christian saint. All who love God and
have the spiritual interests of our Catholic youth at heart will
feel deeply grateful to the reverend author for having given to
the world his knowledge of a life so well calculated to edify and
inspire its readers with admiration of what is, after all, the
highest and best within the sphere of human aim, to lead a holy
life, and die, though it be in the flower of youth, the death of
a saint. Let us have more books like this one, that, with God's
blessing on the lessons they impart, we may have more such lives.

----------

P. F. Cunningham, Philadelphia, is about to publish _The
Montarges Legacy_, and _The Life of St. Stanislaus._

----------

       Books Received.

From John Murphy & Co., Baltimore:

  New editions of the following books:

  Practical Piety set forth by St. Francis de Sales,
  Bishop and Prince of Geneva.
  1 vol. 12mo, pp. 360, $1.

  A Spiritual Retreat of Eight Days.
  By the Right Rev. John M. David, D.D.,
  1 vol. 12mo. $1.

  Kyriale; or, Ordinary of Mass: a Complete Liturgical Manual,
  with Gregorian Chants, etc.; in round or square notes, each
  $1.25.

  The Holy Week: containing the Offices of Holy Week, from the
  Roman Breviary and Missal, with the chants in modern notation.
  $1.25.

  Roman Vesperal: containing the complete Vespers for the whole
  year, with Gregorian Chants in modern notation. $1.50.


From W. B. Kelly, Dublin:

  The Catholic Church in America. A Lecture delivered before the
  Historical and AEsthetical Society in the Catholic University
  of Ireland.
  By Thaddeus J. Butler, D.D., Chicago.
  For sale by the Catholic Publication Society,
  126 Nassau street. 25 cents.


From KELLY, PIET & Co., Baltimore:

  The Wreath of Eglantine, and other Poems:
  Edited and in part composed by Daniel Bedinger Lucas.
  1 vol. 12mo, $1.50.

  Eudoxia; a Picture of the Fifth Century.
  Translated from the German of Ida, Countess Hahn Hahn.
  1 vol. 12mo, $1.50.


From D. & J. Sadlier & Co.:

  St. Dominic's Manual; or, Tertiary's Guide.
  By two Fathers of the Order.
  1 vol. 18mo, pp. 533.


From C. Darveau, Quebec, C. E.:

  St. Patrick's Manual, for the use of Young People, prepared by
  the Christian Brothers.
  1 vol. 24mo, pp. 648.


From Leypoldt & Holt, New York:

  The Fisher Maiden: a Norwegian Tale.
  By Bjornstjerne Bjornson.
  From the author's German edition, by M. E. Niles.
  12mo, pp. 217, $1.25.

  The Gain of a Loss: a Novel.
  By the author of The Last of the Cavaliers.
  1 vol. 12mo, pp. 439, $1.75.


From Clark & Maynard, New York:

  A Manual of General History: being an Outline History of the
  World from the Creation to the Present Time. Fully illustrated
  with maps. For the use of academies, high-schools, and
  families.
  By John J. Anderson, A.M.
  Pp. 400.


From Ivison, Phinney, Blakeman & Co., New York: A

  Dictionary of the English Language, Explanatory, Pronouncing,
  Etymological, and Synonymous.
  Counting-House Edition.
  With an appendix containing various useful tables. Mainly
  abridged from the latest edition of the Qutarto Dictionary of
  Noah Webster, LL. D.
  By William G. Webster and William A. Wheeler.
  Illustrated with more than three hundred engravings on wood.
  Pp. 630.


From Longmans, Green, Reader & Dyer, London:

  The Formation of Christendom. Part II.
  By T. W. Allies.
  1 vol. 8vo, pp. 495.
  The Catholic Publication Society having made arrangements with
  Mr. Allies to supply his book in America, will soon have this
  volume for sale. Price, $6.


From James Duffy, Dublin:

  The Life and Writings of the Rev. Arthur O'Leary.
  By the Rev. M. B. Buckley.
  1 vol. 12mo, pp. 410.


From W. W. Swayne, New York and Brooklyn:

  The Poetical Works of Sir Walter Scott.
  Vol. 1, paper, 25 cents.


From Harper & Brothers:

  The Poetical Works of Charles G. Halpine.
  With a Biographical Sketch and Explanatory Notes.
  Edited by Robert B. Roosevelt.
  1 vol. pp. 352.

-------
{145}

          The Catholic World.

     Vol. IX., No. 50.--May, 1869.

----------

   The Woman Question.
     [Footnote 49]

    [Footnote 49:
    1. _The Revolution_: New York. Weekly. Vol. III.
    2. _Equal Rights for Women_. A Speech by George William
    Curtis, in the Constitutional Convention at Albany, July 19,
    1868.
    3. _Ought Women to learn the Alphabet?_ By Thomas
    Wentworth Higginson.]

The Woman Question, though not yet an all-engrossing question in
our own or in any other country, is exciting so much attention,
and is so vigorously agitated, that no periodical can very well
refuse to consider it. As yet, though entering into politics, it
has not become a party question, and we think we may discuss it
without overstepping the line we have marked out for
ourselves--that of studiously avoiding all party politics; not
because we have not the courage to discuss them, but because we
have aims and purposes which appeal to all parties alike, and
which can best be effected by letting party politics alone.

In what follows we shall take up the question seriously, and
treat it candidly, without indulging in any sneers, jeers, or
ridicule. A certain number of women have become, in some way or
other, very thoroughly convinced that women are deeply wronged,
deprived of their just rights by men, and especially in not being
allowed political suffrage and eligibility. They claim to be in
all things man's equal, and in many things his superior, and
contend that society should make no distinction of sex in any of
its civil and political arrangements. It will not, indeed, be
easy for us to forget this distinction so long as we honor our
mothers, and love our wives and daughters; but we will endeavor
in this discussion to forget it--so far, at least, as to treat
the question on its merits, and make no allowance for any real or
supposed difference of intellect between men and women. We shall
neither roughen nor soften our tones because our opponents are
women, or men who encourage them. The women in question claim for
women all the prerogatives of men; we shall, therefore, take the
liberty to disregard their privileges as women. They may expect
from us civility, not gallantry.

{146}

We say frankly in the outset that we are decidedly opposed to
female suffrage and eligibility. The woman's rights women demand
them both as a right, and complain that men, in refusing to
concede them, withhold a natural right, and violate the equal
rights on which the American republic professes to be based. We
deny that women have a natural right to suffrage and eligibility;
for neither is a natural right at all, for either men or women.
Either is a trust from civil society, not a natural and
indefeasible right; and civil society confers either on whom it
judges trustworthy, and on such conditions as it deems it
expedient to annex. As the trust has never been conferred by
civil society with us on women, they are deprived of no right by
not being enfranchised.

We know that the theory has been broached latterly, and defended
by several political journals, and even by representatives and
senators in Congress, as well as by _The Revolution,_ the
organ of the woman's rights movement, that suffrage and
eligibility are not trusts conferred by civil society on whom it
will, but natural and indefeasible rights, held directly from God
or nature, and which civil society is bound by its very
constitution to recognize, protect, and defend for all men and
women, and which they can be deprived of only by crimes which
forfeit one's natural life or liberty. It is on this ground that
many have defended the extension of the elective franchise and
eligibility to negroes and the colored races in the United
States, and hold that Congress, under that clause of the
Constitution authorizing it to guarantee to the several States a
republican form of government, is bound to enfranchise them. It
may or may not be wise and expedient to extend suffrage and
eligibility to negroes and the colored races hitherto, in most of
the States, excluded from the sovereign people of the country; on
that question we express no opinion, one way or the other; but we
deny that the negroes and colored men can claim admission on the
ground either of natural right or of American republicanism; for
white men themselves cannot claim it on that ground.

Indeed, the assumption that either suffrage or eligibility is a
natural right is anti-republican. The fundamental principle, the
very essence of republicanism is, that power is a trust to be
exercised for the public good or common weal, and is forfeited
when not so exercised, or when exercised for private and personal
ends. Suffrage and eligibility confer power to govern, which, if
a natural right, would imply that power is the natural and
indefeasible right of the governors--the essential principle of
all absolutism, whether autocratic, aristocratic, monarchical, or
democratic. It would imply that the American government is a
pure, centralized, absolute, unmitigated democracy, which may be
regarded either as tantamount to no government, or as the
absolute despotism of the majority for the time, or its right to
govern as it pleases in all things whatsoever, spiritual as well
as secular, regardless of vested rights or constitutional
limitations. This certainly is not American republicanism, which
has always aimed to restrain the absolute power of majorities,
and to protect minorities by constitutional provisions. It has
never recognized suffrage as a personal right which a man carries
with him whithersoever he goes, but has always made it a
territorial right, which a man can exercise only in his own
State, his own county, his own town or city, and his own ward or
precinct. If American republicanism recognized suffrage as a
right, not as simply a trust, why does it place restrictions on
its exercise, or treat bribery as a crime? If suffrage is my
natural right, my vote is my property, and I may do what I please
with it; dispose of it in the market for the highest price I can
get for it, as I may of any other species of property.

{147}

Suffrage and eligibility are not natural, indefeasible rights,
but franchises or trusts conferred by civil society; and it is
for civil society to determine in its wisdom whom it will or will
not enfranchise; on whom it will or will not confer the trust.
Both are social or political rights, derived from political
society, and subject to its will, which may extend or abridge
them as it judges best for the common good. Ask you who
constitute political society? They, be they more or fewer, who,
by the actual constitution of the state, are the sovereign
people. These, and these alone, have the right to determine who
may or may not vote or be voted for. In the United States, the
sovereign people has hitherto been, save in a few localities,
adult males of the white race, and these have the right to say
whether they will or will not extend suffrage to the black and
colored races, and to women and children.

Women, then, have not, for men have not, any natural right to
admission into the ranks of the sovereign people. This disposes
of the question of right, and shows that no injustice or wrong is
done to women by their exclusion, and that no violence is done to
the equal rights on which the American republic is founded. It
may or it may not be wise and expedient to admit women into
political, as they are now admitted into civil, society; but they
cannot claim admission as a right. They can claim it only on the
ground of expediency, or that it is necessary for the common
good. For our part, we have all our life listened to the
arguments and declamations of the woman's rights party on the
subject; have read Mary Wollstonecraft, heard Fanny Wright, and
looked into _The Revolution_, conducted by some of our old
friends and acquaintances, and of whom we think better than many
of their countrymen do; but we remain decidedly of the opinion
that harm instead of good, to both men and women, would result
from the admission. We say not this because we think lightly of
the intellectual or moral capacity of women. We ask not if women
are equal, inferior, or superior to men; for the two sexes are
different, and between things different in kind there is no
relation of equality or of inequality. Of course, we hold that
the woman was made for the man, not the man for the woman, and
that the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the
head of the church, not the wife of the husband; but it suffices
here to say that we do not object to the political
enfranchisement of women on the ground of their feebleness,
either of intellect or of body, or of any real incompetency to
vote or to hold office. We are Catholics, and the church has
always held in high honor chaste, modest, and worthy women as
matrons, widows, or virgins. Her calendar has a full proportion
of female saints, whose names she proposes to the honor and
veneration of all the faithful. She bids the wife obey her
husband in the Lord; but asserts her moral independence of him,
leaves her conscience free, and holds her accountable for her own
deeds.

Women have shown great executive or administrative ability. Few
men have shown more ability on a throne than Isabella, the
Catholic, of Spain; or, in the affairs of government, though
otherwise faulty enough, than Elizabeth of England, and Catharine
II. of Russia. The present queen of the British Isles has had a
most successful reign; but she owes it less to her own abilities
than to the wise counsels of her husbands Prince Albert, and her
domestic virtues as a wife and a mother, by which she has won the
affections of the English people.
{148}
Others have shown rare administrative capacity in governing
religious houses, often no less difficult than to govern a
kingdom or an empire. Women have a keener insight into the
characters of men than have men themselves, and the success of
female sovereigns has, in great measure, been due to their
ability to discover and call around them the best men in the
state, and to put them in the places they are best fitted for.

What women would be as legislators remains to be seen; they have
had little experience in that line; but it would go hard, but
they would prove themselves not much inferior to the average of
the men we send to our State legislatures or to our national
Congress.

Women have also distinguished themselves in the arts as painters
and sculptors, though none of them have ever risen to the front
rank. St. Catharine of Egypt cultivated philosophy with success.
Several holy women have shown great proficiency in mystic
theology, and have written works of great value. In lighter
literature, especially in the present age, women have taken a
leading part. They almost monopolize the modern novel or romance,
and give to contemporary popular literature its tone and
character; yet it must be conceded that no woman has written a
first-class romance. The influence of her writings, speaking
generally, has not tended to purify or exalt the age, but rather
to enfeeble and abase it. The tendency is to substitute sentiment
for thought, morbid passion for strength, and to produce a weak
and unhealthy moral tone. For ourselves, we own, though there are
some women whose works we read, and even re-read with pleasure,
we do not, in general, admire the popular female literature of
the day; and we do not think that literature is that in which
woman is best fitted to excel, or through which she exerts her
most purifying and elevating influences. Her writings do not do
much to awaken in man's heart the long dormant chivalric love so
rife in the romantic ages, or to render the age healthy, natural,
and manly. We say _awaken_; for chivalry, in its true and
disinterested sense, is not dead in the coldest man's heart; it
only sleepeth. It is woman's own fault, more than man's, that it
sleeps, and wakes not to life and energy.

Nor do we object to the political enfranchisement of women in the
special interest of the male sex. Men and women have no separate
interests. What elevates the one elevates the other; what
degrades the one degrades the other. Men cannot depress women,
place them in a false position, make them toys or drudges,
without doing an equal injury to themselves; and one ground of
our dislike to the so-called woman's rights movement is, that it
proceeds on the supposition that there is no inter-dependence
between men and women, and seeks to render them mutually
independent of each other, with entirely distinct and separate
interests. There is a truth in the old Greek fable, related by
Plato in the _Banquet_, that Jupiter united originally both
sexes in one and the same person, and afterward separated them,
and that now they are but two halves of one whole. "God made man
after his own image and likeness; male and female made he
_them_." Each, in this world, is the complement of the
other, and the more closely identified are their interests, the
better is it for both. We, in opposing the political
enfranchisement of women, seek the interest of men no more than
we do the interest of women themselves.

{149}

Women, no doubt, undergo many wrongs, and are obliged to suffer
many hardships, but seldom they alone. It is a world of trial, a
world in which there are wrongs of all sorts, and sufferings of
all kinds. We have lost paradise, and cannot regain it in this
world. We must go through the valley of the shadow of death
before re-entering it. You cannot make earth heaven, and there is
no use in trying; and least of all can you do it by political
means. It is hard for the poor wife to have to maintain a lazy,
idle, drunken vagabond of a husband, and three or four children
into the bargain; it is hard for the wife delicately reared,
accomplished, fitted to adorn the most intellectual, graceful,
and polished society, accustomed to every luxury that wealth can
procure, to find herself a widow reduced to poverty, and a family
of young children to support, and unable to obtain any employment
for which she is fitted as the means of supporting them. But men
suffer too. It is no less hard for the poor, industrious,
hardworking man to find what he earns wasted by an idle,
extravagant, incompetent, and heedless wife, who prefers gadding
and gossiping to taking care of her household. And how much
easier is it for the man who is reduced from affluence to
poverty, a widower with three or four motherless children to
provide for? The reduction from affluence to poverty is sometimes
the fault of the wife as well as of the husband. It is usually
their joint fault. Women have wrongs, so have men; but a woman
has as much power to make a man miserable as a man has to make a
woman miserable; and she tyrannizes over him as often as he does
over her. If he has more power of attack, nature has given her
more power of defence. Her tongue is as formidable a weapon as
his fists, and she knows well how, by her seeming meekness,
gentleness, and apparent martyrdom, to work on his feelings, to
enlist the sympathy of the neighborhood on her side and against
him. Women are neither so wronged nor so helpless as _The
Revolution_ pretends. Men can be brutal, and women can tease
and provoke.

But let the evils be as great as they may, and women as greatly
wronged as is pretended, what can female suffrage and eligibility
do by way of relieving them? All modern methods of reform are
very much like dram-drinking. The dram needs to be constantly
increased in frequency and quantity, while the prostration grows
greater and greater, till the drinker gets the _delirium
tremens_, becomes comatose, and dies. The extension of
suffrage in modern times has cured or lessened no social or moral
evil; and under it, as under any other political system, the rich
grow richer and the poor poorer. Double the dram, enfranchise the
women, give them the political right to vote and be voted for;
what single moral or social evil will it prevent or cure? Will it
make the drunken husband temperate, the lazy and idle industrious
and diligent? Will it prevent the ups and downs of life, the fall
from affluence to poverty, keep death out of the house, and
prevent widowhood and orphanage? These things are beyond the
reach of politics. You cannot legislate men or women into virtue,
into sobriety, industry, providence. The doubled dram would only
introduce a double poison into the system, a new element of
discord into the family, and through the family into society, and
hasten the moment of dissolution. When a false principle of
reform is adopted, the evil sought to be cured is only
aggravated. The reformers started wrong.
{150}
They would reform the church by placing her under human control.
Their successors have in each generation found they did not go
far enough, and have, each in its turn, struggled to push it
farther and farther, till they find themselves without any church
life, without faith, without religion, and beginning to doubt if
there be even a God. So, in politics, we have pushed the false
principle that all individual, domestic, and social evils are due
to bad government, and are to be cured by political reforms and
changes, till we have nearly reformed away all government, at
least, in theory; have well-nigh abolished the family, which is
the social unit; and find that the evils we sought to cure, and
the wrongs we sought to redress, continue undiminished. We cry
out in our delirium for another and a larger dram. When you
proceed on a true principle, the more logically and completely
you carry it out the better; but when you start with a false
principle, the more logical you are, and the farther you push it,
the worse. Your consistency increases instead of diminishing the
evils you would cure.

The conclusive objection to the political enfranchisement of
women is, that it would weaken and finally break up and destroy
the Christian family. The social unit is the family, not the
individual; and the greatest danger to American society is, that
we are rapidly becoming a nation of isolated individuals, without
family ties or affections. The family has already been much
weakened, and is fast disappearing. We have broken away from the
old homestead, have lost the restraining and purifying
associations that gathered round it, and live away from home in
hotels and boarding-houses. We are daily losing the faith, the
virtues, the habits, and the manners without which the family
cannot be sustained; and when the family goes, the nation goes
too, or ceases to be worth preserving. God made the family the
type and basis of society; "male and female made he them." A
large and influential class of women not only neglect but disdain
the retired and simple domestic virtues, and scorn to be tied
down to the modest but essential duties--the drudgery, they call
it--of wives and mothers. This, coupled with the separate
pecuniary interests of husband and wife secured, and the facility
of divorce _a vinculo matrirmonii_ allowed by the laws of
most of the States of the Union, make the family, to a fearful
extent, the mere shadow of what it was and of what it should be.

Extend now to women suffrage and eligibility; give them the
political right to vote and to be voted for; render it feasible
for them to enter the arena of political strife, to become
canvassers in elections and candidates for office, and what
remains of family union will soon be dissolved. The wife may
espouse one political party, and the husband another, and it may
well happen that the husband and wife may be rival candidates for
the same office, and one or the other doomed to the mortification
of defeat. Will the husband like to see his wife enter the lists
against him, and triumph over him? Will the wife, fired with
political ambition for place or power, be pleased to see her own
husband enter the lists against her, and succeed at her expense?
Will political rivalry and the passions it never fails to
engender increase the mutual affection of husband and wife for
each other, and promote domestic union and peace, or will it not
carry into the bosom of the family all the strife, discord,
anger, and division of the political canvass?

{151}

Then, when the wife and mother is engrossed in the political
canvass, or in discharging her duties as a representative or
senator in Congress, a member of the cabinet, or a major-general
in the field, what is to become of the children? The mother will
have little leisure, perhaps less inclination, to attend to them.
A stranger, or even the father, cannot supply her place. Children
need a mother's care; her tender nursing, her sleepless
vigilance, and her mild and loving but unfailing discipline. This
she cannot devolve on the father, or turn over to strangers.
Nobody can supply the place of a mother. Children, then, must be
neglected; nay, they will be in the way, and be looked upon as an
encumbrance. Mothers will repress their maternal instincts; and
the horrible crime of infanticide before birth, now becoming so
fearfully prevalent, and actually causing a decrease in the
native population of several of the States of the Union as well
as in more than one European country, will become more prevalent
still, and the human race be threatened with extinction. Women in
easy circumstances, and placing pleasure before duty, grow weary
of the cares of maternity, and they would only become more weary
still if the political arena were opened to their ambition.

Woman was created to be a wife and a mother; that is her destiny.
To that destiny all her instincts point, and for it nature has
specially qualified her. Her proper sphere is home, and her
proper function is the care of the household, to manage a family,
to take care of children, and attend to their early training. For
this she is endowed with patience, endurance, passive courage,
quick sensibilities, a sympathetic nature, and great executive
and administrative ability. She was born to be a queen in her own
household, and to make home cheerful, bright, and happy. Surely
those women who are wives and mothers should stay at home and
discharge its duties; and the woman's rights party, by seeking to
draw her away from the domestic sphere, where she is really
great, noble, almost divine, and to throw her into the turmoil of
political life, would rob her of her true dignity and worth, and
place her in a position where all her special qualifications and
peculiar excellences would count for nothing. She cannot be
spared from home for that.

It is pretended that woman's generous sympathies, her nice sense
of justice, and her indomitable perseverance in what she
conceives to be right are needed to elevate our politics above
the low, grovelling and sordid tastes of men; but while we admit
that women will make almost any sacrifice to obtain their own
will, and make less than men do of obstacles or consequences, we
are not aware that they have a nicer or a truer sense of justice,
or are more disinterested in their aims than men. All history
proves that the corruptest epochs in a nation's life are
precisely those in which women have mingled most in political
affairs, and have had the most influence in their management. If
they go into the political world, they will, if the distinction
of sex is lost sight of, have no special advantage over men, nor
be more influential for good or for evil. If they go as women,
using all the blandishments, seductions, arts, and intrigues of
their sex, their influence will tend more to corrupt and debase
than to purify and elevate. Women usually will stick at nothing
to carry their points; and when unable to carry them by appeals
to the strength of the other sex, they will appeal to its
weakness. When once they have thrown off their native modesty,
and entered a public arena with men, they will go to lengths that
men will not.
{152}
Lady Macbeth looks with steady nerves and unblanched cheek on a
crime from which her husband shrinks with horror, and upbraids
him with his cowardice for letting "I dare not wait upon I
would." It was not she who saw Banquo's ghost.

We have heard it argued that, if women were to take part in our
elections, they would be quietly and decorously conducted; that
her presence would do more than a whole army of police officials
to maintain order, to banish all fighting, drinking, profane
swearing, venality, and corruption. This would undoubtedly be, to
some extent, the case, if, under the new _régime_, men
should retain the same chivalric respect for women that they now
have. Men now regard women as placed in some sort under their
protection, or the safeguard of their honor. But when she insists
that the distinction of sex shall be disregarded, and tells us
that she asks no favors, regards all offers of protection to her
as a woman as an insult, and that she holds herself competent to
take care of herself, and to compete with men on their own
ground, and in what has hitherto been held to be their own work,
she may be sure that she will be taken at her word, that she will
miss that deference now shown her, and which she has been
accustomed to claim as her right, and be treated with all the
indifference men show to one another. She cannot have the
advantages of both sexes at once. When she forgets that she is a
woman, and insists on being treated as a man, men will forget
that she is a woman, and allow her no advantage on account of her
sex. When she seeks to make herself a man, she will lose her
influence as a woman, and be treated as a man.

Women are not needed as men; they are needed as women, to do, not
what men can do as well as they, but what men cannot do. There is
nothing which more grieves the wise and good, or makes them
tremble for the future of the country, than the growing neglect
or laxity of family discipline; than the insubordination, the
lawlessness, and precocious depravity of Young America. There is,
with the children of this generation, almost a total lack of
filial reverence and obedience. And whose fault is it? It is
chiefly the fault of the mothers, who fail to govern their
households, and to bring up their children in a Christian manner.
Exceptions there happily are; but the number of children that
grow up without any proper training or discipline at home is
fearfully large, and their evil example corrupts not a few of
those who are well brought up. The country is no better than the
town. Wives forget what they owe to their husbands, are
capricious and vain, often light and frivolous, extravagant and
foolish, bent on having their own way, though ruinous to the
family, and generally contriving, by coaxings, blandishments, or
poutings, to get it. They set an ill example to their children,
who soon lose all respect for the authority of the mother, who,
as a wife, forgets to honor and obey her husband, and who, seeing
her have her own way with him, insist on having their own way
with her, and usually succeed. As a rule, children are no longer
subjected to a steady and firm, but mild and judicious
discipline, or trained to habits of filial obedience. Hence, our
daughters, when they become wives and mothers, have none of the
habits or character necessary to govern their household and to
train their children. Those habits and that character are
acquired only in a school of obedience, made pleasant and
cheerful by a mother's playful smile and a mother's love.
{153}
We know we have not in this the sympathy of the women whose organ
is _The Revolution_. They hold obedience in horror, and seek
only to govern, not their own husbands only, not children, but
men, but the state, but the nation, and to be relieved of
household cares, especially of child-bearing, and of the duty of
bringing up children. We should be sorry to do or say anything
which these, in their present mood, could sympathize with. It is
that which is a woman's special duty in the order of providence,
and which constitutes her peculiar glory, that they regard as
their great wrong.

The duty we insist on is especially necessary in a country like
ours, where there is so little respect for authority, and
government is but the echo of public opinion. Wives and mothers,
by neglecting their domestic duties and the proper family
discipline, fail to offer the necessary resistance to growing
lawlessness and crime, aggravated, if not generated, by the false
notions of freedom and equality so widely entertained. It is only
by home discipline, and the early habits of reverence and
obedience to which our children are trained, that the license the
government tolerates, and the courts hardly dare attempt to
restrain, can be counteracted, and the community made a
law-loving and a law-abiding community. The very bases of society
have been sapped, and the conditions of good government despised,
or denounced under the name of despotism. Social and political
life is poisoned in its source, and the blood of the nation
corrupted, and chiefly because wives and mothers have failed in
their domestic duties, and the discipline of their families. How,
then, can the community, the nation itself, subsist, if we call
them away from home, and render its duties still more irksome to
them, instead of laboring to fit them for a more faithful
discharge of their duties?

We have said the evils complained of are chiefly due to the
women, and we have said so because it grows chiefly out of their
neglect of their families. The care and management of children
during their early years belong specially to the mother. It is
her special function to plant and develop in their young and
impressible minds the seeds of virtue, love, reverence, and
obedience, and to train her daughters, by precept and example,
not to be looking out for an eligible _parti_, nor to catch
husbands that will give them splendid establishments, but to be,
in due time, modest and affectionate wives, tender and judicious
mothers, and prudent and careful housekeepers. This the father
cannot do; and his interference, except by wise counsel, and to
honor and sustain the mother, will generally be worse than
nothing. The task devolves specially on the mother; for it
demands the sympathy with children which is peculiar to the
female heart, the strong maternal instinct implanted by nature,
and directed by a judicious education, that blending of love and
authority, sentiment and reason, sweetness and power, so
characteristic of the noble and true-hearted woman, and which so
admirably fit her to be loved and honored, only less than adored,
in her own household. When she neglects this duty, and devotes
her time to pleasure or amusement, wasting her life in luxurious
ease, in reading sentimental or sensational novels, or in
following the caprices of fashion, the household goes to ruin,
the children grow up wild, without discipline, and the honest
earnings of the husband become speedily insufficient for the
family expenses, and he is sorely tempted to provide for them by
rash speculation or by fraud, which, though it may be carried on
for a while without detection, is sure to end in disgrace and
ruin at last.
{154}
Concede now to women suffrage and eligibility, throw them into
the whirlpool of politics, set them to scrambling for office, and
you aggravate the evil a hundred fold. Children, if suffered to
be born, which is hardly to be expected, will be still more
neglected; family discipline still more relaxed, or rendered
still more capricious or inefficient; our daughters will grow up
more generally still without any adequate training to be wives
and mothers, and our sons still more destitute of those habits of
filial reverence and obedience, love of order and discipline,
without which they can hardly be sober, prudent, and worthy heads
of families, or honest citizens.

We have thus far spoken of women only as wives and mothers; but
we are told that there are thousands of women who are not and
cannot be wives and mothers. In the older and more densely
settled States of the Union there is an excess of females over
males, and all cannot get husbands if they would. Yet, we repeat,
woman was created to be a wife and a mother, and the woman that
is not fails of her special destiny. We hold in high honor
spinsters and widows, and do not believe their case anywhere need
be or is utterly hopeless. There is a mystery in Christianity
which the true and enlightened Christian recognizes and
venerates--that of the Virgin-Mother. Those women who cannot be
wives and mothers in the natural order, may be both in the
spiritual order, if they will. They can be wedded to the Holy
Spirit, and be the mothers of minds and hearts. The holy virgins
and devout widows who consecrate themselves to God in or out of
religious orders, are both, and fulfil in the spiritual order
their proper destiny. They are married to a celestial Spouse, and
become mothers to the motherless, to the poor, the destitute, the
homeless. They instruct the ignorant, nurse the sick, help the
helpless, tend the aged, catch the last breath of the dying, pray
for the unbelieving and the cold hearted, and elevate the moral
tone of society, and shed a cheering radiance along the pathway
of life. They are dear to God, dear to the church, and dear to
Christian society. They are to be envied, not pitied. It is only
because you have lost faith in Christ, faith in the holy Catholic
Church, and have become gross in your minds, of "the earth,
earthy," that you deplore the lot of the women who cannot, in the
natural order, find husbands. The church provides better for them
than you can do, even should you secure female suffrage and
eligibility.

We do not, therefore, make an exception from our general remarks
in favor of those who have and can get no earthly husbands, and
who have no children born of their flesh to care for. There are
spiritual relations which they can contract, and purely feminine
duties, more than they can perform, await them, to the poor and
ignorant, the aged and infirm, the helpless and the motherless,
or, worse than motherless, the neglected. Under proper direction,
they can lavish on these the wealth of their affections, the
tenderness of their hearts, and the ardor of their charity, and
find true joy and happiness in so doing, and ample scope for
woman's noblest ambition. They have no need to be idle or
useless. In a world of so much sin and sorrow, sickness and
suffering, there is always work enough for them to do, and there
are always chances enough to acquire merit in the sight of
Heaven, and true glory, that will shine brighter and brighter for
ever.

{155}

We know men often wrong women and cause them great suffering by
their selfishness, tyranny, and brutality; whether more than
women, by their follies and caprices, cause men, we shall not
undertake to determine. Man, except in fiction, is not always a
devil, nor woman an angel. Since the woman's rights people claim
that in intellect woman is man's equal, and in firmness of will
far his superior, it ill becomes them to charge to him alone what
is wrong or painful in her condition, and they must recognize her
as equally responsible with him for whatever is wrong in the
common lot of men and women. There is much wrong on both sides;
much suffering, and much needless suffering, in life. Both men
and women might be, and ought to be, better than they are. But it
is sheer folly or madness to suppose that either can be made
better or happier by political suffrage and eligibility; for the
evil to be cured is one that cannot be reached by any possible
political or legislative action.

That the remedy, to a great extent, must be supplied by woman's
action and influence we concede, but not by her action and
influence in politics. It can only be by her action and influence
as woman, as wife, and mother; in sustaining with her affection
the resolutions and just aspirations of her husband or her sons,
and forming her children to early habits of filial love and
reverence, of obedience to law, and respect for authority. That
she may do this, she needs not her political enfranchisement or
her entire independence of the other sex, but a better and more
thorough system of education for daughters--an education that
specially adapts them to the destiny of their sex, and prepares
them to find their happiness in their homes, and the satisfaction
of their highest ambition in discharging its manifold duties, so
much higher, nobler, and more essential to the virtue and
well-being of the community, the nation, society, and to the life
and progress of the human race, than any which devolve on king or
kaiser, magistrate or legislator. We would not have their
generous instincts repressed, their quick sensibilities blunted?
or their warm, sympathetic nature chilled, nor even the lighter
graces and accomplishments neglected; but we would have them all
directed and harmonized by solid intellectual instruction, and
moral and religious culture. We would have them, whether rich or
poor, trained to find the centre of their affections in their
home; their chief ambition in making it cheerful, bright,
radiant, and happy. Whether destined to grace a magnificent
palace, or to adorn the humble cottage of poverty, this should be
the ideal aimed at in their education. They should be trained to
love home, and to find their pleasure in sharing its cares and
performing its duties, however arduous or painful.

There are comparatively few mothers qualified to give their
daughters such an education, especially in our own country; for
comparatively few have received such an education themselves, or
are able fully to appreciate its importance. They can find little
help in the fashionable boarding-schools for finishing young
ladies; and in general these schools only aggravate the evil to
be cured. The best and the only respectable schools for daughters
that we have in the country are the conventual schools taught by
women consecrated to God, and specially devoted to the work of
education. These schools, indeed, are not always all that might
be wished.
{156}
The good religious sometimes follow educational traditions
perhaps better suited to the social arrangements of other
countries than of our own, and sometimes underrate the value of
intellectual culture. They do not always give as solid an
intellectual education as the American woman needs, and devote a
disproportionate share of their attention to the cultivation of
the affections and sentiments, and to exterior graces and
accomplishments. The defects we hint at are not, however, wholly,
nor chiefly, their fault; they are obliged to consult, in some
measure, the tastes and wishes of parents and guardians, whose
views for their daughters and wards are not always very profound,
very wise, very just, or very Christian. The religious cannot,
certainly, supply the place of the mother in giving their pupils
that practical home training so necessary, and which can be given
only by mothers who have themselves been properly educated; but
they go as far as is possible in remedying the defects of the
present generation of mothers, and in counteracting their follies
and vain ambitions. With all the faults that can be alleged
against any of them, the conventual schools, even as they are, it
must be conceded, are infinitely the best schools for daughters
in the land, and, upon the whole, worthy of the high praise and
liberal patronage their devotedness and disinterestedness secure
them. We have seldom found their graduates weak and sickly
sentimentalists. They develop in their pupils a cheerful and
healthy tone, and a high sense of duty; give them solid moral and
religious instruction; cultivate successfully their moral and
religious affections; refine their manners, purify their tastes,
and send them out feeling that life is serious, life is earnest,
and resolved always to act under a deep sense of their personal
responsibilities, and meet whatever may be their lot with brave
hearts and without murmuring or repining.

We do not disguise the fact that our hopes for the future, in
great measure, rest on these conventual schools. As they are
multiplied, and the number of their graduates increase, and enter
upon the serious duties of life, the ideal of female education
will be come higher and broader; a nobler class of wives and
mothers will exert a healthy and purifying influence; religion
will become a real power in the republic; the moral tone of the
community and the standard of private and public morality will be
elevated; and thus may gradually be acquired the virtues that
will enable us as a people to escape the dangers that now
threaten us, and to save the republic as well as our own souls.
Sectarians, indeed, declaim against these schools, and denounce
them as a subtle device of Satan to make their daughters
"Romanists;" but Satan probably dislikes "Romanism" even more
than sectarians do, and is much more in earnest to suppress or
ruin our conventual schools, in which he is not held in much
honor, than he is to sustain and encourage them. At any rate, our
countrymen who have such a horror of the religion it is our glory
to profess that they cannot call it by its true name, would do
well, before denouncing these schools, to establish better
schools for daughters of their own.

Now, we dare tell these women who are wasting so much time,
energy, philanthropy, and brilliant eloquence in agitating for
female suffrage and eligibility, which, if conceded, would only
make matters worse, that, if they have the real interest of their
sex or of the community at heart, they should turn their
attention to the education of daughters for their special
functions, not as men, but as women who are one day to be wives
and mothers--woman's true destiny.
{157}
These modest, retiring sisters and nuns, who have no new theories
or schemes of social reform, and upon whom you look down with
haughty contempt, as weak, spiritless, and narrow-minded, have
chosen the better part, and are doing infinitely more to raise
woman to her true dignity, and for the political and social as
well as for the moral and religious progress of the country, than
you with all your grand conventions, brilliant speeches, stirring
lectures, and spirited journals.

For poor working-women and poor working-men, obliged to subsist
by their labor, and who can find no employment, we feel a deep
sympathy, and would favor any feasible method of relieving them
with our best efforts. But why cannot American girls find
employment as well as Irish and German girls, who are employed
almost as soon as they touch our shores, and at liberal wages?
There is always work enough to be done if women are qualified to
do it, and are not above doing it. But be that as it may, the
remedy is not political, and must be found, if found at all,
elsewhere than in suffrage and eligibility.

----------

                Daybreak.

              Chapter III.

               Chez Lui.


Miss Hamilton did not go down to dinner the first day; but when
she heard Mr. Granger come in, sent a line to him, excusing
herself till evening, on the plea that she needed rest. The truth
was, however, that she shrank from first meeting the family at
table, a place which allows so little escape from embarrassment.

Her door had been left ajar; and in a few minutes she heard a
silken rustling on the stairs, then a faint tap; and at her
summons there entered a small, lily-faced woman who looked like
something that might have grown out of the pallid March evening.
The silver-gray of her trailing dress, the uncertain tints of her
hair, deepening from flaxen to pale brown, even the cobwebby
Mechlin laces she wore, so thin as to have no color of their
own--all were like light, cool shadows. This lady entered with a
dainty timidity which by no means excluded the most perfect
self-possession, but rather indicated an extreme solicitude for
the person she visited.

"Do I intrude?" she asked in a soft, hesitating way. "Mr. Granger
thought I might come up. We feared that you were ill."

Margaret was annoyed to feel herself blushing. There was
something keen in this lady's beautiful violet eyes, underneath
their superficial expression of anxious kindness.

"I am not ill, only tired," she replied. "I meant to go down
awhile after dinner."

"I am Mrs. Lewis," the stranger announced, seating herself by the
bedside. "My husband and I, and my husband's niece, Aurelia
Lewis, live here. We don't call it boarding, you know. I hope
that you will like us."

{158}

This wish was expressed in a manner so _naïve_ and earnest
that Margaret could but smile in making answer that she was quite
prepared to be pleased with everything, and that her only fear
was lest she might disturb the harmony of their circle--not by
being disagreeable in herself, but simply in being one more.

With a gesture at once graceful and kind, Mrs. Lewis touched
Margaret's hand with her slight, chilly fingers. "You are the one
more whom we want," she said; "we have been rejoicing over the
prospect of having you with us. You do not break, you complete
the circle."

Her quick ear had caught a lingering tone of pain; and she had
already found something pathetic in that thin face and those
languid eyes. Miss Hamilton did not appear to be a person likely
to disturb the empire which this lady prided herself on
exercising over their household.

"I know very little about the family," Margaret remarked. "Mr.
Granger mentioned some names. I am not sure if they were all. And
men never think of the many trifles we like to be told."

Her visitor sighed resignedly. "Certainly not--the sublime
creatures! It is the difference between fresco and miniature, you
know. Let me enlighten you a little. Besides those of us whom you
have seen, there are only Mr. Southard, my husband, and Aurelia.
We consider ourselves a very happy family. Of course, being
human, we have occasional jars; but there is always the
understanding that our real friendship is unimpaired by them. And
we defend each other like Trojans from any outside attack. We try
to manage so as to have but one angry at a time, the others
acting as peacemakers. The only one who may trouble you is my
husband. I am anxious concerning him and you."

With her head a little on one side, the lady contemplated her
companion with a look of pretty distress.

"Forewarned is forearmed," suggested Miss Hamilton.

"Why, you see," her visitor said confidentially, "Mr. Lewis is
one of those provoking beings who take a mischievous delight in
misrepresenting themselves, not for the better, but the worse. If
they see a person leaning very much in one way, they are sure to
lean very much the other way. Mr. Southard calls my husband an
infidel, whatever that is. There certainly are a great many
things which he does not believe. But one half of his scepticism
is a mere pretence to tease the minister. I hope you won't be
vexed with him. You won't when you come to know him. Sometimes I
don't altogether blame him. Of course we all admire Mr. Southard
in the most fatiguing manner; but it cannot be denied that he
does interpret and perform his duties in the preraphaelite style,
With a pitiless adherence to chapter and verse. Still, I often
think that much of his apparent severity may be in those
chiselled features of his. One is occasionally surprised by some
sign of indulgence in him, some touch of grace or tenderness. But
even while you look, the charm, without disappearing, freezes
before your eyes, like spray in winter. I don't know just what to
think of him; but I suspect that he has missed his vocation, that
he was made for a monk or a Jesuit. It would never do to breathe
such a thought to him, though. He thinks that the Pope is
Antichrist."

"And isn't he?" calmly asked the granddaughter of the Rev. Doctor
Hamilton.

Mrs. Lewis put up her hand to refasten a bunch of honey-sweet
tuberoses that were slipping from the glossy coils of her hair,
and by the gesture concealed a momentary amused twinkle of her
eyes.

{159}

"Oh! I dare say!" she replied lightly. "But such a dear,
benignant old antichrist as he is! Ages ago, when we were in
Rome, I was in the crowd before St. Peter's when the pope gave
the Easter benediction. Involuntarily I knelt with the rest; and
really, Miss Hamilton, that seemed to me the only benediction I
ever received. I did not understand my own emotion. It was quite
unexpected. Perhaps it was something in that intoxicating
atmosphere which is only half air; the other half is soul."

Margaret was silent. She had no wish to express any displeasure;
but she was shocked to hear the mystical Babylon spoken of with
toleration, and that by a descendant of the puritans.

Mrs. Lewis sat a moment with downcast eyes, aware of, and quietly
submitting to the scrutiny of the other--by no means afraid of
it, quite confident, probably, that the result would be
agreeable.

This lady was about forty years of age, delicate rather than
beautiful, with a frosty sparkle about her. Her manner was
gentleness itself; but one soon perceived something fine and
sharp beneath; a blue arrowy glance that carried home a phrase
otherwise light as a feather, a slight emphasis that made the
more obvious meaning of a word glance aside, an unnecessary
suavity of expression that led to suspicion of some pungent
hidden meaning. But with all her airy malice there was much of
genuine honesty and kind feeling. She was like a faceted gem,
showing her little glittering shield at every turn; but still a
gem.

"Aurelia is quite impatient to welcome you," she resumed softly.
"You cannot fail to like her, when you happen to think of it. She
is sweet and beautiful all through.

"Now I will leave you to take your rest, and read the note of
which Mr. Granger made me the bearer. I hope to see you this
evening."

Margaret looked after the little lady as she glided away,
glancing back from the door with a friendly smile and nod, then
disappeared, soundless save for the rustling of her dress. She
listened to that faint silken whisper on the stairs, then to the
soft shutting of the parlor door, two pushes before it latched.
Then she read her note. It was but a line. "Rest as long as you
wish to. But when you are able to come down, we all want to see
you."

She went down to the parlor after dinner, and found the whole
family there. There was yet so much of daylight that one
gentleman, sitting in a western window, was reading the evening
paper by it; but the stream of gaslight that came in from some
room at the end of the long _suite_ made a red-golden path
across the darkened back-parlor, and caught brightly here and
there on the carving of a picture, a curve of bronze or marble,
or the gilding of a book-cover, and glimmered unsteadily over a
winged Mercury that leaned out of the vague dusk and sparkle,
tiptoe, at point of flight, with lifted face and glinting eyes.

Mr. Granger stood near the door by which Margaret entered,
evidently on the watch for her; and at sight of him that slight
nervous embarrassment inseparable from her circumstances, and
from the unstrung condition of her mind and body, instantly died
away. To her he was strength, courage, and protection. Shielded
by his friendship, she feared nothing.

Mrs. Lewis and Dora met her like old friends; that florid
gentleman with English side-whiskers she guessed to be Mr. Lewis;
and she recognized that fine profile clear against the opaline
west.

{160}

Mr. Southard came forward at once, scarcely waiting for an
introduction.

"A granddaughter of the Rev. Doctor Hamilton?" he said with
emphasis. "I am happy to see you."

Miss Hamilton received tranquilly his cordial salutation, and
mentally consigned it to the manes of her grandfather.

Mr. Lewis got up out of his armchair, and bowed lowly. "Madam,"
he said with great deliberation, "I do not in the least care who
your grandfather was. I am glad to see _you_."

"Thank you!" said Margaret.

The gentleman settled rather heavily into his chair again. He was
one of those who would rather sit than stand. Margaret turned to
meet his niece, who was offering her hand, and murmuring some
word of welcome. She looked at Aurelia Lewis with delight,
perceiving then what Mrs. Lewis had meant in saying that her
husband's niece was sweet and beautiful all through. The girl
radiated loveliness. She was a blonde, with deep ambers and
browns in her hair and eyes, looking like some translucent
creature shone through by rich sunset lights too soft for
brilliancy. She was large, suave, a trifle sirupy, perhaps, but
sweet to the core, had no salient points in her disposition, but
a charmingly liquid way of adapting herself to the angles of
others. If the looks and manners of Mrs. Lewis were faceted,
those of her husband's niece were what jewelers' call _en
cabochon_. What Aurelia said was nothing. She was not a
reportable person. What she _was_ was delicious.

"I remember Doctor Hamilton very well," Mr. Lewis said when the
ladies had finished their compliments. "He was one of those men
who make religion respectable. He held some pretty hard
doctrines; but he believed every one of 'em, and held 'em with a
grip. The last time I saw him was seven or eight years ago, just
before his death. They had up their everlasting petition before
the legislature here, for the abolition of capital punishment;
and a committee was appointed to attend to the matter. I went up
to one of their hearings. There were Phillips, Pierpont, Andrew,
Spear, and a lot of other smooth-tongued, soft-hearted fellows
who didn't want the poor, dear murderers to be hanged; and on the
other side were Doctor Hamilton with his eyes and his cane,
common sense, Moses and the decalogue. They had rather a rough
time of it. Andrew called your grandfather an old fogy, over some
one else's shoulders; and Phillips tilted over Moses, tables and
all, with that sharp lance of his. But Doctor Hamilton stood
there as firm as a rock, and beat them all out. He had the glance
of an eagle, and a way of swinging his arm about, when he was in
earnest, that looked as if it wouldn't take much provocation to
make him hit straight out. Phillips said something that he didn't
like, and the doctor stamped at him. Well, the upshot of the
matter was, that capital punishment was not abolished that year,
thanks to one tough, intrepid old man."

"My grandfather was very resolute," said Margaret, with a slight,
proud smile.

"Yes," answered Mr. Lewis, "he would have made a prime soldier,
if he hadn't made the mistake of being a doctor of divinity."

"The church needed his authoritative speech," said Mr. Southard,
with decision. "To the minister of God belongs the voice of
denunciation as well as the voice of prayer."

{161}

Mr. Lewis gave his moustache an impatient twitch.

Mr. Granger seized the first opportunity to speak aside to
Margaret. "You like these people? You are contented?" he asked
hastily.

"Yes, and yes," she replied.

"You think that you will feel at home when you have become better
acquainted with them?" he pursued.

"It seems to me that I have always lived here," she answered,
smiling. "There is not the least strangeness. Indeed, surprising
things, if they are pleasant, never surprise me. I am always
expecting miracles. It is only painful or trivial events which
find me incredulous and ill at ease."

The chandeliers were lighted, and the windows closed; but,
according to their pleasant occasional custom, the curtains were
not drawn for a while yet. If any person in the street took
pleasure in seeing this family gathering, they were welcome.

Mrs. Lewis broke a few sprays from a musk-vine over-starred with
yellow blossoms, and twined them into a wreath as she slowly
approached the two who were standing near a book-case. "_Vive
le roi!_" she said, lifting the wreath to the marble brows of
a Shakespeare that stood on the lower shelf.

Margaret glanced along a row of blue and brown covers, and
exclaimed, "My Brownings! all hail! there they are!"

"You also!" said Mrs. Lewis, with a grimace. "Own, now, that they
jolt horribly--that the Browning Pegasus is a racker, and that
the Browning road up Parnassus is macadamized with--well,
diamonds, if you will, but diamonds in the rough. True, the hoofs
do make dents; they do dash over the ground with a four-footed
trampling; but--" a shrug and a shiver completed the sentence.

"Mrs. Browning needs a lapidary," Mr. Granger said; "but her
husband's constipated style is a necessity. His books are books
of quintessences. At first I thought him suggestive; but soon
perceived that he was stimulating instead. He seems to have
brushed a subject. Look again, and you will see that he has
exhausted it."

Margaret read the titles of the books, and in them read, also,
something of the minds of her new associates. There were a few
shining names from each of the great nations, and a good
selection of English and American authors, the patriarchs in
their places. She had a word for each, but thought, "I wonder why
I like Lowell, almost in silence, yet like him best."

Near this was another case of books, all Oriental, or relating to
the Orient. There were the Talmud and the Koran; there were
hideous mythologies full of propitiatory prayers to the devil.
There were _Vathek, The Arabian Nights, Ferdousi_, and a
hundred others. Over this case hung an oval water-color of sea
and sky with a rising sun blazing at the horizon, lighting with
flickering gold a path across the blue, liquid expanse, and
flooding with light the ethereal spaces. On a scroll beneath this
was inscribed, "Ex Oriente Lux."

"Light and hasheesh," said Mr. Southard laughingly. "Don't linger
there too long."

Mr. Granger called Dora to him. "What has my little girl been
learning to-day?" he asked.

The little one's eyes flashed with a sudden, glorious
recollection. "O papa! I can spell cup."

The father was suitably astonished.

"Is it possible? Let me hear."

The child raised her eyebrows, and played the coquette with her
erudition. "You spell it," she said tauntingly.

{162}

Mr. Granger leaned back in his chair, and knitted his brows in
intense study. "T-a-s-s-e, cup."

"No-o, papa," said the fairy at his knee.

"T-a-z-z-a, cup!" he essayed again.

Dora shook her flossy curls.

"T-a-z-a, cup!" he said desperately.

The child looked at him with tears in her eyes.

"Oh!" he said, "c-u-p, cup!" at which she screamed with delight.

"How blue it sounds," said Margaret. "Like a Canterbury bell with
a handle to it."

A tray was brought in with coffee, which was Dora's signal to go
to bed. She took an affectionate leave of all, but hid her face
in Margaret's neck in saying good night.

"Who was the little girl in the picture?" she whispered.

"It was you, dear," was the reply.

"I keeped thinking of it this ever so long," said the child.

Her father always accompanied her to the foot of the stairs; and
the two went out together, Dora clinging to his hand, which she
held against her cheek, and he looking down upon her with a fond
smile.

Margaret shrank with a momentary spasm of pain and terror, as she
looked after them. How fearful is that clinging love which human
beings have for each other! how terrible, since, sooner or later,
they must part; since, at any instant, the hand of fate may be
outstretched to snatch them asunder!

"Are you ill?" whispered Aurelia, touching her arm.

Margaret started, and recollected herself with an effort; then
smiled without an effort; for the door opened, and Mr. Granger
came in again, glancing first at her, then coming to sit near
her.

"I have found out the origin of coffee," Mrs. Lewis said. "It is,
or is capable of being, a Mohammedan legend. I will tell you.
When Mother Eve, to whom be peace! fell, after her sin, from the
seventh heaven, and was precipitated to earth, as she slipped
over the verge of Paradise, she instinctively flung out her arm,
and caught at a shrub with milk-white blossoms that grew there.
It broke in her hand. She fell into Arabia, near Mocha. The
branch that fell with her took root and grew, and had blossoms
with five petals, as white as the beautiful Mother's five
fingers. And that's the history of coffee. Aura, give me a cup
without delay. That story was salt."

"Why should we not have sentiments with so wonderful a draught?"
Mr. Granger said. "Propose anything. Shall I begin? I have been
reading the European news. Victor Emmanuel is dawning like a sun
over Italy. I propose Rome, the dead lion, with honey for
Samson."

Mr. Lewis pushed out his underlip. He always scouted at
republicans, red or black.

"I follow you," he said immediately, with a sly glance at Mr.
Southard. "Rome, the rock that does not crack, though all the
bores blast it."

There was a momentary pause, during which the eyes of the
minister scintillated. Then he exclaimed, "Luther, the Moses at
the stroke of whose rod the rock was rent, and the gospel waters
loosed."

"Ah! Luther!" endorsed Mr. Lewis with an affectation of
enthusiasm. "Greater than Nimrod, he built a Babel which babbles
to the ends of the earth."

Mr. Southard flashed out, "Yes; and every tongue can spell the
word Bible, sir!"

"And deny its plainest teachings," was the retort; "and vilify
the hand that preserved it!"

{163}

"Now, Charles," interposed Mrs. Lewis, touching her husband's
arm, "why will you say what you do not mean, just for the sake of
being disagreeable? You know, Mr. Southard, that he cares no more
for Rome than he does for Pekin, and knows no more about it,
indeed. The fact is, he has the greatest respect for our
church--may I say _militant_?"

"Sweet peacemaker!" exclaimed Mr. Lewis, delighted with the neat
little sting at the end of his wife's speech.

Aurelia lifted her cup, and interposed with a laughing quotation:

"'Here's a health to all those that we love. Here's a health to
all them that love us. Here's a health to all those that love
them that love those that love them that love those that love
us.'"

This was drunk with acclamations, and peace restored.

After a while Mr. Lewis managed, or happened, to find Margaret
apart.

"I protest I never had a worse opinion of myself than I have
tonight," he said. "There I had promised Louis and my wife to let
religion alone, and not get up a skirmish with the minister for
at least a week after you came; and I meant to keep my promise.
But you see what my resolutions are worth. I am sincerely sorry
if I have vexed you."

He looked so sorry, and spoke so frankly, that Margaret could not
help giving him a pleasant answer, though she had been
displeased.

"The fact is," he went on, lowering his voice, "I have seen so
much cant, and hypocrisy, and inconsistency in religion that it
has disgusted me with the whole business. I may go too far. I
don't doubt that there are honest men and women in the churches;
but to my mind they are few and far between. I've nothing to say
against Mr. Southard, and I don't want any one else to speak
against him. I say uglier things to his face than I would say
behind his back. He's a good man, according to his light; but you
must permit me to say that it is a Bengal-light to my eyes. I
can't stand it. It turns me blue all through."

"Perhaps you do not understand him," Margaret suggested. "May be
you haven't given him a chance to explain."

"I tried to be fair," was the reply. "Now Southard," said I,
"tell me what you want me to believe, and I'll believe if I can."
Well, the first thing he told me was, that I must give up my
reason. 'By George, I won't!' said I, and there was an end to the
catechism. Of course, if I set my reason aside, I might be made
to believe that chalk is cheese. Perhaps I am stubborn and
material, as he says; but I am what God made me; and I won't
pretend to be anything else. I believe that there is somewhere a
way for us all--a way that we shall know is right, when once we
get into it. These fishers of men ought to remember that whales
are not caught with trout-hooks, and that it isn't the whale's
fault if there's a good deal of blubber to get through before you
reach the inside of him. St. Paul let fly some pretty sharp
harpoons. I can't get 'em out of me for my life. And, for another
kind of man, I like Beecher. His bait isn't painted flies, but
fish, a piece of yourself. But the trouble with him is, there's
no barb on his catch. You slip off as easily as you get on."

Margaret was glad when the others interposed and put an end to
this talk. To her surprise, she had nothing to reply to Mr.
Lewis's objections. And not only that, but, while he spoke, she
perceived in her own mind a faint echo to his dissatisfaction. Of
course it must be wrong, and she was glad to have the
conversation put an end to.

{164}

They had music, Aurelia playing with a good deal of taste some
perfectly harmless pieces. While she listened, Miss Hamilton's
glance wandered about the rooms, finding them quite to her taste.
The first impertinent gloss of everything had worn off, and each
article had mellowed into its place, like the colors of an old
picture. There was none of that look we sometimes see, of
everything having been dipped into the same paint-pot. The
furniture was rich in material and beautiful in shape; the
upholstery a heavy silk and wool, the colors deep and harmonious,
nothing too fine for use. The dull amber of the walls was nearly
covered with pictures, book-cases, cabinets, and brackets; there
was every sort of table, from the two large central ones with
black marble tops, piled with late books and periodicals, to the
tiny teapoys that could be lifted on a finger, marvels of gold,
and japanning, and ingenious Chinese perspective. On the black
marble mantel-piece near her were a pair of silver candelebra,
heirlooms in the family, and china vases of glowing colors,
purple, and rose, and gold. There was more bronze than parian;
there were curtains wherever curtains could be; and withal, there
was plentiful space to get about, and for the ladies to display
their trains.

All this her first glance took in with a sense of pleasure. Then
she looked deeper, and perceived friendship, ease, security, all
that make the soul of home. Deeper yet, then, to the vague
longing for a love, a security, a rest exceeding the earthly. One
who has suffered much can never again feel quite secure, but
shrinks from delight almost as much as from pain.

She turned to Mr. Southard, who sat beside her. "I am thinking
how miserably we are the creatures of circumstance," she said, in
her earnestness forgetting how abrupt she might seem. "When we
are troubled, everything is dark; when we are happy, everything
that approaches casts its shadow behind, and shows a sunny
front."

He regarded her kindly, pleased with her almost confidential
manner. "There is but one escape from such slavery," he said.
"When we set the sun of righteousness in the zenith of our lives,
then shadows are annihilated, not hidden, but annihilated."

When Margaret went up-stairs that night, she knelt before her
open window, and leaned out, feeling, rather than seeing, the
brooding, starless sky, soft and shadowy, like wings over a nest.
Her soul uplifted itself blindly, almost painfully, beating
against its ignorance. There was something out of sight and
reach, which she wanted to see and to touch. There was one hidden
whom she longed to thank and adore.

"O brooding wings!" she whispered, stretching out her hands. "O
father and mother-bird over the nest where the little ones lie in
the sweet, sweet dark!"

Words failed. She knew not what to say. "I wish that I could
pray!" she thought, tears overflowing her eyes.

Margaret did not know that she had prayed.


            Chapter IV.

         Just Before Light.


The days were well arranged in the Granger mansion. Breakfast was
a movable feast, and silent for the most part. The members of the
family broke their fast when and as they liked, often with a book
or paper for company.

{165}

Most persons feel disinclined to talk in the morning, and are
social only from necessity. This household recognized and
respected the instinct. One could always hold one's tongue there.
If they did not follow the old Persian rule never to speak till
one had something to say worth hearing, they at least kept
silence when they felt so inclined.

Luncheon was never honored by the presence of the gentlemen,
except that on rare occasions Mr. Southard came out of his study
to join the ladies, who by this time had found their tongues.
They preferred his usual custom of taking a scholarly cup of tea
in the midst of his books.

To the natural woman an occasional gossip is a necessity; and if
ever these three ladies indulged in that pardonable weakness, it
was over their luncheon. At six o'clock all met at dinner, and
passed the evening together. This disposition of time left the
greater part of the day free, for each one to spend as he chose,
and brought them together again at the close of the day, more or
lest tired, always glad to meet, often with something to say.

Margaret found herself fully and pleasantly occupied. Besides
translating, she had again set up her easel, and spent an hour or
two daily at her former pretty employment. The value of her
services increased, she found, in proportion as she grew
indifferent to rendering them; and she could now select her own
work, and dictate terms. But her most delightful occupation was
the teaching her three little pupils.

There are two ways of teaching children. One is to seek to impose
on them our own individuality, to dogmatize, in utter
unconsciousness that they are the most merciless of critics,
frequently the keenest of observers, and that they do not so much
lack ideas, as the power of expression. Such teachers climb on to
a pedestal, and talk complacently downward at pupils who,
perhaps, do not in the least consider them classical personages.
We cannot impose on children unless we can dazzle them, sometimes
not even then.

The other mode is to stand on their own platform, and talk up,
not logically, according to Kant or Hamilton, but in that
circuitous and inconsequent manner which is often the most
effectual logic with children. We all know that the greatest
precision of aim is attained through a spiral bore; and perhaps
these young minds oftener reach the mark in that indirect manner,
than they would by any more formal process.

This was Miss Hamilton's mode of teaching and influencing
children, and it was as fascinating to her as to them. She
treated them with respect, never laughed at their crude ideas,
did not require of them a self-control difficult for an adult to
practice, and never forgot that some ugly duck might turn out to
be a swan. But where she did assert authority, she was absolute;
and she was merciless to insolence and disobedience.

"I want cake. I don't like bread and butter," says Dora.

Mrs. James fired didactic platitudes at the child, Aurelia
coaxed, and Mrs. Lewis preached hygiene. Miss Hamilton knew
better than either. She sketched a bright word-picture of waving
wheat-fields over-buzzed by bees, over-fluttered by birds,
starred through and through with little intrusive flowers that
had no business whatever there, but were let stay; of the shaking
mill where the wheat was ground, and the gay stream that laughed,
and set its shining shoulder to the great wheel, and pushed, and
ran away, blind with foam; of the yeasty sponge, a pile of milky
bubbles.
{166}
She told of sweet clover-heads, red and white, and the cow and
the bees seeing who should get them first. 'I want them for my
honey,' says the bee. 'And I want them for my cream,' says Mooly.
And they both made a snatch, and Mooly got the clover, and
perhaps a purple violet with it, and the cream got the sweetness
of them, and then it was churned, and there was the butter! She
described the clean, cool dairy, full of a ceaseless flicker of
light and shade from the hop-vines that swung outside the window,
and waved the humming-birds away, of pans and pans of yellow
cream, smooth and delicious, of fresh butter just out of the
churn, glowing like gold through its bath of water, of pink and
white petals of apple-blossoms drifting in on the soft breeze,
and settling--"who knows but a pink, crimped-up-at-the-edges
petal may have settled on this very piece of butter? Try, now, if
it doesn't taste apple-blossomy."

Nonsense, of course, when viewed from a dignified altitude; but
when looked up at from a point about two feet from the ground, it
was the most excellent sense imaginable. To these three little
girls, Dora, Agnes, and Violet, Miss Hamilton was a goddess.

Margaret did not neglect her own mind in those happy days. Mr.
Southard marked out for her a course of reading in which, it is
true, poetry and fiction, with a few shining exceptions, were
tabooed; but metaphysics was permitted; and history enjoined tome
upon tome, striking octaves up the centuries, and dying away in
tinkling mythologies. She read conscientiously, sometimes with
pleasure, sometimes with a half-acknowledged weariness.

Mr. Southard was a severe Mentor. As he did not spare himself, so
he did not spare others, still less Margaret. She failed to
perceive, what was plain to the others, that, by virtue of her
descent, he considered her his especial charge, and was trying to
form her after his notions. She acquiesced in all his
requirements, half from indifference, half from a desire to
please everybody, since she was herself so well pleased; and then
forgot all about him. It was out of his power to trouble her save
for a moment.

"You yield too much to that man," Mrs. Lewis said to her one day.
"He is one of those positive persons who cannot help being
tyrannical."

"He has a fine mind," said Margaret absently.

"Yes," the lady acknowledged in a pettish tone. "But if he would
send a few pulses up to irrigate his brain, it would be an
improvement."

Of course Mr. Southard spoke of religion to his pupil, and urged
on her the duty of being united with the church.

"I cannot be religious, as the church requires," she said
uneasily, dreading lest he might overcome her will without
convincing her reason. "I think that it is something cabalistic."

"Your grandfather, and your father and mother did not find it
so," the minister said reprovingly.

Margaret caught her breath with pain, and lifted her hand in a
quick, silencing gesture. "I never bury my dead!" she said; and
after a moment added, "It may be wrong, but this religion seems
to me like a strait-jacket. I like to read of David dancing
before the ark, of dervishes whirling, of Shakers clapping their
hands, of Methodists singing at the tops of their voices 'Glory
Hallelujah!' or falling into trances. Religion is not fervent
enough for me. It does not express my feelings. I hardly know
what I need. Perhaps I am all wrong."

{167}

She stopped, her eyes filling with tears of vexation.

But even as the drops started, they brightened; for, just in
season to save her from still more pressing exhortation, Mr.
Granger sauntered across the room, and put some careless question
to the minister.

Mr. Southard recollected that he had to lecture that evening, and
left the room to prepare himself.

"I am so glad you came!" Margaret said, "I was on the point of
being bound, and gagged, and blindfolded."

Mr. Granger took the chair that the minister had vacated, and
drew up to him a little stand on which he leaned his arms, "I
perceived that I was needed," he said. "There was no mistaking
your besieged expression; and I saw, too, that look in Mr.
Southard's face which tells that he is about to pile up an
insurmountable argument. I do not think that you will be any
better for having religious discussions with him. You will only
be fretted and uneasy. Mr. Southard is an excellent man, and a
sincere Christian; but he is in danger of mistaking his own
temperament for a dogma."

"If I thought that, then I shouldn't mind so much," Margaret
said. "But I have been taking for granted that he is right and I
wrong, and trying to let him think for me. The result is, that
instead of being convinced, I have only been irritated. I must
think for myself, whether I wish to or not. Now he circumscribes
my reading so. It is miscellaneous, I know; but I am curious
about everything in the universe. I don't like closed doors. He
thinks my curiosity trivial and dangerous, and reminds me that a
rolling stone gathers no moss."

"And I would ask, with the canny Scotchman,'what good does the
moss do the stone?'" Mr. Granger replied. "The fact is, you've
got to do just as I did with him. He and I fought that battle out
long ago, and now he lets me alone, and we are good friends. Be
as curious as you like. I heard him speak with disapproval of
your going to the Jewish synagogue last week, and I dare say you
resolved not to go again. Go, if you wish; and don't ask his
permission. He frowned on the Greek anthology, and you laid it
aside. Take it up again if you like. Even pagan flowers catch the
dews of heaven. Your own good taste and delicacy will be a
sufficient censor in matters of reading."

"Now I breathe!" Margaret said joyfully. "Some people can bear to
be so hemmed in; but I cannot. It does me harm. If I am denied a
drop of water, which, given, would satisfy me, at once I thirst
for the ocean. I cannot help it. It is my way."

"Don't try to help it," Mr. Granger replied decisively; "or,
above all, don't allow any one else to try to help it for you. I
have no patience with such impositions. It is an insult to
humanity, and an insult to Him who created humanity, for any one
person to attempt to think for another. Obedience and humility
are good only when they are voluntary, and are practised at the
mandate of reason. There are people who never go out of a certain
round, never want to. They are born, they live, and they die, in
the mental and moral domicil of their forefathers. They have no
orbit, but only an axis. Stick a precedent through them, and give
them a twirl, and they will hum on contentedly to the end of the
chapter. I've nothing against them, as long as they let others
alone, and don't insist that to stay in one place and buzz is the
end of humanity.
{168}
Other people there are who grow, they are insatiably curious,
they dive to the heart of things, they take nothing without a
question. They are not quite satisfied with truth itself till
they have compared it with all that claims to be truth. Let them
look, I say. It's a poor truth that won't bear any test that man
can put to it. The first are, as Coleridge says, 'very positive,
but not quite certain' that they are right; to the last a
conviction once won is perfect and indestructible. Rest with them
is not vegetation, but rapture.

"Fly abroad, my wild bird! don't be afraid. Use your wings. That
is what they were made for."

Margaret forgot to answer in listening and looking at the
speaker's animated face. When Mr. Granger was in earnest, he had
an impetuous way that carried all before it. At the end, his
shining eyes dropped on her and seemed to cover her with light;
the impatient ring in his voice softened to an indulgent
tenderness. Margaret felt as a flower may feel that has its fill
of sun and dew, and has nothing to do but bloom, and then fade
away. She had no fear of this man, no sense of humiliation with
regard to the past. Her gratitude toward him was boundless. To
him she owed life and all that made life tolerable, and any
devotion which he could require of her she was ready to render.
Her friendship was perfect, deep, frank, and full of a silent
delight. She did not deify him, but was satisfied to find him
human. He could speak a cross word if his beef was over-done, his
coffee too weak, or his paper out of the way when he wanted it.
He could criticise people occasionally, and laugh at their
weakness, even when his kind heart reproached him for doing it.
He liked to lounge on a sofa and read, when he had better be
about his business. He needed rousing, she thought; was too much
of a Sybarite to live in a world full of over-worked people.
Perhaps he was rusting. But how kind and thoughtful he was; how
full of sympathy when sympathy was needed; how generously he
blamed himself when he was wrong, and how readily forgot the
faults of others. How impossible it was for him to be mean or
selfish! His rich, sweet, slow nature reminded her of a rose; but
she felt intuitively that under that silence was hidden a heroic
strength.

Mr. Southard's lecture was on the Jesuits; and all the family
were to go and hear him.

"Terribly hot weather for such a subject," Mr. Lewis grumbled.
"But it wouldn't be respectful not to go. Don't forget to take
your smelling-salts, girls. There will be a strong odor of
brimstone in the entertainment.

Margaret went to the lecture with a feeling that was almost fear.
To her the name of Jesuit was a terror. The day of those
powerful, guileful men was passed, surely; and yet, what if, in
the strange vicissitudes of life, they should revive again? She
was glad that the minister was going to raise his warning voice;
yet still, she dreaded to hear him. The subject was too exciting.

The lecture was what might be expected. Beginning with Ignatius
of Loyola, the speaker traced the progress of that unique and
powerful society through its wonderful increase, and its
downfall, to the present time, when as he said, the bruised
serpent was again raising its head.

{169}

Mr. Southard did full justice to their learning, their sagacity,
and their zeal. He told with a sort of shrinking admiration how
men possessed of tastes and accomplishments which fitted them to
shine in the most cultivated society, buried themselves in
distant and heathen lands, far removed from all human sympathy,
hardened their scholarly hands with toil, encountered danger,
suffered death--for what? That their society might prosper! The
subject seemed to have for the speaker a painful fascination. He
lingered while describing the unparalleled devotion, the
pernicious enthusiasm of these men. He acknowledged that they
proclaimed the name of Christ where it had never been heard
before; he lamented that ministers of the gospel had not emulated
their heroism; but there the picture was over-clouded, was vailed
in blackness. It needed so much brightness in order that the
darkness which followed might have its full effect.

We all know what pigments are used in that Plutonian
shading--mental reservation, probableism, and the doctrine that
the end justifies the means; the latter a fiction, the two former
scrupulously misrepresented.

Here Mr. Southard was at home. Here he could denounce with fiery
indignation, point with lofty scorn. The close of the lecture
left the characters of the Jesuits as black as their robes. They
had been lifter only to be cast down.

Miss Hamilton walked home with Mr. Granger, scarcely uttering a
word the whole way.

"You do not speak of the lecture," he said when they were at the
house steps. "Has it terrified you so much that you dare not?
Shall you start up from sleep to-night fancying that a great
black Jesuit has come to carry you off?"

"Do you know, Mr. Granger," she said slowly, "those men seem to
me very much like the apostles; in their devotion, I mean? I
would like to read about them. They are interesting."

"Oh! they have, doubtless, books which will tell you all you want
to know," he replied.

"_They!_" repeated Margaret. "But I want to know the truth."
Mr. Granger laughed. "Then I advise you to read nothing, and hear
nothing."

"How then shall I learn?" demanded Miss Hamilton with a touch of
impatience.

"Descend into the depth of your consciousness, as the German did
when he wanted to make a correct drawing of an elephant."

"No," she replied remembering the story, "I will imitate the
Frenchman; I will go to the elephant's country, and draw from
life."

"That is not difficult," Mr. Granger said, amused at the idea of
Miss Hamilton studying the Jesuits. "These elephants have jungles
the world over. In this city you may find one on Endicott street,
another on Suffolk street, and a third on Harrison avenue."

They were just entering the house. Margaret hesitated, and paused
in the entry.

"You do not think this a foolish curiosity?" she asked wistfully.
"You see no harm in my wishing to know something more about
them?"

Mr. Granger was leaving his hat and gloves on the table. He
turned immediately, surprised at the serious manner in which the
question was put.

"Surely not!" he said promptly. "I should be very inconsistent if
I did."

She stood an instant longer, her face perfectly grave and pale.

"You are afraid?" he asked smiling.

{170}

"No," she replied hesitatingly, "I don't think that is it. But I
have all my life had such a horror of Catholics, and especially
of Jesuits, that to resolve even to look at them deliberately,
seems almost as momentous a step as Caesar crossing the Rubicon."


                   Chapter V.

       The Sword Of The Lord And Of Gideon.

Boston, at the beginning of the war, was not a place to go to
sleep in. Massachusetts politics, so long eminent in the senate,
had at last taken the field; and that city, which is the brain of
the State, effervesced with enthusiasm. Men the least heroic,
apparently, showed themselves capable of heroism; and dreamers
over the great deeds of others looked up to find that they might
themselves be "the hymn the Brahmin sings."

Eager crowds surrounded the bulletin, put out by newspaper
offices, or ran to gaze at mustering or departing regiments.
Windows filled at the sound of a fife and drum; and it seemed
that the air was fit to be breathed only when it was full of the
flutter of flags.

Ceremony was set aside. Strangers and foes spoke to each other;
and the most disdainful lady would smile upon the roughest
uniform. From the Protestant pulpit came no more the exhortation
to brotherly love, but the trumpet-call to arms; and under the
wing of the Old South meeting-house rose a recruiting office, and
a rostrum, with the motto, "The sword of the Lord and of Gideon."

The Lord of that time was he at the touch of whose rod the flesh
and the loaves were consumed with fire; who sent for a sign a
drench of dew on the fleece; at the command of whose servant all
Ephraim shouted and took the waters before the flying Midianites,
with the heads of Oreb and of Zeb on their spears.

Of course there was a good deal of froth; but underneath glowed
the pure wine. It is true that many went because the savage
instinct hidden in human nature rose from its unseen lair, and
fiercely shook itself awake at the scent of blood. But others
came from an honest sense of duty, and offered their lives
knowing what they did; and women who loved them said amen. It was
a stirring time.

It is not to be supposed that our friends were indifferent to
these events. It was a doubtful point with them, indeed, whether
they could be content to leave the city that summer. Mr. Southard
was decidedly for remaining in town; and Mr. Granger, though less
excited, was inclined to second him. But Mr. Lewis had, early in
the spring, engaged a cottage at the seaside, with the
understanding that the whole family were to accompany him there,
and he utterly refused to release them from their promise. As if
to help his arguments, the weather became intensely hot in June.
Finally they consented to go.

"We owe you thanks for your persistence," Mr. Granger said, as
they sat together the last evening of their stay in town. "I
couldn't stand two months of this."

Mr. Lewis was past answering. Dressed in a complete suit of
linen, seated in a wide Fayal chair, with a palm-leaf fan in one
hand and a handkerchief in the other, he presented what his wife
called an ill-tempered dissolving view. At that moment, the only
desire of his heart was that one of Sydney Smith's, that he could
take off his flesh and sit in his bones.

{171}

Aurelia and Margaret sat near by, flushed, smiling, and languid,
trying to look cool in their crisp, white dresses.

Miss Hamilton would scarcely be recognized by one who had seen
her only three months before. Happiness had done its work, and
she was beautiful. Her face had recovered its smooth curves and
bloomy whiteness, and her lips were constantly brightening with
the smile that was ever ready to come.

Mr. Granger contemplated the two young ladies with a patriarchal
admiration. He liked to have beautiful objects in his sight; and
surely, he thought, no other man in the city could boast of
having in his family two such girls as those who now sat opposite
him. Besides, what was best, they were friends of his, and
regarded him with confidence and affection.

Mrs. Lewis glanced from them to him, and back to them, and pouted
her lip a little. "He is enough to try the patience of a saint!"
she was thinking. "Why doesn't he marry one of those girls like a
sensible man? To be sure, it is their fault. They are too
friendly and frank with him, the simpletons! There they sit and
beam on him with affectionate tranquillity, as if he were their
grandfather. I'd like to give 'em a shaking."

Mr. Southard was walking slowly to and fro from the back-parlor
to the front, and he, too, glanced frequently at the sofa where
sat the two unconscious beauties. But no smile softened his pale
face. It seemed, indeed, sterner than usual. The war was stirring
the minister to the depths.

Mr. Lewis opened a blind near him. A beam of dusty gold came in
from the west; he snapped the blind in its face.

"Seems to me it takes the sun a long time to get down," he said
crossly. "I hope that none of your mighty Joshuas has commanded
it to stand still."

No one answered. They sat in the sultry gloaming, and listened
dreamily to the mingled city noises that came from near and far;
the softened roll of a private carriage, like the touch of a
gloved hand, after the knuckled grasp of drays and carts; the
irritating wheeze of an inexorable hand-organ; and, through all,
the shrill cry of the news-boy, the cicada of the city.

The good-breeding of the company was shown by the perfect
composure of their silence, and the perfect quiescence of their
minds, by the fact that their thoughts all drifted in the same
direction, each one after its own mode.

Mrs. Lewis was thinking: "Those poor horses! I wish they knew
enough to organize a strike, and all run away into the green,
shady country."

The husband was saying relentingly to himself, "I declare I do
pity the poor fellows who have to work during this infernal
weather."

The others were still more in harmony with Mr. Granger when he
spoke lowly, half to himself:

"If that beautiful idyl of Ruskin's could be realized; that
country and government where the king should be the father of his
people; where all alike should go to him for help and comfort;
where he should find his glory, not in enlarging his dominion,
but in making it more happy and peaceful! Will such a kingdom
ever be, I wonder? Will such a golden age ever come?"

Margaret glanced with a swift smile toward Mr. Southard, and saw
the twin of her thought in his face. He came and stood with his
hand on the arm of her sofa.

{172}

"Both you and Mr. Ruskin are unconsciously thinking of the same
thing," he said, with some new sweetness in his voice, and
brightness in his face. "What you mean can only be the kingdom of
God; and it will come! it will come!"

Looking up smilingly at him, Margaret caught a smile in return;
and then, for the first time, she thought that Mr. Southard was
beautiful. The cold purity of his face was lighted momentarily by
that glow which it needed in order to be attractive.

Aurelia rose, and crossing the room, flung the blinds open. The
sun had set, and a slight coolness was creeping up.

"This butchery going on at the South looks as if the kingdom of
God were coming with a vengeance," said Mr. Lewis, fanning
himself.

"It is coming with a vengeance!" exclaimed Mr. Southard. "God
does not work in sunshine alone. Job saw him in the whirlwind.
Massachusetts soldiers have gone out with the Bible as well as
the bayonet."

Mr. Lewis contemplated the speaker with an expression of
wondering admiration that was a little overdone.

"What _did_ God do before Massachusetts was discovered?" he
exclaimed.

"I was surprised to hear, Mr. Granger, that your cousin Sinclair
had joined a New York regiment," Mrs. Lewis said hastily. "Only
the day before the steamer sailed in which he had engaged
passage, some quixotic whim seized him, and he volunteered. I
cannot conceive what induced him."

"I think the uniform was becoming," Mr. Granger said dryly.

"I pity his wife," pursued the lady, sighing. "Poor Caroline!"

"She has acted like a fool!" Mr. Lewis broke in angrily. "It was
her fault that Sinclair went off. She thorned him perpetually
with her exactions. She forgot that lovers are only common folks
in a state of evaporation, and that it is in the nature of things
that they should get condensed after a time. She wanted him to be
for ever picking up her pocket-handkerchief, and writing
acrostics on her name. A man can't stand that kind of folderol
when he's got to be fifty years old. We begin to develop a taste
for common sense when we reach that age."

"He showed no confidence in her," Mrs. Lewis said, with downcast
eyes, "He often deceived her, and therefore she always suspected
him."

"I think that a man should have no concealments from his wife,"
said Mr. Southard emphatically.

"That's just what Samson's wife thought when her husband proposed
his little conundrum to the Philistines," commented Mr. Lewis.

Margaret got up and followed Aurelia to the window.

"I am very sorry for Cousin Caroline," said Mr. Granger, in his
stateliest manner, rising, also, and putting an end to the
discussion.

"He is always sorry for any one who can contrive to appear
abused," Mr. Lewis said to Margaret. "If you want to interest
him, you must be as unfortunate as you can."

Margaret looked at her friend with eyes to which the quick tears
started, and blessed him in her heart.

He was passing at the moment, and, catching the remark, feared
lest she might be hurt or embarrassed.

"Don't you want to come out on to the veranda?" he asked,
glancing back as he stepped from the long window.

The words were nothing; but they were so steeped in the kindness
of the look and tone accompanying them that they seemed to be
words of tenderness.

{173}

She followed him out into the twilight; the others came too, and
they sat looking into the street, saying little, but enjoying the
refreshing coolness. Other people were at their windows, or on
their steps; and occasionally an acquaintance passing stopped for
a word. After a while G----, the liberator, came along, and
leaned on the fence a moment--a man with a ridge over the top of
his bald head, that looked as if his backbone didn't mean to stop
till it had reached his forehead, as probably it didn't; a
soft-voiced, gently-speaking lion; but Margaret had heard him
roar.

"Mr. G----," said Mr. Granger, "here is a lady with two dactyls
for a name, Miss Margaret Hamilton. She will add another, and be
Miriam, when your people come out through the Red Sea we are
making."

"Have your cymbals ready, young prophetess," said the liberator.
"The waters are lifting on the right hand and on the left."



The next day they went to the seaside, the ladies going in the
morning to set things in order; the gentlemen not permitted to
make their appearance till evening.

After a pleasant ride of an hour in the cars, they stepped out at
a little way-station, where a carriage was awaiting them. About
half a mile from this station, on a point of land hidden from it
by a strip of thick woods, was their cottage.

The place was quite solitary; not a house in sight landward,
though summer cottages nestled all about among the hills, hidden
in wild green nooks. But across the water, towns were visible in
all directions.

They drove with soundless wheels over a moist, brown road that
wound and coiled through the woods. There had been a shower in
the night that left everything washed, and the sky cloudless. It
was yet scarcely ten o'clock; and the air, though warm, was fresh
and still. The morning sunshine lay across the road, motionless
between the motionless dense tree-shadows; both light and shade
so still, so intense, they looked like a pavement of solid gold
and amber. If, at intervals, a slight motion woke the woods, less
like a breeze than a deep and gentle respiration of nature, and
that leaf-and-flower-wrought pavement stirred through each
glowing abaciscus, it was as though the solid earth were stirred.

A faint sultry odor began to rise from the pine-tops, and from
clumps of sweet-fern that stood in sunny spots; but the rank,
long-stemmed flowers and trailing vines that grew under the trees
were yet glistening with the undried shower; the shaded grass at
the roadside was beaded, every blade, with minute sparkles of
water; and here and there a pine-bough was thickly hung with
drops that trembled with fulness at the points of its clustered
emerald needles, and at a touch came clashing down in a shower
that was distinctly heard through the silence.

The birds were taking their forenoon rest; but, as the carriage
rolled lightly past, a fanatical bobolink, who did not seem to
have much common sense, but to be brimming over with the most
glorious nonsense, swung himself down from some hidden perch,
alighted in an utterly impossible manner on a spire of grass, and
poured forth such a long-drawn, liquid, impetuous song, that it
was a wonder there was anything of him left when it was over.

Three pairs of hands were stretched to arrest the driver's arm;
three smiling, breathless faces listened till the last note, and
watched the ecstatic little warbler swim away with an undulating
motion, as if he floated on the bubbling waves of his own song.

{174}

In a few minutes a turn of the road brought them in sight of the
blue, salt water spread out boundlessly, sparkling, and
sail-flecked; and presently they drove up at the cottage door.

This was a long, low building, all wings, like a moth; colored,
like fungi, of mottled browns and yellows; overtrailed by
woodbines and honeysuckles, through which you sometimes only
guessed at the windows by the white curtains blowing out.

"Why, it is something that has grown out of the earth!" exclaimed
Margaret. "See! the ground is all uneven about the walls as it is
about the boles of trees."

This rural domicil faced the east and the sea; and an unfenced
lawn sloped down to the beach where the tide was now creeping up
with bright ripples chasing each other.

The house was pleasant enough, large and airy; and, after a few
hours' work, they had everything in order. Then, tired, happy,
and hungry, they sat down to luncheon.

"Isn't it delightful to get rid of men a little while, when you
know that they are soon to come again?" drawled Aurelia, sitting
with both elbows on the table, and her rich hair a little
tumbled.

Margaret glanced at her with a smile of approval. "That sweet
creature!" she thought. And said aloud, "You know perfectly well,
Aura, that all the time they are gone we are thinking of them and
doing something for them. Whom have we been working for to-day
but the gentlemen, pray?"

To her surprise, Aurelia's brown eyes dropped, and her beautiful
face turned a sudden pink.

"I never could carve a fowl," said Mrs. Lewis plaintively. "But
there must be a beginning in learning anything. I wish I knew
where the beginning of this duck is. Aura, will you go look in
that Audubon, and see how this creature is put together? We are
likely to be worse off than Mr. Secretary Pepys, when the venison
pasty turned out to be 'palpable mutton.' We shall have nothing."

Margaret started up. "Infirm of purpose, give me the carver!" she
cried; and seizing the knife, in a moment of inspiration,
triumphantly carved the mysterious duck, and betrayed its hidden
articulations.

Mrs. Lewis contemplated her with great respect. "My dear," she
said, "I have done you injustice. I have believed that though you
could succeed admirably in the ornamental and the extraordinary,
you had no faculty for common things. I acknowledge my
error.'Nemesis favors genius,' as Disraeli says of Burke."

After luncheon and a siesta, they dressed and went out onto the
lawn to watch for the gentlemen, who presently appeared.

Mr. Granger presented Margaret with a spike of beautiful pink
arethusa set in a ring of feathery ferns. "It came from a swamp
miles away," he said. "I wanted to bring you something bright the
first day."

"You always bring me something bright," she said.

             To Be Continued.

-------

{175}

    _Problems Of The Age_, And Its Critics.


The article from _The Independent_ of August 20th, which we
quote in full below, has been sent to us by the writer of it,
with an accompanying note, requesting us to take notice of its
observations. Our remarks will, therefore, be chiefly confined to
this particular criticism on the _Problems of the Age_,
although we shall embrace the opportunity to notice also some
other criticisms which have been made in various periodicals.

  "The pastor of the Broadway Tabernacle, many years ago, taking
  a hint from Archbishop Whately,'traced the errors of Romanism
  to their origin,' _not_ 'in human nature,' but in Old
  School theology. The ultra-Calvinist doctrine of original sin,
  he argued, necessitated the dogma of baptismal regeneration;
  and the doctrine of physical inability brought in the notion of
  sacramental grace. Mr. Hewit is a living example, and his book
  is documentary proof, of the justice of this theory. His early
  training was under the severest of schoolmasters, in the oldest
  of schools. The problems on which his mind has been exercised
  from his birth are such as this: How men can be 'born depraved,
  with an irresistible propensity to sin, and under the doom of
  eternal misery.' With admirable infelicity, a treatise on
  questions like this--the freshest of which are as old as
  Christian theology, and the others as old, if not older, than
  the fall of man--has been entitled _Problems of the Age_,
  on the ground (as we are informed in the preface) that they are
  'subjects of much interest and inquiry in our own time.' From
  his hereditary embarrassments on these subjects, the writer
  makes his way out to a new theodicy, which on the subject of
  the existence of sin is Taylorism, word for word; on the
  subject of natural depravity is something like Pelagianism; and
  on the subject of original sin is a curious notion, which he
  strives mightily to represent as the sentiment of Augustine.
  The whole series of ideas is labelled 'Catholic Theology,' and
  represented as the antagonist of Protestant opinion.

  "The volume deserves no small praise as a specimen of lucid,
  consecutive argument on difficult questions, conducted in pure
  English. The only serious blemish upon the author's style is
  his habit, when he has said a thing once in good English, of
  saying it over again immediately in bad Latin. But this, we
  suppose, is less the fault of his taste than of his position.
  The logic of the book, also, has not more faults than are
  commonly incident to such discussions; it is strong for pulling
  down, feeble in building up. It reduces to absurdity the
  statements of some of his antagonists, with wonderfully
  complacent unconsciousness that a smart antagonist could get
  exactly the same hitch about the neck of _its_ statement,
  and drag it to the same destruction.

  "The plan of the work is curious. It begins with the primary
  cognitions of the mind, and goes forward with an _à priori
  _ argument for the existence of God: that if God exists, he
  must necessarily exist in Trinity; must create just such a
  universe; must be incarnate in the Second Person; must redeem a
  fallen race; must institute the Roman Catholic Church, its
  sacraments and ritual. The second part is devoted to finding in
  Augustine the ideas of the former part--ideas some of which,
  unless that lucid author has been hitherto read with a veil
  upon the heart,

    'Would make _Augustine_ stare and gasp.'

  "Besides the limits of space, which are imperative, two reasons
  suffice to excuse us from examining in detail the course of
  this ingenious and protracted argument:

  "_First_. It is a matter of comparatively little interest
  to scrutinize severely the _processes_ of a reasoner to
  whom one half of his _conclusions_ are prescribed
  beforehand, under peril of excommunication and eternal
  damnation, while he holds the other half under a vow to
  repudiate them at a moment's notice from the proper authority.

  "_Second_. It is profoundly unsatisfactory to argue
  against any such book, whatever its origin or pretensions, as
  representative of the Roman Catholic theology. From page to
  page the author challenges our respect and deference for his
  views as being the teachings of the church.'This is Catholic
  truth; this is Catholic theology.'
{176}
  But, once let us give chase to one of his propositions, and
  hunt it down into the corner of an absurdity, and we are sure
  to hear some of the author's confederates trying to call off
  the dogs with the assurance,'Oh! that is only a notion of
  Hewit's;' or, 'only a private opinion of theologians;' or,
  'only the declaration of an individual pope;' or, 'only a
  decree of council which never was generally received: the
  church is not responsible for such things as these.' So
  slippery a thing is 'Catholic doctrine'! So unrestful is the
  'repose' offered to inquiring minds by that church, which
  divides all subjects of religious thought into two classes:
  one, on which it is forbidden to make impartial inquiry; the
  other, on which it is forbidden to come to settled
  conclusions."

We confess that it appears to us a very puzzling "problem" to
find out how to answer the foregoing criticism, or the others
from non-catholic periodicals which it has been our hap to fall
in with. Not one of them has seriously controverted the main
thesis of the book they profess to criticise, or to make any
well-motived adjudication of the several portions of the argument
by which the thesis is sustained. Some, like the one before us,
attempt to set aside the whole question; others content
themselves with a round assertion that the arguments are
inconclusive; and the residue confine themselves to generalities;
or, at most, to the criticism of some minor details. We should
not think it worth while to trouble ourselves or our readers with
a formal replication to such superficial critics, were it not for
the opportunity which is afforded us of bringing into clearer
light the total lack of all deep philosophy or theology in the
non-catholic world, and the value of the Catholic philosophy
which we are striving to bring before the minds of intelligent
and sincere inquirers after truth.

The criticisms begin with the title of the work. The critic of
_The Independent_ objects to our calling old questions
_problems of the age_. _The Southern Review_ coincides
with him, and suggests that they should rather have been called
"problems _of all ages;_" while another critic, in _The
Evening Post_, gives his verdict that they are all to be
classed as "problems of a bygone age." This last criticism is the
only one founded upon a reason; and is, at the same time, a full
justification of the appropriateness of the title before all
those who still profess to believe in the revelation of God. The
different classes of protesters against the teaching of the
church have wearied themselves in vain in searching for a
satisfactory solution of the problems of man's condition and
destiny; either in some new rendering of divine revelation, or in
some system of purely rational philosophy. The despair produced
by their utter failure vents itself in the denial that these
problems are real ones, capable of any solution at all, and in
the attempt to relegate them finally into the region of the
unknowable. This is a vain effort. They have forced themselves
upon the attention of the human mind ever since the creation, and
they will continue to do so, in spite of all efforts to exorcise
them. The relations of man to his Creator, the reason of moral
and physical evil, the bearing of the present life on the future,
the significance of Christianity, and such like topics, can be
regarded as obsolete questions only by a most unpardonable
levity. The so-called Liberal Christian and the rationalist may
in deed proffer the opinion that the solutions we have given are
already antiquated. But, with all the hardihood which persons of
this class possess in so remarkable a degree in claiming for
themselves all the light, all the intelligence, all the spiritual
vitality existing in the world, we must persist in thinking that
their triumphant tone is some what prematurely assumed.
{177}
We insist that the problems of bygone ages are the problems of
the present ages, and that the solutions of bygone ages are the
only real ones, as true and as necessary at the present moment as
they have ever been. The restless mind of the non-Catholic world,
having broken away from its intellectual centre to wander
aimlessly in the infinite void, has plunged itself anew into all
the puzzle and bewilderment from which Christianity with its
divine philosophy had once delivered it, and, wearied with its
wanderings, longs and yet delays to return to its proper orbit.
Hence the great problems of past ages have become emphatically
the problems of the present, and must be answered anew, by the
same principles and the same truths which past ages found
sufficient, yet presented in part in modified language, in a new
dress, and with special application to new phases of error. The
title _Problems of the Age_ is therefore fully justified as
the most felicitous and appropriate which could have been chosen
for a treatise intended to meet the wants of those who are
seeking for help in their doubts and difficulties respecting both
natural and revealed religion. Any believer in the Christian
revelation who cannot recognize this, and heartily sympathize in
any well-meant effort to present the Christian mysteries in an
aspect which may attract honest and candid doubters or
unbelievers, shows that he has mistaken his side, and has more
intellectual sympathy with unbelief than he would willingly
acknowledge, even to himself.

Another anonymous critic sets aside with one sentence the entire
argument of the book; because, forsooth, it begins with the
assumption that the Catholic doctrine is the only true one, and
demands a preliminary submission of the reader's mind to the
authority of the Catholic Church. Nothing could be more
superficial and incorrect than this statement of the thesis
proposed by the author. The whole course of the argument supposes
that an unbeliever or inquirer after the true religion begins
with the first, self-evident principles of reason; proceeds, by
way of demonstration, to the truths of natural theology, and by
the way of evidence and the motives of credibility advances to
the belief of Christianity and the divine authority of the
Catholic Church. The thesis proposed or the special topic to be
discussed by the author is, Supposing the authority of the
Catholic Church sufficiently established by extrinsic evidence,
is there any insurmountable obstacle, on the side of reason, to
accept her dogmas as intrinsically credible? The implicit or even
explicit affirmation that Catholic philosophy is the true and
only philosophy, that it alone can satisfy the demands of reason,
is no begging of the question; for it is not stated as the
_datum_ or logical premiss from which the logical
conclusions are drawn. It is stated as being, so far as the mind
of the sceptical reader is concerned, only an hypothesis to be
proved, an enunciation of the judgment which is made by the mind
of a Catholic, the motives of which the non-catholic reader is
invited to examine and consider by the light of the principles of
reason, or of those revealed truths of which he is already
convinced.

A most sapient critic in the London _Athenaeum_, venturing
entirely out of his depth, makes an observation on the statement
that absolute beauty is identical with the divine essence, which
we notice merely for the amusement of our theological readers.
The statement of the author is, that beauty is to be identified
with the divine essence, by virtue of its definition as the
splendor of truth, and because truth, being identical with the
divine essence, its splendor must be also.
{178}
This consummate philosopher argues that beauty must be
identified, not with the divine essence, but with its splendor,
because it is the splendor of truth. The splendor of God is,
then, something distinct from God; and he is not most pure act
and most simple being! We cannot wish for a more apposite
illustration of the total loss of the first and most fundamental
conceptions of philosophy and natural theology out of the English
mind--a natural result of that movement which began with Luther,
when he publicly burned the _Summa_ of St. Thomas.

_The Mercersburg Review_ denies the demonstrative force of
the evidences of natural religion and positive revelation;
referring us to conscience, or the moral sense, as the ground of
belief in God and in Jesus Christ. This is another proof of the
truth of our judgment, that the radical intellectual disease
which Protestantism has produced requires treatment by a thorough
dosing with sound philosophy. The corruption of theology has
brought on a corruption of philosophy, and heresy has produced
scepticism, so that we can hardly find a sound spot to begin with
as a _point d'appui_ for the reconstruction of rational and
orthodox belief. We do not despise the argument from conscience
and the moral sense, or deny its validity. We did not specially
draw it out, because we were not writing a complete treatise on
natural theology; but it is contained in the metaphysical
argument establishing the first and final cause. Apart from that,
it has no conclusive force. What is conscience? Nothing but a
practical judgment respecting that which ought to be done or left
undone. What is the moral sense, but an intimate apprehension of
the relation of the voluntary acts of an intelligent and free
agent to a final cause? It is only intellect which can take
cognizance of a rule or principle directing a certain act to be
done or omitted, or of the intrinsic necessity of directing all
acts toward a final cause or ultimate end. The intellect cannot
do this, or deduce an argument from conscience and the moral
sense for the existence of God, unless it has certain infallible
principles given it in its creation; and with these principles,
the existence of God and all natural theology can be proved by a
metaphysical demonstration, proceeding from which, as a basis, we
prove Christianity and the Catholic Church by a moral
demonstration which is reducible to principles of metaphysical
certitude. Deny this, and conscience, or the moral sense, is a
mere feeling, a sensible emotion, a habit induced by education, a
subjective state, which is just as available in support of
Buddhism or Mohammedanism as of Christianity. _The Mercersburg
Review_ is trying to sustain itself midway down the declivity
of a slippery hill, afraid to descend where the mangled remains
of Feuerbach lie bleaching in the sun, and unwilling to catch the
rope which the Catholic Church throws to it, and ascend to the
height from whence Luther, in his pride and folly, slid. Kant's
miserable expedient of practical reason may suit those who are
content with such an insecure position; but it will never satisfy
those who look for true science, and certain, infallible faith.

_The Round Table_, in a notice which is, on the whole, very
favorable and appreciative, complains that we have accused
Calvinism of being a dualistic or Manichaean doctrine. We have
not only affirmed, but proved that it is so. By Calvinism,
however, we mean the strict, logical Calvinism of the rigid
adherents of the system.
{179}
The moderated, modified system, which approaches more nearly to
the doctrine of the most rigorous Catholic school, we do not wish
to censure too severely. Neither do we charge formal dualism, or
a formal denial of the pure, unmixed goodness of God even upon
the strictest Calvinists. What we affirm is, that, together with
their doctrine respecting God, which is orthodox, they hold
another doctrine respecting the acts of God toward his creatures,
which is logically incompatible with the former, and logically
demands the affirmation of an evil and malignant principle
equally self-existent, necessary, and eternal with the principle
of good, and thus leads to the doctrine of dualism in being. Many
orthodox Protestants have spoken against Calvinism much more
severely than we have done; and, in fact, while we cannot too
strongly reprobate its logical consequences, we always intend to
distinguish between them and the true, interior belief which
exists in the minds of many Calvinists, excellent persons, and
really nearer to the church, in their doctrine, as practically
apprehended, than they are aware of.

Our _Independent_ critic is displeased with the Latin
quotations from scholastic theology which we have somewhat freely
employed, and compliments us, as he apparently supposes, by
suggesting that this violation of good taste is to be ascribed,
not to any lack of judgment on our part, but to the fault of our
position. It is somewhat amusing to notice the patronizing air
which this well-meaning gentleman assumes, and the evident
complacency with which, from the height of his little, recently
constructed eminence, he looks down with a smile of pitying
forbearance upon our unfortunate "position." We will consent to
waive, once for all, all claims of a personal nature to any
consideration which is not derived from our position as a
Catholic and a humble disciple of the scholastic theology. That
theology is the glory and the boast of Christendom and of the
human intellect. We are firmly convinced that there is no true
wisdom, science, illumination, or progress to be found, except in
following the broad path which scholastic theology has explored
and beaten. Although our nice critic--who seems to have more
admiration for the effeminate classicism of Bembo and the age of
Leo X. than the masculine _verve_ of St. Thomas--may call
the scientific terminology of the schoolmen "bad Latin," we shall
venture to retain a totally different opinion. It is unequalled
and unapproachable for precision, clearness, and vigor. We have
employed it because our own judgment and taste have dictated to
us the propriety of doing so. We have not been led by servile
adhesion to custom, or the affectation of making a display, but
by the desire of making our meaning more clear and evident to
theological readers, especially those whose native language is
not English, and of introducing into our English theological
literature those definite and precise modes of reasoning which
belong to these great schoolmen. We can easily understand the
aversion of our opponents to the schoolmen, in which they are
only following after their predecessor, Martin Bucer, who said,
albeit in Latin, _Tolle Thomam et delebo Ecclesiam Romanam_,
"Take away Thomas, and I will destroy the Roman Church." To the
personal remarks of the critic in regard to the author and the
history of his religious opinions we give a simple
_transeat_, and pass to what semblance of argument there is
in rejoinder to the thesis defended in the _Problems of the
Age_.

{180}

The critic says that the same process of logic which the author
employs against his opponents would destroy his own statements.
This is a mere assertion, without a shadow of proof, and we meet
it with a simple denial. It is, moreover, a piece of triviality
with which we have no patience. It is the language of the most
wretched and shallow scepticism, conceived in the very spirit of
the question of Pontius Pilate to our Lord, "What is truth?" We
have been engaged for thirty years in the study of philosophy and
theology, and have carefully examined and weighed the matters we
have undertaken to discuss. The substance of the doctrine we have
presented is that in which the greatest minds of all ages have
been agreed; and it has been proved and defended against every
assault in a manner so triumphant that its antagonists have
nothing to say, but to deny the first principles of logic, the
possibility of science, the certainty of faith. There are,
undoubtedly, certain minor points which are open to question and
difference of opinion. But, as to our main thesis, that the
Catholic dogmas are not contradictory to anything which is known
or demonstrable by human science, we defy all opponents to refute
it.

By another subterfuge, equally miserable, our critic shakes off
all responsibility of even noticing the serious, calm, and
well-motived statements which we have made respecting Catholic
doctrines. We hold, he says, one half of our doctrines as
prescribed by authority, under pain of excommunication and
damnation; and the other half, under an obligation to renounce
them at a moment's warning, from the same authority; therefore,
no attention is to be paid to our arguments. This is one of the
most remarkable and most discreditable statements we remember
ever to have come across in a writer professing himself an
orthodox Christian. Does this inconsiderate writer see to what a
dilemma he has reduced himself? Either he must admit that Jesus
Christ, the apostles, the Bible, teach him with authority, and
plainly and unequivocally, certain doctrines which he is bound to
believe, under penalty of being cast out from the communion of
true believers, and incurring eternal damnation; or he must deny
it. In the first case, he must retract his words, or give the
full benefit of them to the rationalist and the infidel, against
himself. In the second case, he must lay aside his mask, and step
forth with the discovered lineaments of an open unbeliever. We
receive the dogmas of faith proposed by the church because they
are revealed by Jesus Christ through his Holy Spirit, who is
indwelling in the body of the church. We cannot revoke these
dogmas into an examination or discussion of doubt, any more than
we can doubt our own existence, or the first principle of
reasoning. Nevertheless, as we can argue against a person who
doubts these first principles, or give proofs and evidences to an
ignorant man of facts or truths whose certainty is known to us;
so we can give proofs of dogmas of faith which we are not
permitted to doubt for an instant to one who does not believe
these dogmas, or understand the motives upon which their
credibility is established. It is unlawful to doubt the being and
perfections of God, the immortality of the soul, the truth of
revelation. Yet we may examine thoroughly all these topics to
find new and confirmatory proof and answers to objections. One
who is in doubt or ignorance may examine and weigh evidences in
order to ascertain the truth, and does not sin by keeping his
judgment in suspense until it obtains the data sufficient to make
a decision reasonable and obligatory.
{181}
In arguing with such a person, it is necessary to descend to his
level, and reason from the premises which his intellect admits.
In like manner, when it is a question of the Trinity, the
Incarnation, the divinity of Jesus Christ, the canonicity and
inspiration of the Scriptures, and all other Catholic dogmas;
although a Catholic may not doubt any one of these, and would act
unreasonably if he did, since he has the same certainty of their
truth that he has of his own existence or the being of God; yet
he may examine the evidences which are confirmatory of his faith
for his own satisfaction, and reason with an unbeliever in order
to convince him of the truth. The subterfuge by which our critic
and some other writers, especially one in _The Churchman_,
attempt to evade the inevitable deductions of Catholic logic,
which they cannot meet and refute--namely, that we cannot, with
consistency, argue about doctrines defined by infallible
authority--is the shallowest of all the artifices of sophistry.
When the Son of God appeared on the earth in human nature, and in
form and fashion as a man, claiming infallible authority, and
demanding unreserved obedience, it was necessary for him to give
evidence of his divine mission. A Jew, a Mohammedan, or a
Buddhist cannot, in reason or conscience, believe in Jesus Christ
until this evidence has been proposed to him. When it is
sufficiently proposed, he is bound to believe; and, once becoming
aware that Jesus is the Son of God, he is bound to believe all
that he has revealed, simply upon his word. But, supposing he has
been erroneously informed that the teaching of Jesus Christ
contains certain doctrines or statements of fact which are in
contradiction to what seems to him to be right reason or certain
knowledge, it is unquestionably both prudent and charitable to
correct his mistakes upon this point, and thus remove the
obstacles to belief from his mind. Precisely so in regard to the
Catholic Church. The demand which she makes of submission to her
infallible authority, as the witness and teacher established by
Jesus Christ, is accompanied by evidence. It is upon this
evidence we lay the greatest stress; and in virtue of this it is
that we present the Catholic doctrines as certain truths which
every one is bound to believe. Undoubtedly, the infallibility of
the church once established, it is the duty of every one to
believe the doctrines she proposes, putting aside all
difficulties and objections which may exist in his own imperfect,
limited understanding. Yet, if these difficulties and objections
do not lie in the very mysteriousness, vastness, and elevation of
the object of faith itself, but in merely subjective
misapprehensions, it is right to attempt to remove them, and to
make the exercise of faith easier to the inquirer. Moreover,
although it is sufficient to prove the infallibility of the
church, and then, from this infallibility, to deduce, as a
necessary consequence, the truth of all Catholic teaching; it
does not follow that each separate portion of this teaching
cannot be proved by other and independent lines of argument. The
divine legation of Moses is sufficiently proved by the authority
of Christ; but it can be proved apart from that authority. So,
the Trinity, the real presence, baptismal regeneration, or
purgatory, are sufficiently and infallibly proved from the
judgment of the church; but they may be also proved from
Scripture, from tradition, and, in a negative way, from reason.
In the _Problems of the Age_ our principal intention has
been to clear away difficulties and misapprehensions from the
object of faith, in order that candid inquirers might not be
obliged to assume any greater burden upon their minds than the
weight of that yoke of faith which the Lord himself imposes.
{182}
In doing this, we have endeavored not only to clear the dogmas of
faith from the perversions of heretical doctrines, but also to
distinguish them from theological opinions, which rest only on
human authority, and are open to discussion. We have also thought
it best, not merely to mark off doctrines of faith, and leave
them in their naked simplicity, free from that theological
envelope which is sometimes confounded with their substance; but
also to give them that dress which, in our opinion, is best
fitted to set off their native grace and beauty. We have not
simply expressed the definitions of the church, discriminating
from them the opinion of this and that school, and thus barely
indicating what must be, and what need not be believed, in order
to be a Catholic. We know the wants of the class of minds we are
dealing with. They feel the need of some general view which shall
give them a _coup a'oeil_ of the theological landscape, and
enable them to embrace the details and single objects contained
in it in one harmonious whole. They have had so much sophistical
reasoning and false philosophy, as well as bad and repulsive
theology, dinned into their ears and minds that they cannot be
satisfied without some better system as a substitute. We were
obliged, therefore, not only to point out that certain
opinions--generally repugnant to those who have been sickened by
imbibing the Calvinistic and Lutheran poison--are not obligatory
on the conscience of any Catholic, but also to present the
opinions of another school more remote from Protestant orthodoxy,
and less repugnant to those who are called liberal Christians.
Our critic seems to imagine that, in doing this, we are merely
playing an adroit game in which all kinds of theological or
philosophical opinions are used as counters, without reference to
truth, and merely with the view of winning as many converts as
possible, by any show of plausible argument. At any moment, he
says, we are ready to throw away the whole, if commanded to do so
by authority. Once caught, those who have been drawn into the
church by an artifice will have their minds tutored in a far
different way, and be obliged to keep themselves ready to accept
the very contrary of that which we assured them was sound,
orthodox doctrine, at the arbitrary will of the ecclesiastical
authority. Until that authority defines precisely what the sound
Catholic doctrine is, we can have no settled, well-grounded
opinion; but only conjecture and hypothesis. Let the absurdity of
any of these hypotheses be shown by some Protestant
controversialist, and the plea is ready that the church is not
responsible for private opinions. Yet we have been artful and
audacious enough to put forth a network of such hypotheses as
Catholic doctrine when they are not Catholic doctrine, and are
directly controverted by other Catholic writers. In an article
which appeared lately in _Putnam's Monthly_, publicly
ascribed to the same gentleman who is the avowed author of the
criticism we are noticing, there is a general charge made upon
"Americo-Roman preachers," of presenting a "plausible
pseudo-Catholicity" quite different from the genuine Italian and
Irish article. _The Churchman_, not long ago, made a similar
statement which, if not mendacious, is supremely foolish and
ignorant, respecting F. Hyacinthe, and certain other devoted
Catholics in France.

{183}

The whole is a tissue of cobwebs, which a stroke of the pen can
sweep away. The Holy See is not accustomed to condemn suddenly
and by the wholesale the probable opinions of grave and learned
theologians, much less the doctrines of great and
long-established schools. In the _Problems of the Age_, we
have been careful to follow in the wake of theologians of
established repute, and not to lay down propositions whose
tenability is doubtful or suspected. It is possible that some
definitions or decrees may be made hereafter which may require us
to modify some of our opinions in theology or philosophy, and we
shall undoubtedly submit at once to any such decisions. But there
is no probability that we shall ever be called upon to change
radically and essentially that system of theology which we have
derived from the best and most esteemed Catholic authors. There
is certainly no reason to think that the tenets distinguishing
the Dominican from the Augustinian school will ever be condemned
in a mass. Those which distinguish the Jesuit school from either
or both of these have been through a severe ordeal of accusation
and trial long ago, and have come out unscathed. The same is true
of the doctrines of Cardinal Sfondrati. Suarez, St. Alphonsus,
Perrone, and Archbishop Kenrick are certainly respectable
authority, and a good guarantee of the orthodoxy of opinions
sustained by their judgment. Perrone, whom we have followed more
closely than any other author in treating of the most delicate
and difficult questions, has taught and published his theology at
Rome. It has passed through thirty seven editions, and is more
popular as a text-book than any other. He is a consultor of the
Sacred Congregations of the Council and the Index, Prefect of
Studies in the Roman College, and, together with Fathers Schrader
and Franzlin, eminent theologians of the same Jesuit school, a
member of the Commission of Dogmatic Theology, which is preparing
the points for decision in the coming Council of the Vatican. The
doctrines advanced in the _Problems of the Age_ in
opposition to Calvinism, in accordance with the theological
exposition of Perrone, cannot, therefore, be qualified as
peculiar or curious opinions of the author, as pseudo-Catholic or
Americo-Roman theories, or as liable to any theological censure
of unsoundness.

Nevertheless, we have not, as the critic asserts, set forth these
or other opinions indiscriminately, and in so far as they vary
from the opinions of other approved Catholic authors, as being
exclusively the Catholic doctrine. We have used extreme care and
conscientiousness in this respect, although our critic is
incapable of appreciating it, from his lack of all thorough
knowledge of the controversy he has unadvisedly meddled with. We
do not qualify as Catholic doctrine, in a strict sense, anything
which is not _de fide obligante_, or admitted by the
generality of theologians, without opposition from any
respectable authority, as morally certain. We censure no really
probable opinion as contrary to Catholic doctrine, and are
disposed to allow the utmost latitude of movement to every
individual mind competent to reason on theological subjects,
between the opposite extremes condemned by the church. It does
not follow from this, however, that our doctrine is mere
hypothesis, and that we are forbidden or unable to come to any
positive conclusions beyond the formal definitions of the church.
The substance and essential constituents of the doctrine are
certainly Catholic, and common to all schools.
{184}
The Council of Trent condemned the heresies of Calvin and Luther,
and the Holy See, the whole church concurring, has condemned the
heresies of Jansenius and Baius. We know, also, what was the
theology of the men who framed and enacted the decrees condemning
those errors, or affirming the opposite truths, what was the
spirit animating the church at that time, and continuing in it
until the present; and we have in the episcopate, but especially
in the Holy See, the living, authentic teacher and interpreter of
the doctrine contained in the written decrees. There is,
therefore, a solid and common basis upon which all Catholics
stand, and upon which it is possible and allowable to construct
theological theories or systems. Learning, logic, the intuitive
power of genius, and the special gifts imparted by the Holy
Spirit to certain favored men, have their full scope in carrying
on this work. Through their activity, conclusions, deductions,
expositions, elucidations, may be attained, which have a value
varying all the way from plausible conjecture and hypothesis up
through the different degrees of probability, to moral certainty.
For ourselves, we have always studied to find in the most
approved authors those opinions which approach as nearly as
possible to moral certainty; or, in default of such, those which
are admitted to be probable, and to our mind appear intrinsically
more probable than their opposites. We write and speak,
therefore, not with an economy, or as presenting opinions likely
to captivate our readers, but with an interior conviction, in
accordance with that which we believe to be really the revealed
and rational truth; or else we indicate that we are speaking
under a reserve of doubt and suspended judgment. As for the
insinuation that we are concerned in any artful scheme for
palming off a plausible pseudo-Catholicity in lieu of the
Catholicity of the Pope, the Roman Church, and of the faithful
people of Ireland, we repudiate it as false, groundless, and
injurious. We hold unreservedly to the Pope and all his doctrinal
decisions; to the genuine, thorough, uncompromising Catholicity
of Rome and the universal church; to the faith for which the
martyred people of Ireland have dared and suffered all. Nothing
could be more opposed to that astuteness for which Catholic
ecclesiastics generally obtain extensive credit, than to attempt
such a foolish scheme in this country and age of the world as
some persons attribute to us for the purpose of nullifying the
effect of our influence and arguments upon the minds of candid
inquirers after truth. For what purpose or end could we desire to
propagate the Catholic religion in this country, unless we are
convinced that it is the only true religion established by Jesus
Christ, and necessary to the salvation of the human race? With
this conviction, it would be the most supreme folly to preach any
other doctrine but that genuine and sound Catholic doctrine which
is sanctioned by the supreme authority in the church, and which
we desire to propagate. Individuals may, no doubt, err, even with
good intentions, in the attempt to discriminate between the
permanent and the variable, the essential and the accidental, the
universal and the local elements in Catholicity; and in the
effort to adjust the relations between the doctrine and
institutions of the church and new conditions of human science,
or political and social order. But it is impossible for any
individual or clique either to master or resist the general
Catholic sentiment, and thus to cause the acceptance of any form
of pseudo or neo-Catholicism as genuine Catholicity.
{185}
Moreover, there is the vigilant eye and strong arm of
ecclesiastical authority ready every moment to detect and
restrain the aberrations of private judgment, and to condemn all
opinions or schemes which cannot be tolerated without endangering
either doctrine or discipline. The voice of the Holy Father is
heard throughout the world, and the voice of the whole Catholic
Church will reverberate to the uttermost parts of the earth from
the approaching Ecumenical Council. All intelligent persons, more
especially all inquisitive, shrewd, and cool-headed Americans,
have the means of knowing what genuine Catholic doctrine is.
Whoever should attempt to set forth a dilution of Catholicity
with Grecism, Anglicanism, rationalism, or any other kind of
individualism, as a lure to non-catholics, would, therefore,
simply gain nothing, unless a little unenviable notoriety should
seem to his vanity a gain worth purchasing by the betrayal of his
trust. The people of this country want the genuine Catholicity,
or nothing. They will not be deluded a second time by a
counterfeit, and become followers of a man, a party, or a sect.
Nor do we wish to deceive them. We desire to set before them the
doctrine and law of the Catholic Church in their purity and
integrity, that they may have the opportunity of embracing them
for their temporal and eternal salvation. We have had this end in
view in writing and publishing the _Problems of the Age;_
and, knowing well the delicacy and difficulty of the task, we
have spared no pains to study the decisions of councils and the
Holy See, to compare and weigh the statements of the most
approved theologians, and to make no explanations which we were
not satisfied are tenable, according to the received criterion of
orthodoxy. We do not desire, however, or exact that any of our
statements should be taken upon trust by any one. We have written
for thinking and educated persons, who have need of light upon
certain dark points of Christian doctrine; who are in earnest,
and willing to take the time and trouble necessary for learning
the truth. Such persons, if they read only English, will find all
that is requisite, in addition to the citations made in the
_Problems of the Age_, in _Möhler's Symbolism_.
Scholars and theologians may satisfy themselves more fully by the
aid of the collection of dogmatic and doctrinal decrees contained
in Denziger's _Enchiridion_, and of the theologies of
Billuart, Perrone, and Kenrick, the first of whom is a strict
Thomist, the second a Jesuit, and the third of no particular
school. In the exposition of the more antique and technically
Augustinian tenets, the works of Berti, Estius, Antoine, Cardinal
Noris, and Cardinal Gotti can be consulted. There are many other
books relating to the Jansenist controversy, in Latin, French,
and English, from which the fullest information can be obtained
in regard to the history of the desperate struggle which that
pseudo-Augustinian heresy--so nearly allied to the more moderate
Calvinism and to one form of Anglicanism--made to gain a foothold
in the church, and its thorough and complete discomfiture by the
learning and logic of the great Thomist and Jesuit theologians,
and the authority of the Holy See.

There remains but one more point to be noticed, closely connected
with the topic just now discussed, the charge of Pelagianism made
by our critic against our own doctrines, and of semi-Pelagianism
made by _The Mercersburg Review_, against the same, which
the latter does not distinguish from the doctrine of the Roman
Church.
{186}
The learned Professor Emerson, of Andover, long since called the
attention of his co-religionists to the fact that the designation
of Pelagian is used in this country very much at random, and by
persons who have no accurate notion of the tenets of Pelagius.
Calvinism, Jansenism, and Baianism are heresies on one side of
the line; Pelagianism and semi-Pelagianism on the opposite. The
Catholic doctrine is the truth which they all deny or pervert,
exaggerate or diminish, by their false perspective. Therefore,
each of them accuses the Catholic doctrine of the error opposite
to its own error. This is no new thing, but was long ago
complained of by St. Athanasius and St. Hilary. The Arians
accused the Catholics of being Sabellians, and the Sabellians
accused them of being Arians or Arianizers. We uphold both nature
and grace, against Calvinists and Pelagians, therefore we are by
turns accused of denying both. In the present instance, we are
accused of denying or diminishing grace. The accusation is
foolish, and shows a very slight knowledge of theology in those
who make it. The Pelagian heresy asserts that human nature is
capable of attaining the beatitude which the holy angels and
saints possess with Jesus Christ in God, by its own intrinsic
power, and is in the same state now as that in which Adam was
originally constituted. The contrary doctrine is so clearly
stated and so fully developed in the _Problems of the Age_,
that it suffices to refer the reader to its pages. The
semi-Pelagian heresy asserts that human nature is capable of the
beginning of faith by its own efforts, and also of meriting grace
by a merit of congruity. This heresy is unequivocally condemned
by the church, and rejected by every school and every theologian.
There is not a trace of it in a single line we have written.

This leads us to notice a misapprehension into which the editor
of _The Religious Magazine_ of Boston has fallen. This
Unitarian periodical is one which we esteem very much, on account
of its excellent and truly devout spirit; and its contributors
belong to a class of liberal Christians whose tendencies inspire
us with much hope. It is with pleasure, therefore, that we
recognize the candid and amicable tone of the notice which it has
given of that which we have written especially for those whose
intellectual direction is in the line which it follows. Our
Unitarian critic has, however, made the great mistake of
supposing that we use an orthodox phraseology, without any ideas
behind it different from those of liberal Christians or
rationalists. He says, "Setting aside what we cannot help calling
theological technicalities, his account of man's moral being
accords almost entirely with that which our liberal Christianity
would give." "Perhaps the criticism upon our author must be, that
he only retains in word and form much which he has abandoned in
fact." The writer of this has been so accustomed to associate
certain Catholic formulas and words with Calvinistic ideas, that
they seem to him to mean nothing when dissociated from them. With
him, the logical alternative of Calvinism is Unitarianism; and
whoever agrees with him in rejecting the former, must
substantially agree with him in holding the latter, however his
language may vary from that which he himself uses. The reason of
this is, that he fails to apprehend the Catholic idea of the
supernatural order; that is, of the elevation of the rational
creature to the immediate intuition of the divine essence in the
beatific vision. We fear that in the last analysis it will be
found that Unitarians have lost the distinct conception of the
personality of God, and retain only a vague, confused notion of
him as abstract being, and therefore not an object of direct
vision.
{187}
Hence, they conceive of the highest contemplation and beatitude
of man in the future life as a mere evolution and extension of
our natural intelligence and spontaneity. Or, if they do conceive
of heaven as a state in which the soul attains to a direct,
personal fellowship and converse with God as a friend, a father,
a supreme, intelligent, living, and loving Spirit, with whom the
human spirit comes into immediate relations, like those of man
with man on earth, they still believe that we are capable of
attaining to this by the mere development of our natural powers,
and by purely natural acts. There is, therefore, a great chasm
between the Unitarian and the Catholic doctrine. The latter
teaches, in the mystery of the Trinity, the only real and
possible conception of personal subsistence in the divine
essence, and sets forth the concrete, living, active,
impersonated God, in whom is infinite, self-sufficing beatitude,
without any necessity to create for the sake of completing the
reason, and relations, and end of his being. This infinite
beatitude consisting in the contemplation and love of his own
essence which is actuated in the Trinity, presents the idea of a
beatitude infinitely superior to and distinct from any felicity
to which we have any natural aptitude or impulse. Its cause and
object is the divine essence, directly and immediately beheld by
an intellectual vision, of which our corporeal vision of material
objects is but a faint shadow. The Catholic doctrine teaches that
human nature must be elevated by a supernatural gratuitous grace
in order to attain to this vision of God; that in Christ it is so
elevated, even to a hypostatic union with the second person of
the Trinity; that in Adam it was elevated to a lesser or adoptive
filiation; that the angelic nature is also elevated to a similar
state; and that men, under the present dispensation; are subjects
of the same grace. The church teaches, moreover, that this grace
is granted to men, since the fall, only through the merits of the
sacrifice of Jesus Christ upon the cross; that without divine
grace they cannot even begin a supernatural life; that no merely
natural virtue deserves this grace; and that it is by faith,
which is the gift of God; by the sacraments, and by good works
done in the state of grace, in the communion of the Catholic
Church, that we can alone obtain everlasting life with Christ.
There is as much difference between this doctrine and any form of
Unitarianism as there is between the sun and the earth; the
star-studded sky and a neat, well-kept flower-garden. Catholics
may differ from each other in regard to certain questions
concerning the state of human nature when destitute of grace; but
we are all agreed in regard to the need of grace for attaining
the end we are bound to strive after, the conditions of obtaining
this grace, and the obligation of complying with them, as well as
in regard to the insufficiency of all media for bringing the
human race even to its acme of temporal progress and felicity,
except the institutions and teaching of the Catholic Church.

-------

{188}


             Heremore-Brandon;
      Or, The Fortunes Of A Newsboy.


              CHAPTER IX.

When they arrived at the Wiltshire depot, Dick and Mary were
still undecided what step to take next; for neither of them
favored the idea of asking at once for Dr. Heremore, feeling
certain that the probabilities of his being alive would vanish
the moment that such an inquiry was proposed.

It was a nice enough town, with fine breezes from the sea blowing
through its streets, and a quaint look about the houses that made
Dick, at least, feel as if they were in a foreign land. Dick and
Mary stood on the depot platform together, undecided still.

"Let us walk a little way up and see what we can see," Mary
proposed.

All that they found at first were a few lumber-wagons, a
market-wagon, and now and then a group of boys playing; but
finally they came upon a store, at the door of which several
long-limbed countrymen were talking and chewing tobacco. I should
have said "chewing and talking;" for the chewing was much more
vigorously prosecuted than the talking. The presence of the
strangers, one a lady in a plain but very stylish dress,
attracted some attention; the men surveyed them in a leisurely,
undazzled way, hardly making room for them to pass; for, having
seen the sign POST-OFFICE in the window of this store, Dick and
Mary concluded to enter and make inquiries. The afternoon sun
streamed in upon the floor; the flies buzzed at the windows; and
a man, with his hat on and his chair tilted back, was at the back
of the store. He made no sign of changing his position when he
first saw the strangers, not because Mr. Wilkes was any less well
disposed toward "the ladies" than a city merchant would be, but
because country people fancy it is more dignified to show
indifference than politeness. In time, however, he tilted down
his chair, freed his great mouth from its load of tobacco, and
lounged up to the counter where Mary and Dick were standing.

"I want to ask you a question," Dick answered to the
storekleeper's look; "I suppose you know this town pretty well?"
Dick was so afraid of the answer that he did not know how to put
a direct question in regard to Dr. Heremore.

"Rather," was the laconic reply, with no change of the speaker's
countenance.

"Do you know if a Dr. Heremore lived here once, twenty-five years
or so ago?"

"I wasn't here in them days," for Mr. Wilkes was a young man who
did not care to be old.

"I did not suppose you did know, of your own knowledge; I thought
you might have heard."

"I suppose you have come to see him?"

"Or to hear of him," added Dick.

"Come from Boston or York, I suppose?"

"From New York," answered Dick; "can you tell us who is likely to
give us information?"

{189}

"About the old doctor?" asked Mr. Wilkes in the same impassive
manner.

"Yes," said Dick, rather impatiently.

"I suppose you are relations o' his?"

"We came to get information, not to give it," Dick replied in a
quiet tone but inwardly vexed.

"Well," answered the storekeeper, not in the least abashed by
this rebuke, "there's an old fellow lives up yonder, who knows
pretty much everything's been done here for the last forty years;
you'd better go to him; if any one knows, he does. Better not be
too techy with _him_, I can tell you, if you want to find
out anything; people as wants to take must give too, you know.
That there road will take you straight to the house; white house,
first on the left after you come to the meeting house."

"Thank you; and the name?"

"Well, folks usually calls him 'The Governor' round here; you,
being strangers, can call him what you please."

"Will he like a stranger's calling?"

"Oh! tell him I sent you--Ben Wilkes--and you are all right."

"Thank you!" Mary and Dick replied and turned away. "Ben Wilkes,"
who, during this conversation, had seated himself on the counter,
the better to show his ease in the strangers' society,
which--Mary's especially--secretly impressed him very much,
looked leisurely after them as they passed out of the store; then
took out some fresh tobacco, and returned to his chair.

"I don't like to go," said Mary, "it may be some joke upon us."

"I am afraid it is," answered Dick; "but, after all, what can
happen that we need mind? If it is a gentleman to whom he has
sent us, no matter how angry he is, he will see that you are a
lady, and you will know how to explain it; if he has sent us to
one who is not, I guess I shall be able to reply to him."

Their walk was a very long one, but the meeting-house at last
came in sight, and next it, though there was a goodly space
between, was a large white house, irregular and rambling, with
very nicely kept shrubbery around.

Dick opened the gate with a hand that was a little nervous; but
Mary whispered as their feet crunched the neatly bordered gravel
walk to the low porch, "It is all right, I am sure; there is an
old gentleman by the window."

"Will you be spokesman this time?" asked Dick.

Mary nodded, and as the path was narrow and they could not well
walk side by side, she was in front, so that naturally she would
be the first to meet the old gentleman. A very fine old gentleman
he was; a large man with a fine head, and, as his first words
proved, a remarkably full, sweet voice. Seeing a lady coming
toward him, he rose at once from his arm-chair, closed his book
and advanced a step or two to greet her. Mary was one of those
women toward whom courteous men are most courteous from the first
glance; and this old gentleman, who moved toward her with all the
grace and ease of a vigorous young man, was one of those men to
whom gentle women are gentler, from the first, than to others.

"Good-evening," he said, as Mary looked up to him with a smile at
at once pleasant and deferential. "Good-evening," and as she did
not say more than these words, the gentleman continued, "I will
not say, 'Come in,' for it is too pleasant out of doors for that;
but let me give you chairs."

{190}

"Thank you, sir, we are strangers, but, we hope, not intruders,"
she replied.

"Certainly not," he answered. "It is a great pleasure for me to
receive my old friends, and a pleasure to me to make new ones;
and strangers, even if they remain strangers, bring with them
great interest to the quiet lives of us old people." This he said
in a tone not in the least formal, or as if "making a speech,"
and still looking more at Mary than at her brother. They were not
yet seated, and no expression but that of kindly courtesy crossed
his face while looking into the sweet, gravely smiling one before
him; his tones were hardly altered when he added, "I have waited
for you these many long years, Mary; but I never doubted you
would come at last. You must not play tricks upon my old heart;
it has suffered too much to be able to sustain its part as it did
in old times."

Mary drew back a step, at this strange address, but she could not
withdraw her eyes from his, as in tender, gentle tones he spoke
the last words. Dick stood closer to her, but said nothing.

"Indeed, you mistake," Mary said, with great earnestness; "I have
told you the truth, I am really a stranger, although you have
called me by my name, Mary. I am Mary Brandon, and this--"

"Is your husband. Well, Mary, are you not my daughter? If you
were changed, why come to see me? I heard you were changed. I
spent four years in Paris and Rome, following up the trace given
me in New York, and then I came back disappointed but not
despairing. 'Mary will not die without sending for me or coming
to me,' I said; and I have taken care always to be ready for you.
I never thought you could come to me with coldness or
indifference. I was prepared for almost anything--to see you poor
and broken-hearted; no shame, no sin, no sorrow that would part
us. I did not think to see you come back beautiful, happy, rich,"
a glance at her dress, "and without a word of greeting."

"Dr. Heremore?" said Dick, not because he believed or thought it,
but because the words came forced by some inward power greater
than his knowledge.

"Well, Charles," answered the old gentleman, sadly but
composedly, turning at this name, "can you explain it?"

And then Mary understood it all. The years were nothing to him
who had waited for his child's return, She was in his arms before
Dick had recovered from his first bewilderment, now, by this act
of hers, trebly increased.

"Ah my child! if I spoke severely, it was only because I could
not bear the waiting. I knew your jokes of old, darling; but when
one has waited so long for the dear face one loves, the last
moments seem longer than all the years. I will ask no questions.
I see you two are together, and it is all right. You can tell me
all at your leisure. Now, Mary, I must kill the fatted calf. Even
though you and Charles have not returned as prodigals," he added
as if he would not, even in play, risk hurting them.

"Not yet, please," said Mary. "Let us have it all to ourselves
for a few minutes." And they seated themselves on the sunny
porch, the old gentleman's delight now beginning to show itself
in the nervous way he moved his hands, and his disjointed
sentences.
{191}
Mary took off her hat at once, and threw it, with rather more of
gayety than was quite natural to her, upon one of the short
branches, looking like pegs, which had been left in the pillars
of the porch.

"You haven't forgotten the old ways--eh, Mary?" Dr. Heremore
asked, as he saw the movement. "I remember well how proud you
were the day you first found you could reach that very peg, and
you are as much a child as you were that day, is she not,
Charles?"

"Pretty nearly," answered Dick, who could not fulfil his part
with Mary's readiness.

"How deliciously fresh everything looks!" exclaimed Mary.

"You should have seen it in June. I never saw the roses thicker.
O pet, how I did wish for you, then! The time of roses was always
your time."

"And I love them as much as ever!" exclaimed Mary, telling the
truth of herself. "Next year, if I am alive, I will be here with
them; we will have jolly times looking after them. I have learned
a great deal about flowers lately, but I shall never love roses
like yours." This indeed, Mary felt to be true.

"Flora has had to be replaced," said her grandfather observing
her eyes resting on a statue in the garden in front. "I will show
you the alterations I have made, and a few are improvements. But
you must have something to eat now. I cannot let you go a minute
longer. You came up by the boat, I presume?"

"Yes, and had a hearty dinner," Mary answered, having a dread of
a servant's entering, and getting things all wrong again, "To eat
now will only spoil our appetite for tea, and I want you to see
what an appetite I have."

"Perhaps you are too tired to go around the garden?"

"Tired! No, indeed."

"I am afraid it will not interest you much, Charles," the old
gentleman said to Dick. "You never did care much about the little
place."

"Oh! I assure you, I would be delighted to see it all," Dick
answered, eagerly; but Mary had noticed the constraint in her
grandfather's voice whenever he addressed the supposed Charles,
and said quickly:

"Oh! we don't want you, you don't know a rose from a sunflower;
pick up a book and read till we come back."

"This way, dear; have you forgotten?" Dr. Heremore said, looking
at her in a perplexed manner as naturally enough she turned away
from the house. "This way, dear, you lose the whole effect if you
go around. Come through the house. There, dear old Mary," he
added, smilingly handing her a glass of wine which he poured out
from a decanter on the sideboard in the dining room. "Drink to
'The Elms' and no more jokes upon old hearts."

"To our happy meeting and no more parting," added Mary, drinking
her wine with him. He poured out a glass for Dick, or Charles, as
he thought him, and, rather formally, carried it to him It was
very clear that "Charles" was no favorite.

All through the trim garden, and then through the whole house,
Mary followed her grandfather, her heart, as it may be believed,
full of love for the tender father of her lost mother. She stood
in the room which that mother had occupied, and could not speak a
word as she gazed reverently around. It was a thorough New
England bedroom--a high mahogany bedstead, a long narrow
looking-glass with a landscape painted on the upper part, in a
gilt frame, a great chintz-covered arm-chair by the bed, a round
mahogany table, with a red cover and a Bible, a stiff,
long-legged washstand in the corner, a prim chest of drawers
under the looking-glass between the windows, composed the
furniture of the room; a badly painted picture of a young girl in
the dress of a shepherdess, and a pair of vases on the mantel,
were the only ornaments; a crimson carpet and white
window-curtains were plainly of a later date than the furniture.

{192}

"I have had to alter some things," said Dr. Heremore, as they
came out of the room, "but I got them as much like the old ones
as I could, that you might feel at home here. Your baggage should
be here by this time, should it not? How did you send it?" "We
left it at the station," answered Mary. "You know we were not
sure--not certain sure that we should find you."

"I suppose not, I suppose not. These have been long years, Mary,
but they have not changed us, after all. But I must send for your
trunks. I suppose Charles has the checks."

"We brought but very little with us," Mary said, considerably
embarrassed, and, seeing the change in his countenance, she
hastened to add, "But now that it is all right and we have found
the way, we will stay with you until you turn us out; at least, I
will."

"Then you will send for more things, and how about the children?"
with the same perplexed look at her. Mary knew not what to say.
Was it not better to tell him the real truth at once? How could
she go on with this deception, as innocent as any deception can
be, and yet how break down his joy in its very midst? Silently
she stood beside him, at a hall window, looking upon the prospect
he had pointed out to her, considering what answer to make him.
He, too, was silent; for a long time the two stood there, and
then it was the doctor who spoke first.

"Mary, your children must be men and women now. I had forgotten
how long it was; but I remember you were here last the year the
meeting-house over there was put up, and I just was thinking that
was over twenty years ago. Richard was a few months old, then.
Mary, don't deceive me. Tell me the truth."

Mary turned sadly toward him, and laid her hands in his.

"_Grandpapa_, I will," was all she said.

It was a great blow to him, but something had been hovering
confusedly before his mind ever since they came out together, and
now it was clear. He turned abruptly away from her at the first
shock, then came to her more kindly than ever. "Forgive me,
dear," he apologized with mournful courtesy; "I did not mean to
be rude, but it is a great shock. You are very like her, very
like her, but I should have known at once that those years could
not have left her a girl like you. I will not ask more--your
mother--"

"My _father_ is living," Mary said, with tears streaming
down her face, as he stopped, "and that is my brother
down-stairs."

"Is he your only brother? have you sisters?" he asked.

"We are your only grandchildren," she answered; and he understood
that his child was dead, and another woman had filled her place.

"You are a noble girl," he said, with lingering tenderness in
every word. "We will go down now. I will greet Richard, and then,
dear, you will let me be alone for a little while. I shall have
to send for your things, you know."

"If it is any trouble--" began Mary.

{193}

"None, I will see about it at once."

They went down, and he greeted Richard, then went away slowly,
still begging them to excuse him for the inattention to them.
Soon after, a barefooted boy of twelve or fourteen or so went
whistling down the road past the house, staring at them as he
went by; an hour after, the same boy returned with their bags;
these were taken up-stairs by a thin, severe-looking, very
neatly-dressed woman, who quickly and with only a word or two
showed them their rooms, and told them that, as soon as they were
dressed, tea would be ready.

Mary dressed in her mother's room with a sense of that mother's
spirit around her. She fortunately had brought a dress with her,
so that she was able to make a slight change. Then slowly and
with great reverence she went down the stairs, meeting Dick in
the hall, to whom she whispered, "O Dick! how I love him; but I
am afraid it will kill him; the purpose for which he has lived
these twenty years is taken from him. Can we give him another?"

"It may be that you can," Dick replied, looking tenderly into her
sweet face, all aglow with the bright soul-life which had been
kindled so actively in the last hours. "If you can, Mary, try it;
do not think of anything else; stay with him, do anything you
think right and good for him; he deserves more from us than--"
Dick hesitated, not willing to speak unkindly of Mr. Brandon, who
certainly had been a father to Mary--"than any other."

"I will try," Mary answered speaking quickly and in a low voice.
"If it seems best that I should stay a little while, you will
explain to papa? But perhaps, after all, it will be you who will
be able to replace her best."

"We shall see," Dick said, and then Dr. Heremore was seen coming
toward them, with less lightness in his step than they had
noticed before; otherwise there was but little change, except
that his voice was more mournfully tender than at first.

"It is a long time since I saw that place filled," he said,
arranging a chair for Mary before the tea-urn. "And it is very
sweet to me to see your bright young face before me; a long time
since I have had so strong an arm to help me," he added, as Dick
eagerly offered him some little assistance, "and I am very
grateful for it."

There were no explanations that night; he talked to Dick and Mary
as to very dear and honored guests, of everything likely to
interest them, and was won by their eager attention to tell them
many little things about his house and grounds, which were his
evident pride and pleasure, all in the same subdued, courteous
way that had attracted them from the first. There seemed, in the
beginning, a far greater sympathy between Mary and him than he
had with Dick, which was the reason, undoubtedly, why he devoted
his attention more especially to his grandson, whose modest
replies, given with a heightened color and an evident desire to
please, were very winningly made.

"I have two noble grandchildren," he said to them as they stood
up to say good-night. "My daughter, short as her life was, did
not come into the world for a small purpose; she did not live for
little good; she has sent me two to love and esteem, and to win
some love from them, I trust--yes, I _believe_."

{194}

The next day, he set apart a time and then there were full
explanations from both sides. Dick's story we know already. Dr.
Heremore's can be told in a few words. His daughter married, when
very young and on a short acquaintance, a gentleman who was
spending his summer holidays in the vicinity of Wiltshire, and,
immediately upon her marriage, had gone to N---- to reside; they
remained there until Richard was a month old, when his daughter
made him a long--her last--visit; from there to New York, whence
a letter or two was all that came for some little time; then one
written evidently in great depression of spirits. Dr. Heremore,
on receipt of this, went at once to New York to see her, only to
hear that she had gone with her husband to Europe. A little
further inquiry proved to his satisfaction that Mr. Brandon was
in the South, and that his wife was not with him; his letters
were unanswered, and his alarm was every day greater and more
painful. At last, he followed a lady--described to be somewhat of
his daughter's appearance, bearing the same name, who had joined
a theatrical company, though of this last he was not aware for a
long time--to Europe. As he had said before, he came back
disappointed but not despairing, to hear of Mr. Brandon's
death--the same false report, perhaps intentionally circulated,
which his daughter had heard. Her letters to him, of which she
spoke in her letter to Dick, were lost while he was away
searching for her. He had not been rich, then; but coming home,
he had resumed his practice, and lived patiently awaiting news of
her, energetically laboring to secure a small fortune for her
should she ever come to claim it. This little fortune he would
divide at once, he said, between her two children; for "what," he
argued with them, "what is the use of hoarding it to give to you
later when, I trust, you will not need it half as much? A few
hundreds in early youth are often worth as many thousands in
after-years."

"That will do for Dick," Mary conceded, "because it _would_
be a great thing for him to have a little start just now; and
besides, there's Somebody Else for _him_ to think of; but I
will take my share in staying here. You will not drive me away?"

"Your father?"

"Papa would--it's a shabby thing to say--be very willing to have
me away, in his present circumstances. He has been wishing and
wishing for Fred and Joe constantly ever since they went; but for
me--he thinks girls are a sort of nuisance, I know he does; and
will be very grateful to you if you divide the burden with him."

"But if--just as I got used to loving you, there should be
another Somebody Else besides Dick's? How about this out of
civilization place, then?"

Mary grew very red indeed, but answered readily, "Oh! that's a
long way off; and besides, he may not think this out of
civilization, you know."

So it was settled. One of the clerks who had been from early
boyhood in Ames and Narden's store had been long intending to
start out on his own account, and Dick was very sure that they
could fulfill their olden dream of partnership, now that Dr.
Heremore was willing to give them a start. Dick went down to New
York the day after this conversation, and there was a long talk
between the members of the firm, and the two clerks, which
culminated in a dinner and the agreement that all was to go on as
it had been going, until the first of May, when there would be a
new bookseller's firm in the New York Directory, to wit, BARNES
AND HEREMORE.

{195}

After a brief conversation with Mr. Brandon, Dick hurried to
Carlton, and was not long making his way to the shadowy lane. To
her honor and glory be it said, Trot was the first to see him;
and without waiting for a greeting, not even for the expected
"dear 'ittle Titten," ran with all speed into the house, crying,
"Thishter! Thishter! Mr. Dit ith toming!" at the top of her
voice; and Rose, all blushing at being caught "just as she was,"
had no time to utter a word before "Mr. Dit," was beside her.
There was great rejoicing over Dick; the children pulled him in
every direction, to show him some new thing he had not yet seen,
until he began to tell the story of his adventures, when they
stood around in perfect silence. Mrs. Alaine and Mrs. Stoffs
wiped their eyes between their smiles and their exclamations of
delight; old Carl once held his pipe in one hand and forgot to
fill it for nearly a minute, so absorbed was he; but Rose alone
did not say a word of congratulation when Dick's good fortune and
his brightened future were announced. I even think she had a good
cry about it, after a little talk with Dick by herself, that
evening, so hard it is to leave one's home.

"There's not a thing to wait for now," Dick had said, with
beaming eyes; and poor Rose's ideas of "youth," and "time to get
ready," and all that sort of remark, were put aside without the
least consideration. "We will have a little house of our own,"
Dick continued, "we will not go to boarding, as some people do;
you are too good a housekeeper for _that_, I am sure; and as
New York has no houses for young people of moderate means, we
will have a home of our own near the city. Shall we not, Rose?"

Dick was a very busy young man for a couple of months after this.
One thing Dr. Heremore did that seemed hard, but not so very
unnatural, and of which no one who has never felt a wrong to some
one dearly loved should judge. He begged that he might never see
Mr. Brandon, nor be asked to hold any communication with him. He
gave Mary a certain sum of money, which he wished her to use for
her father and step-brothers; but beyond that, he left Mr.
Brandon to help himself.

After attending to all his grandfather's requests and
suggestions, Dick, as he had been invited to do, returned to
Wiltshire to give an account of his management, and to take up
some things for Mary's use. He was on his way to the boat when he
suddenly started and exclaimed, "Mr. Irving!" for no less a
person than his "Sir Launcelot" was standing beside him. Mr.
Irving, not recognizing him, bowed slightly and passed on, and
Dick began to be relieved that Mary was so far away; perhaps,
after all, it was a great deal better.

But another surprise was in store for Dick, who--an inexperienced
traveller even yet, and always in advance of time--had gone on
and waited long before the boat prepared to leave; for at the
last moment a carriage drove rapidly to the pier, and a gentleman
sprang from it in time to catch the boat. It was "Sir Launcelot."

"Mr. Heremore, I believe," he said to Dick, when they met
somewhat later on the boat. "I called on Mr. Brandon to-day, just
after you met me, to pay my respects to him on my return from
Europe. I found him in a different business from that in which I
had left him, and very reserved. I asked after the ladies of his
family, who, he told me, were at your grandfather's and his
father-in-law's, in Maine, adding that there was a long story,
which I had better come to you to hear, if you had not already
left. I have business in Maine, so followed you up."

So they made acquaintance; and the new-found relationship with
Mary was explained, as also the reverses Mr. Brandon had met
with.

{196}

"His wife dead, too, you tell me! How shocked he must have been
at my questions of her! How like him not to give me a hint!"
exclaimed Mr. Irving.

The new friendship progressed well, as it often will between two
gentlemen, one of whom is in love with the other's sister,
although there was a wide difference between their characters.
Mr. Irving was many years older than Dick, as his finished
manners and his manly presence attested, without the aid of a few
gray hairs on his temples, not visible, and half a dozen or so in
his heavy moustache, very visible and adding much to his good
looks, in the eyes of most of the ladies who saw him. It seemed
as natural to Dick that this travelled man, so polished, so
princely as he was, should be just the one to please his
high-bred sister, and he captivated by her, as that he himself
should belong to Rose and she to him. Consequently he did not put
on any of the airs in which brothers, especially when they are
very young, delight to appear before their sister's admirers.

Dick had even tact enough, when they reached Dr. Heremore's house
--for, of course, Mr. Irving's "business in Maine" did not
interfere with his accompanying Dick to Wiltshire--to be, very
busy with the carriage and trunks, while Mr. Irving opened the
little gate, and announced himself to the young lady on the
porch. When Dick, a few minutes after, greeted his sister, he had
no need, though Mary's color did not come as readily as Rose's,
to say with Sir Lavaine:

  "For fear our people call you lily maid,
   In earnest, let me bring your color back."

I think that Dr. Heremore, though the very soul of courtesy,
looked rather sadly upon Mr. Irving; but he was not long left in
any uncertainty in regard to that gentleman's wishes; for the
very next day his story was told; how he had known and loved Mary
from her very earliest girlhood, but that he was afraid of his
greater age, and, anxious that she should not be influenced by
their long acquaintance and the advantages his ripened years had
given him over admirers more suited to her in age, he had gone to
Europe, but lacked the courage to remain half the time he had
allotted, and now was back, and--"

"And, ah! yes, I understand; I am to lose her," said her
grandfather sadly. "I knew I could not keep her."

"Giving her to me will not be losing her. We talked about it last
night, and we are both delighted with this place; and as I am
bound to no especial spot, (Mr. Irving was an author,) and she
loves none half so much as this, we can well pitch our tent
here."

But when further acquaintance had enabled the man of "riper
years" to take a place in Dr. Heremore's life which neither Mary
nor Dick could fill, it was settled that the old house was large
enough for the three; and as Mr. Irving was wealthy, healthy, and
wise, the sun of Mary's happiness shone very brightly.

There's nothing more for me to say except that Dick went down to
Carlton still once again, and that in its church there is a
little altar of the Blessed Virgin, whereon Rose had the
unspeakable delight--so precious to every pious heart--of laying
a beautiful veil--Mary's gift to her "sweet little
sister"--which Trot looks critically at every Sunday, and may be
a little oftener, and puzzles her small head wondering if its
delicate texture--the veil's--will stand the wear and tear of the
years that must pass before she can replace it with hers; which
always makes uncle Carl laugh. And Rose has persuaded Mary to
dedicate her own in the same way, and Mary has laughingly
complied, a little shame-faced, too, at her own secret pleasure
in doing it, at the same time half wondering "what will come of
it." Rose does not wonder; she thinks she knows.

As for Dick, there is every reason to believe that this coming
Christmas there will be two or three glad hearts travelling
around in company with two or three rough, ragged, shaggy boys;
that he will carve his own Christmas turkey at his own, own
table; and that there will be a _couleur de Rose_ over all
his future life.

----------
{197}

      Our Lady's Easter.

              I.

  She knelt, expectant, through the night:
    For He had promised. In her face
    The pure soul beaming, full of grace,
  But sorrow-tranced--a frozen light.

  But, ere her eastward lattice caught
    The glimmer of the breaking day,
    No more in that sweet garden lay
  The buried picture of her thought.

  The sealed stone shut a void, and lo!
    The Mother and the Son had met!
    For her a day should never set
  Had burst upon the night of woe.

  In sudden glory stood He there,
    And gently raised her to his breast:
    And on his heart, in perfect rest,
  She poured her own--a voiceless prayer.

  Enough for her that he has died,
    And lives, to die again no more:
    The foe despoiled, the combat o'er,
  The Victor crowned and glorified.

{198}
             II.

  What song of seraphim shall tell
    My joy to-day, my blissful queen?
    Yet truly not in vain, I ween,
  Our earthly alleluias swell.

  It is but just that we should thus
    Our Jesus' triumph share with thee.
    For us he died, to set us free.
  Thou owest him risen, then, to us.

  But thou, sweet Mother, grant us more
    Than here to join the festive strain:
    To hymn, but never know, our gain
  Were ten times loss for once before.

  Thy faithful children let us be.
    Entreat thy Son, that he may give
    The wisdom to our hearts to live
  In his, the risen life, with thee.

  For so, amid the onward years,
    This feast shall bring us strength renewed;
    To pass secure, o'er self subdued,
  To Easter in the sinless spheres.

-------

{199}

 Two Months In Spain During The Late Revolution.


  September 9, 1868.

To-day, while they are yet celebrating the Nativity of the
Blessed Virgin, we enter Spain, that mysterious world behind the
Pyrenees, so different from all others, and of which we know so
little! To-day is also the anniversary of my birthday into the
Catholic Church, and now it is my birthday into Catholic Spain!
"La tierra de Maria Santisima."

Leaving Perpignan (in the Pyrénées Orientales) by diligence, we
pass through a most tropical looking country, amidst hedges of
aloe, and oleander, and pomegranates, (reminding one of Texas in
the character of the soil, the productions, and even the houses;)
we soon begin the ascent of the mountains; and, before it is
quite dark, we are across the Pyrenees. By the light of a
beautiful sunset we have some grand mountain views, and encounter
a group of Spanish gypsies, dark, ragged, and dirty, but highly
picturesque. All along these mountains are cork-trees of
prodigious size, with black, twisted trunks, from which the bark
has been stripped--their fantastic shapes taking the form of nuns
or monks--great ghosts in the dim light. Perthus, on the other
side the mountains, is the last French town; high above which
towers the fortress of Bellegarde, built by Louis XIV. in 1679.
Just outside this town we pass a granite pyramid, on which is
written "Gallia." A fellow-passenger tells us we are on Spanish
soil. All cry, "Viva España!" and we look out upon a
solemn-looking soldier, who stands by a cantonnier, above which
floats the red and yellow flag of Spain. La Junguera is the first
Spanish town; and here is a rival fort to the towering French one
so lately seen. Here our luggage is visited, and we have our
first experience of Spanish courtesy. The gentlemen passengers
all come to ask, "Will the ladies have fruit?" "Will they have
wine?" And one of our party, wishing to give alms to a blind
beggar, and asking change for a franc, one of the gentlemen gives
her the money in coppers, and refuses to take the franc; which,
it seems, is the Spanish custom.

At Figueras we eat our first _Spanish supper_; no
inconsiderable meal, if we may judge by this one. First came the
inevitable soup, (_puchero;_) then, boiled beef; next in
course, cabbage and turnips, eaten with oil and vinegar, and the
yellow sweet-pepper which is the accompaniment to everything, or
may be eaten alone, as salad. The third course was stewed beef;
next, fried fish, (fish, in Spain, never comes before the third
course;) and now, stewed mushrooms; but, as they are stewed in
oil, (and that none of the sweetest,) we pass them by. After
this, lobster; then cold chicken and partridge; and now the
delicious fruits of the country, and the toasted almonds which
are universal at every meal, and cheese. Coffee and chocolate
terminate this repast, for which we pay three and a half francs,
and after which one might reasonably be expected to travel all
night.

{200}

Gerona appeared with the early dawn; a curious old town of 14,000
inhabitants, on the river Oña, and looking not unlike Rome with
its yellow river, its tall houses, and balconies. Both this town
and Figueras have made themselves memorable in wars and sieges.
Indeed, what Spanish town has not its tale of heroism and brave
defence during the French invasion of 1809-11? These towns were
both starved into capitulation, after sieges which lasted seven
or eight months, the women loading and serving the guns during
the siege, and taking the places of their fallen husbands or
lovers, like the "Maid of Saragossa." We were glad to leave the
diligence for the railway which runs by the lovely Mediterranean
coast, passing many pretty towns with ruins of old Moorish
fortresses and castles on the hills beyond. In one of these
towns, Avengo de Mar, the dock-yards are very famous, and a naval
school was here established by Charles III.

Mataro, a place of 16,000 people, seemed very busy and thriving.
This, too, has its tale of siege and slaughter. The French have
left behind them in Spain a legacy of hate. Of the ruins of a
monastery near one of these towns a pretty story is told. Two
Catalonian students passing by this beautiful site, one
exclaimed, "What a charming situation this would be for a
convent! When I am pope, I will build one here." "Then," said the
other, "I will be a monk, and live in it." Years after, when the
latter _had_ become a monk, he was sent for to Rome, and
being presented to the pope, (Nicholas V.,) recognized in him his
old friend and companion, when in the act of receiving his
blessing. The pope embraced him; reminded the monk of his
promise; built the convent, in which, we presume, the latter
lived and died. The beautiful convent was utterly destroyed in
the civil wars of 1835, when the monks were all driven from
Spain.

  "The sacred taper-lights are gone,
   Gray moss hath clad the altar stone,
   The holy image is o'erthrown,
     The bell hath ceased to toll.

  "The long-ribbed aisles are burnt and shrunk,
   The holy shrine to ruin sunk,
   Departed is the pious monk;
     God's blessing on his soul!"

----

  Barcelona, Province Of Catalonia.
    Hotel De Las Cuatro Naciones.

September 10.

How charming looks this gay, busy city, with its shady streets,
beautiful gardens and fountains, the sea before it, the mountains
behind, fortifications on every side, seemingly impregnable. Our
hotel is on the "Rambla," a wide boulevard, like those of Paris,
upon which most of the fine buildings are situated, and which is
the principal promenade. In the evening, we go to one of the
theatres, and hear a French opera beautifully sung.


Friday, 11.

The books tell us that Barcelona was founded by Hamilcar, the
Carthaginian, B.C. 237. Cesar Augustus raised it to a Roman
colony. Ataulfo, the first king of the Goths, chose it for his
court. In 713, it fell into the hands of the Moors, who were
expelled by Charlemagne in 801. From this time, it belonged to
the Duchy of Aquitaine, and was governed by counts, until Charles
the Bold made it an independent kingdom, to reward Count Wilfred
el Velloso, who had aided him against the Normans. Count Raymond
Berenguer IV. united Catalonia with Arragon, by marrying the
heiress of that kingdom, from which time it was the rival of
Genoa and Venice. It has always been the centre of revolutionary
movement, restlessly endeavoring to regain its independence. The
Catalans are industrious, bold, and enterprising.
{201}
Indeed, so much do they surpass the people of other parts of
Spain in activity and enterprise, that they are called the
Spanish Yankees, and Barcelona is termed the Manchester of Spain.
Manufactories of cotton and silk; the most famous laces of Spain;
a most flourishing trade, as well as fine schools and public
libraries, are to be found here. They boast that the first
experiment with steam for navigation purposes was made in
Barcelona, the inventor having displayed his steamboat before
Charles V. and Philip II., in 1543. Charles, being occupied in
foreign conquests, took little notice of this, and, through fear
of explosion, the discovery was abandoned, and the secret died
with the inventor.

Barcelona has a very large French population. In the Calle
Fernando, we see shops handsome as those of Paris. Already we
find most tempting Spanish fans for a mere trifle; and at every
turn the delicious chocolate is being made into cakes by
machinery. There are many fine churches. The cathedral is a grand
specimen of the Gothic Catalan of the thirteenth century--one of
the most imposing churches we have seen in Europe. "Sober,
elegant, harmonious, and simple," as some traveller describes it.
The Moors converted the old cathedral of their Gothic
predecessors into a mosque. James II., "el conquistador," one of
the greatest of the Catalan heroes, commenced this in 1293. The
cloisters are very interesting; have a pretty court, with
orange-trees and flowers, and a curious old fountain of a knight
on horseback; the water flowing from the knight's head, his toes,
and from the tail and mouth of the horse. In the crypt is the
body of St. Eulalia, the patron saint of Barcelona; removed from
St. Maria del Mar, where it had been kept since the year 878.
Before this shrine Francis I. heard mass, when a prisoner in
Spain, after the battle of Pavia. In the choir, over each finely
sculptured stall, is painted the shield of each of the knights of
the Golden Fleece. Here was held a "chapter," or general
assembly, presided over by Charles V., March 5th, 1519. Charles,
then only king of Spain, occupied a throne on one side hung with
damask and gold; opposite was the empty throne of Maximilian,
first emperor of Germany, (his grandfather,) hung in black.
Around the king were assembled Christian, King of Denmark;
Sigismund, King of Poland; the Prince of Orange, the Dukes of
Alba, Friaz, Cruz, and the flower of the nobility of Spain and
Flanders.

There are some curious old monuments in the church, and a
crucifix called "Cristo de Lepanto," which was carried on the
prow of the flagship of Don John, of Austria, in the battle of
Lepanto. The figure--of life size--is all inclined to one side;
and the faithful of that day assure us that the sacred image
turned itself aside, to avoid the Moslem bullets which were aimed
at it. Certain, it was never struck.

While in the church, we see a funeral mass, which is peculiar in
some of its ceremonies, and very solemn in the dim religious
cathedral light, where every kneeling figure, with its black
mantilla, seems to be a mourner. After the credo, little tapers
are distributed, and, at a certain part of the mass, are lighted.
The priest comes to the foot of the altar. Each person, bearing a
lighted taper, goes forward in procession, the men on one side,
the women on the other. Each one kisses the cross upon the stole
of the priest, as if in submission to the will of God. The
candles are extinguished, and deposited in a plate.

{202}

Walking on the Rambla this evening, we hear a drum, and,
following the crowd, witness the performance of a Spanish
mountebank, whose sayings must have been very witty, to judge by
the plaudits of the crowd. He had a learned dog, which so far
surpassed all the dogs we had ever seen that I am persuaded he
was cleverer than his master.


Saturday, September 12.

A rainy day. But we take a long walk through the crooked, narrow
streets; going into the Calle de la Plateria (the street of the
jewellers) to see the curious long filagree earrings worn by the
peasants. We are as much objects of curiosity to these people, as
they are to us, (bonnets and parasols being rarely seen in
Spain.) An old man, touched my blue veil, yesterday, asking,
"Queste paese?" and when I told him we were "Americanos," he
rejoined, "Me speak England; me like Americanos." Even the
poorest people here are courteous and respectful; and their
language seems to have borrowed so much that is flowery and
poetic from their Arab progenitors, that it would seem
exaggerated and insincere, were it not accompanied by a grave and
earnest manner as well as gesticulation. We ask a beggar the way
to a certain street. He accompanies us all the way, declines any
remuneration, and at parting says, "Go, and may God go with you!"
A policeman, seeing us endeavor to enter the Plaza Real, to look
at the monument to the king, opens the gate, though the public
are not admitted. We thank him for making an exception in our
favor; and upon going out, he bids us "Adios," adding,' "May your
beauty never be less." At the _table d'hote_, every Spaniard
bows as we enter, and all rise when we leave the table. In the
centre of the table is a pyramid of cigars and matches most
fantastically arranged; and it is the custom for gentlemen to
smoke at every meal! We visit St. Maria del Mar, a church
considered by many to be superior to the cathedral,
architecturally. It was built in 1329, on the site of a former
church, erected to contain the body of St. Eulalia. The arched
roof is of immense height; the main altar of black and yellow
marble. The church is hung with many pictures by Spanish artists,
and has the usual amount of stucco and gilding for which Spanish
churches have been remarkable since the days of Columbus, when
gold was so plentiful with them.



Sunday, 13th.

We hear mass in the little Gothic church of St. Monica, hard by,
and go afterward to the cathedral, which is even more impressive
upon a second view. Several baptisms are going on, and the very
babies are dressed in mantillas--the white mantillas worn by the
lower classes, which are very pretty. White silk, trimmed with
white lace, or of the lace alone; the silk, which is a long
strip, is pinned to the hair on top of the head, and the lace
falls over the face, or is folded back. Young ladies wear them of
black lace, in the street or for visits; silk, for the churches;
and these with the never-failing accompaniment of the fan, belong
to all alike; rich and poor, old and young. The fan serves as
parasol, and strange to say, that, with this alone to shelter
them from the sun, these women should be so beautifully fair; and
in Valencia they are famed for their white complexions! Surely
the sun in Spain is kinder than in America, for freckles and
sun-burn are never seen.

{203}

The men wear a red or purple cap, which they call "gorro;" a sort
of bag which hangs down behind, or at the side, or is more
generally folded flat across the forehead; a red or purple sash,
(_faja;_) a short jacket; sandals (_espardinya_) of
hemp or straw, tied with strings. We drive through the streets,
and find most of the shops closed, (Sunday;) and see through the
open doors that every house, even the very poorest, looks nice
and clean.

In the evening, we drive upon the Prado del Gracia, which
terminates in the little town of Gracia, where are pretty villas,
and stop at a convent for the evening service. It is of this very
convent that they tell how, in the Moorish invasion of Al
Mansour, when his soldiers were recruiting for the harems of the
Balearic Islands, (Minorca and Majorca,) the poor nuns, thinking
to avoid so horrible a fate, heroically cut off their noses to
disfigure themselves; but it did not avail to save them; for
history records that they were carried off, in spite of their
noses, or, rather, in spite of the want of them.

Barceloneta is a suburb where live the fishermen, and where we
find docks crowded with shipping. From this we have a fine view
of the Fort Montuich, built upon a high rock. There is also a
citadel near the sea, and a beautiful promenade upon the walls,
(Muralea del Mar.) And amongst the public buildings is a
university, said to be the finest in Spain; many hospitals and
charitable institutions, and a theatre (the Lycée) which they
claim to be larger than San Carlo, in Naples, the Scala, in
Milan, or even the new-opera house in Paris. Barcelona is the
birthplace of Balmes, the author of that great work,
_Protestantism and Catholicity compared in their Influence upon
Civilization_.



Valencia Del Cid, Sept. 14.

Yesterday, at six in the morning, we leave Barcelona for "the
City of the Cid," arriving at ten o'clock at night; a long,
fatiguing, but interesting day. The railway runs by the blue
Mediterranean, with stern, bleak mountains close on the other
side; or through vineyards, and fig and olive groves, with which
are mingled peaches, apples, and quinces, showing that all
varieties of fruits meet together in this favored clime. In
passing Martorell, the third or fourth station from Barcelona, we
have a fine view of Montserrat; a picturesque, jagged mountain
1000 feet high, where is a monastery, one of the most celebrated
pilgrimages in Spain. On the opposite side is a famous old Roman
bridge (over the Llobregat river) called "del Diablo," built in
531 B.C., by Hannibal, in honor of Hamilcar. At one end is a
triumphal arch. Here the views are particularly fine.

Villafranca comes next, the earliest Carthaginian colony in
Catalonia, founded by Hamilcar. Next we see Terragona, an ancient
city, on a steep and craggy eminence, founded by the Scipios. It
was long the seat of the Roman government in Spain; now famous
for its fine wines.

Here the costume of the peasants begins to look more eastern. The
full, short linen pantaloons, (on each leg a petticoat;) a red
handkerchief, worn as a turban; sometimes leather leggings, but
more frequently legs red from the wine-press, where they have
been treading out the grape-juice. The peasants are simple and
friendly, and, seeing few strangers, look upon them as guests,
and seem never disposed to speculate upon our ignorance of the
prices of things. One of our party offered to pay for a tempting
bunch of grapes which we saw in a man's basket, who pressed to
look at us in one of the stations. With difficulty he was
prevailed upon to take a real, (five cents.) He then offered
more, which we in turn declined.
{204}
Waiting till the train moved off, he sprang forward, and dropped
into my lap a bunch which must have weighed several pounds, and I
looked back to see him smiling most triumphantly. At another
station (a poor place in the mountains) a modest, clean-looking
woman came forward with glasses of water. No one paid anything
for drinking it. But when she came to our carriage, one of the
party gave her two reals, (ten cents in silver.) The poor thing
shook her head sadly, saying, "No tengo cambia." (But I have no
change.) When she was made to comprehend that she was to keep it
_all_, her face glowed with delighted surprise; and as we
moved off, we saw her showing the money to all around her. No
doubt she took my friend for the queen herself!

At Tortosa, on the Ebro, we begin to see the palm-trees. And here
we enter the province of Valencia, the brightest jewel in the
crown of Spain. The Moors placed here their paradise, and under
their rule it became the garden of Spain. From them the Cid
rescued it in 1094, and here he governed like a king, and died
here in 1099. It was then annexed to Castile and Arragon. It is a
fortified town, about three miles from the sea; and with its
narrow streets, tall houses, balconies, with curtains and blinds
hanging outside into the street, looks perennially southern and
Spanish. We come up from the station in a "tartana," a vehicle
peculiar to Valencia, a sort of omnibus on two wheels, made to
hold six persons; without springs, and with one horse. The driver
sits on the shaft, with his legs dangling down, or supported by a
strap. This vehicle jolts horribly, but is very cheap and
convenient.



Tuesday, September 13.

To-day we first see the museum, in which are many pictures of
Spanish artists, both ancient and modern--two of Spagnoletto, and
several of Ribalta and Juanes--two Valencian artists of whom they
are very proud. The last is especially famed for his beautiful
pictures of our Lord. We saw here the ancient altar used by James
the Conqueror, "Don Jaime," as he is called--the great hero of
Catalonia, son of Pedro I. He was one of the first sovereigns who
established standing armies in Europe. Amongst other wise
institutions, the municipal body of Barcelona was his work. He
died in Valencia, 1276, on his way to the monastery of Poblet to
become a monk, confiding his goodly sword, "La Tizona," to his
son Don Pedro, in whose favor he had abdicated that year.

In this museum are many remains of the ancient Saguntum, (now
called Murviedro,) which is but a few miles from Valencia, and a
model of its old Roman theatre. In the court of the building are
some palm-trees three hundred years old.

We next visit an ancient church of the Jesuits to see one of
Murillo's "Immaculate Conceptions," which is very beautiful. Then
the "Audiencia," an ancient building of the sixteenth century,
where are the courts of justice and other courts. Here is some
wonderful old carving, and curious portraits of Inquisitors;
civil, on one side, ecclesiastical on the other. We were glad to
see that the former greatly outnumbered the latter. After this,
we go to one of the finest hospitals in the world; with marble
floors, and pillars supporting a lofty ceiling; the great windows
opening into gardens of orange, and myrtle, and jessamine; all
clean, fresh, and cool; with an altar so placed in the centre,
under a lofty dome, that every patient could see and hear the
divine office. The whole building was alike well arranged; the
kitchen large and convenient, and the dispensary grand.
{205}
Certainly, in all our experience--and we have visited hospitals
everywhere--we have seen nothing so _inviting_, so really
elegant, as this. Here we meet the two loveliest women we have
seen in Spain; both sisters of charity; one having charge of the
dispensary, and the other of the foundling institution connected
with the hospital. Such white complexions; lovely color; such
eyes, and eyelashes, and teeth! Specimens of the beauty of
Valencia. And such charming groups of children as we saw amongst
these unhappy disowned ones! Unconscious of their fate, they
played merrily in the cool court, till, seeing strangers, many
ran to hide their beautiful eyes behind the sister's apron. The
school-room would have done honor to the most "_enlightened
nation_," which might here take a lesson from "_benighted
Spain_." Great placards hold the "A B C." Slates hang in order
by the little benches against the wall; pictures of beasts and
birds, for natural history; maps, for geography; drawings, for
mathematics; balls strung on wires, for counting; large books
filled with colored engravings of Bible history, from the birth
of Adam to the end of the Apocalypse. And such neatness and
order! There is one department for the little ones whose mothers
leave them each morning, when they go out to work, returning for
them at night. Their tiny baskets hung in a row. Some, who were
quite babies, were being greatly petted, because it was their
first day away from the mother.

While in the school-room, one of the party began examining a
large map of Spain with reference to our projected route. The
sister seeing this, lowered the map by a cord, and calling a
little fellow of five years, he pointed out the oceans by which
Spain is surrounded, named the rivers and mountains, the
provinces of Spain, and the principal towns; never once making a
blunder, though he often paused to recollect himself.

We drive to see the queen's garden, where is every tropical tree
and flower. This, with other gardens, borders upon the Alameda, a
broad, shady promenade extending three miles to the sea. There is
another promenade called the "Glorieta," where the band plays
every morning from nine to eleven. We see, also, the Plaza de
Toros, (the arena for the bull-fights,) one of the finest in
Spain, capable of holding twenty thousand people; built so
exactly like a Roman amphitheatre that we feel as if we looked
upon the Colosseum in the days of its glory. It is evident that
these people inherit the love of this their national pastime from
their Roman ancestors. Happily, the fashion is dying out. In
Valencia, the bull-fights occur but once or twice a year. They
are now making preparations for a three days' "funcion," to begin
on the 24th. We saw the poor horses doomed to death. Forty a day
is the average number. The men are rarely killed, but often badly
hurt.



Wednesday, September 16.

This morning we go to the markets to see the wonderful display of
fruits for which Valencia is so famous. Never were such grapes
and peaches, melons and figs, oranges and lemons, apples and
pears, the last as fine as could be seen in all New England; the
nuts and vegetables equally good. Potatoes, and tomatoes, and
peppers, of mammoth size, and even the Indian corn and rice as
good as those of America. But even the Spanish gravity is here
upset at sight of our round hats, short veils, and parasols.
{206}
The women hold their their sides with laughter, and we are driven
to resolve upon wearing mantillas and fans, which fashion we soon
after, in self-defence, adopt. We go to the shops to buy fans,
which are a specialty of Valencia, as are also the beautiful
striped blankets, (mantas,) which are as indispensable to a
Valencian as the fan is to the Valencienne; and is at once his
cloak, his bag, his bed, his coverlet, and his towel. They say of
a Valencian, that he has two uses for a watermelon--to eat his
dinner, and make his toilette. After eating the melon, he washes
his face with the rind, and wipes upon his manta. They wear it
slung gracefully over the left shoulder, or over both shoulders,
the ends falling behind; and over the head-handkerchief is often
worn the pointed hat of Philip II.'s time, with wide, turned-up
brim.

To-day we visit the cathedral and San Juanes. Like most of the
great churches of Spain, the cathedral occupies the site of a
Roman temple. This, made into a church by the Goths, was changed
to a mosque by the Arabs, and now (since 1240) it is again a
Christian church. Some of the doors, and many of the ornaments,
are Moorish. The gratings--of brass--are very handsome; as are
the altars and screen, of marble and alabaster. This last is most
abundant in Spain. A palace opposite to our hotel (that of the
Marquis de los Aguas) is beautifully adorned on the outside with
statues, and vases, and flowers of alabaster in relievo.

All these Spanish churches are much ornamented with stucco and
gilding, according to the taste of the time in which they were
built. The cathedral has some good pictures in the sacristy; and
within the sanctuary hang the _spurs_ of Don Jaime upon his
shield. His body is in one of the chapels.

In an old chapter-house we were shown some great chains taken
from the Moors, and a series of portraits of all the archbishops
of Valencia; and so much is it the habit to gesticulate in this
country, that even these dignitaries, instead of being painted in
_ecclesiastical attitudes_, have their fingers in every
imaginable position. One must know their expressive language to
read what each of these worthies may be saying.

After some shopping, we go to call upon the present archbishop, a
graceful and dignified person, who received us most kindly, and
presented us each a chapelette and scapular. He has a grand old
palace, very plainly furnished; a pretty chapel; and, in a fine
old hall, with groined roof, were portraits of his predecessors
from the sixth century to the present day.

We have a visit from the English consul, to whom we brought
letters. He is very kind and friendly, and full of offers of
service. The Spanish sun seems to have warmed the English heart,
which seldom gives out so much, save in its own foggy island. He
sends us some fine wine, which, with some iced orgeat, secures us
a merry evening.



Thursday, 17.

This morning we hear mass in the Church of the Patriarch, into
which no woman may enter without being veiled. Then we visit the
house in which St. Vincent Ferrer, the patron of Valencia, was
born, and where is a fountain greatly esteemed for its miraculous
powers.

While at breakfast, a young man enters, whom we take for a
Spaniard, but who proves to be an American, and from Maine! He
has lived in Cuba, however, and it turns out that his father is a
friend of the Spanish ladies with whom we are travelling.
{207}
He gives a pleasant account of his travels in the north of Spain;
tells of the wonders of Burgos; of the railway between that and
Miranda, which shows such extraordinary engineering skill; and of
the fine scenery through which he has passed. Yesterday, on the
mountains, he saw three sunsets; or rather, saw the sun set three
times, in descending from range to range.

It is delightful to meet an American who, instead of complaining
of the discomforts of travelling in Spain, as most of our people
do, sees only what is pleasant. For ourselves, we have been most
fortunate; good hotels, most obliging people, and, so far from
being extortionate, (as we were told to expect,) we find Spanish
hotels cheaper than those of any other part of Europe. To-day we
eat the "pollo con arroz," one of the national dishes, (rice with
chicken and saffron,) and find it very good.

Hans Andersen, in his little book on Spain, says:

  "Connected with Valencia, are several of the old Spanish
  romances about the Cid--he who in all his battles, and on
  occasions when he was misjudged, remained true to his God, his
  people, and himself; he who, in his own time, took rank with
  the monarchs of Spain, and down to our own time is the pride of
  the country which he was mainly instrumental in rescuing from
  the infidels. As a conqueror he entered Valencia, and here
  lived with his noble and heroic wife, Zimena, and his
  daughters, Doña Sol and Doña Elvira; and here he died in 1099.
  Here stood around his bed of death all who were dear to him.
  Even his very warhorse, Babieca, was ordered to be called
  thither. In song, it is said that the horse stood like a lamb,
  and gazed with his large eyes upon his master, who could no
  more speak than the poor horse himself. ... Through the streets
  of Valencia passed at night the extraordinary cavalcade to San
  Peder de Cordoña, which the departed chief had desired should
  be his burial-place. The victorious colors of the Cid were
  carried in front. Four hundred knights protected them. Then
  came the corpse. Upright upon his war-horse sat the dead;
  arrayed in his armor with his shield and his helmet, his long
  white beard flowing down to his breast.

  "Gil Diaz and Bishop Jeronymo escorted the body on either side;
  then followed Doña Zimena with three hundred noblemen. The gate
  of Valencia toward Castile was opened, and the procession
  passed silently and slowly out into the open fields, where the
  Moorish army was encamped. A dark Moorish woman shot at them a
  poisoned arrow, but she and a hundred of her sisters paid the
  forfeit of their lives for that deed. Thirty-six Moorish
  princes were in the camp; but terror seized upon them when they
  beheld the dead hero on his white charger.

    'And to their vessels they took flight,
     And many   sprang into the waves.
     Two thousand, certainly, that night
     Amid the billows found their graves.'

  "And the Cid Campeador thus won, after he was dead, good tents,
  gold and silver; and the poorest in Valencia became rich. So
  says the old 'Song of the Cid in Valencia.'


  Cordova -- Province Of Andalusia --
     Fonda Suiza -- Hotel Suisse.

September 18.

After a long night journey, (by rail,) we reach a hotel rivalling
the cleanness and comfort of the genuine Swiss hotel, and find
ourselves in the ancient capital of the Moorish empire, and in
that lovely, bright Andalusia, so famed throughout the world.

From the time we leave Valencia until we reach Jativa, (about
fifty miles,) we pass over the "Huerta" (the "garden") of
Valencia, one continuous plain of verdure; pastures which are cut
from twelve to seventeen times a year. Golden oranges, and other
fruits hang above these green fields; and dates, and figs, and
peaches, and pears, and quinces, pomegranates, plums, apples,
melons, and grapes, and olives, with Indian corn, rice, and every
vegetable in equal perfection. Well might the Moors term this
plain (with Andalusia) "the Paradise of the East." For centuries
after their expulsion, their poets still sang verses expressive
of their grief for its loss, and it is said they still mention it
in their evening prayers, and supplicate Heaven to restore it to
them.

{208}

And this fertility is all their work. Every stream has been
turned from its channel into numberless little canals, which
water this luxurious soil; and these are arranged with such skill
and care that crop after crop has its share of irrigation, and in
its just proportion. From Jativa the country becomes more
mountainous. We pass the ruins of an old chateau on a high hill,
(Montesa,) seat of an ancient order of chivalry which existed
after the suppression of the Templars. We next pass Almanzar,
Chinchilla, Albacete, where they sell the famous "Toledo blades,"
now hardly so famous. Here we are in La Mancha, and when we stop
in Alcazar at midnight, we are near the village of Troboso, which
Cervantes makes the dwelling of Don Quixote's Dulcinea. Alcazar
is claimed as the birth-place of Cervantes.

Here we leave our road for the grand route between Madrid and
Cordova; and here we are crowded into carriages with other
ladies, a fate from which we have hitherto been defended; each
conductor treating us as if we had been especially committed to
his care, and sparing us all annoyance. Fortunately, at
Manzanares two of these ladies leave us, and we make acquaintance
with the third, who is very kind and polite; offers us a share of
her luncheon, and gives us much information of people and things
in Spain. She is a Portuguese, and tells us how much larger and
finer are the olive-trees in her country than in Spain; she
remembers one tree which eight men could not clasp. From her we
hear much of the queen as from an unprejudiced source, and learn,
what we gathered afterward from many credible sources, that this
poor queen is a good woman, a very pious woman, full of talents
and accomplishments, generous to a fault, with strong feelings
and affections, which induce her to reward to excess those whom
she loves or who have served her; and this has given rise to the
injurious reports which have found their way to every foreign
newspaper, but which no _good_ people in Spain believe.

From Andujar the country is very uninteresting, more of a grazing
country, where we see immense herds of cattle, sheep, horses, and
goats, with picturesque shepherds minding them. The men wear
short trousers, opened several inches at the ankle, showing the
untanned leathern buskin, (as is seen in the old pictures of
Philip II.'s time,) a red sash, and the black hat turned up all
around. Presently we come upon the Guadalquivir, upon which
Cordova is situated, and which is crossed here by a bridge of
black marble. We drive up the cool, shady streets, catching
glimpses, through open doors and curtains, of the little paradise
within--the marble courts, with fountain, and orange-trees, and
flowers, and vines--a vestige of the old Moorish time. In fact,
everything here so preserves its Arabic character that one is
transported six centuries back, into the palmy days of the
Kalifs, when this city was said to have contained half a million
of inhabitants, 200,000 houses, 60,000 palaces, 700 mosques, 900
baths, 50 hospitals, and a public library of 600,000 volumes. Of
all these glories only the mosque remains to show by its
magnificence that these accounts cannot be exaggerated.

{209}

Saturday, September 19.

We hasten to see the mosque, (the cathedral now,) and, entering a
low door-way in the wall which surrounds it, you find yourself in
a beautiful oriental court, with fountains, and rows of tall
palms, and ancient orange trees and cypress. This is called "the
court of ranges." Open colonnades surround the court on all sides
save one, from which twenty doors once opened into the mosque;
only one of these is now open. Enter this, and you find yourself
in a forest of pillars--a thousand are yet left--of every hue and
shade, no two alike, of jasper, and verde antique, and porphyry,
and alabaster, and every colored marble, fluted, and spiral; and
over these, rises arch upon arch overlapping each other. These
divide the mosque into twenty-nine aisles from north to south,
and nineteen from west to east; intersecting each other in the
most harmonious and beautiful manner. The Moors brought these
pillars from the ancient temples of Rome, and Nismes, and
Carthage. The mosque was built in the eighth century, by Abd El
Rahman, who aimed to make it rival those of Damascus and Bagdad.
It is said he worked upon it an hour every day with his own hand,
and it is certain that it ranked in sanctity with the "Caaba" of
Mecca, and the great mosque of Jerusalem. Ten thousand lamps
illuminated it at the hour of prayer; the roof was made of arbor
vitae, which is considered imperishable, and was burnished with
gold. The chapel, where is the holy of holies--where was kept the
Koran--gives one an idea of what the ornaments of the whole must
have been. Here the carvings are of the most exquisite fineness,
like patterns of lace; the gold enamel, the beautiful mosaics,
are as bright as if made yesterday. In the holy of holies--a
recess in this chapel--the roof is of one block of marble, carved
in the form of a shell, supported by pillars of various-colored
marble. Around this wall a path is worn in the marble pavement,
by the knees of the faithful making the mystic "seven rounds;"
and our guide tells us that, when a few years ago, the brother of
the king of Morocco came here, he went round this holy of holies
upon his knees, seven times, crying bitterly all the while. The
chapel of the Kalifs is also remarkable, from the floor to the
ceiling, the marble being carved in these beautiful and delicate
patterns.

From the cathedral, we go to visit the old Roman bridge of
sixteen arches, which spans the Guadalquivir. This looks upon
some ruins of Moorish mills, and the orange-gardens of the
Alcazar, (now in ruins,) once the palace of Roderick, the last of
the Goths. As we pass the modern Alcazar, (used as a prison,) an
old cavalry officer comes out of the government stables, and
invites us to look at the horses--the silky-coated Andalusians of
which we have heard so much, and the fleet-footed, graceful
Arabians. Each horse had his name and pedigree on a shield over
his stall. Returning to our hotel for breakfast, we go out again
to see the markets and the shops; visit some churches, and the
lovely promenade by the Guadalquivir. Our costumes excite great
remark; one woman says to another, "They are masqueraders;"
another lifts her hands and exclaims "Ave Maria;" and but for the
intervention of our guide, who reproves their curiosity, we
should be followed by a troop of children.



Sunday, 20.

Coming to breakfast, we are charmed to find our young American
friend whom we had left in Valencia; and, in spite of a pouring
rain, we all set out to hear high mass in the cathedral. The
mosque was consecrated, and made the cathedral, when the city was
captured by St. Ferdinand in 1236.
{210}
Several chapels and altars were then added, and in 1521, the
transept and choir were begun, to make room for which, eighty
pillars were sacrificed. Charles V., who gave permission for this
act of vandalism, was deeply mortified when he saw what had been
done, and reproved the canons of the church, saying, they had
destroyed what was unique in the world, to raise that which could
be found anywhere.

While we are at mass, our young American arrives with the guide,
to tell us that a _revolution_ has broken out, and entreats
us to return to the hotel. Some of the ladies are much alarmed;
but my friend and myself, remembering that revolutions are
chronic in Spanish countries, and are generally bloodless, we
maintain our ground, too old soldiers to be driven from the field
before a gun is fired; and the result justifies our faith.

Nobody quits the church. We have a solemn procession of the
Blessed Sacrament after mass, winding through these beautiful
aisles, accompanied by a band of wind instruments, the whole
congregation following. We reach home to find our
fellow-travellers very much frightened and annoyed at the
prospect of a long detention; but we are assured that the worst
which can befall us is a delay of a few days, to which we can
well submit in this comfortable inn. Making acquaintance with our
fellow-prisoners, we grow jolly over our misfortunes. The
railways are all cut; General Prim and his colleagues (the exiled
generals) are besieging Cadiz; and the queen has fled to
Biarritz, to claim the intervention of the Emperor Napoleon.
These are some of the rumors which are rife during the day. Hosts
of red umbrellas parade the town--the most formidable weapon
which we encounter; a few voices faintly cry "Libertad!" and
"Viva!" some damp-looking soldiers pass by, with lances from
which depend little red flags, looking limp and hopeless in the
heavy rain. These troops declare for the people. We ask one of
these what they want; the answer is, "Liberty." (Of course.) "And
what is that?" "We want a _King_. We will not be governed by
a woman." Inflammatory hand-bills are distributed amongst the
crowd, very vague in their demands, "_an empty throne_"
being the first requisite on the list.

One man is killed, (a fine young officer of the queen's troops
mercilessly shot down,) and another man is wounded. In the
evening, we hear that the revolution is accomplished in Cordova;
the insurrectionists have the city!


Monday, 21.

All is peaceful in appearance, and we go out to shop, to find
some of the filagree jewelry for which Cordova is remarkable--an
art retained from the time of the Moors. The rain drives us in,
and we spend the day with music, books, and in conversation with
our new friends--a Spanish lady of rank, who has come to Cordova
about a lawsuit, and who shakes with fright, and goes about with
a glass of water and a cup of vinegar to quiet her nerves; the
poor lady neither eats nor sleeps. The others are of different
calibre; a sturdy Scotch lady, and her companion, a sweet and
charming German girl. "Who's afeard!"



Tuesday, 22.

We are roused by the sound of military music, and find that 5000
of the queen's troops are entering the city. Such.
splendid-looking fellows! Such handsome officers! It is plain the
city is taken in earnest _now!_ The inconstant populace
clamor and shout; all is enthusiasm; the report is, that the
insurrectionists are fled to Seville; the roads are repaired, but
we are not allowed to leave the city.
{211}
Still prisoners of _war!_ Later in the day, we hear that the
troops we saw this morning are those which had joined the
insurgents at Seville. The queen's troops, commanded by the
Marquis de Novaliches, are outside the town, fearing to be too
few for those within, and waiting the turn of events. It is
supposed there will be some compromise entered into; a convention
patched up; and no fighting. The prime minister, Gonzales Bravo,
has fled from Madrid, where all is anarchy. This man, who has
been the author of all the oppressive measures, and all the
banishments which have made the queen's government unpopular,
now, in her hour of need leaves her to her fate, after cruelly
deceiving her. When she feared the danger of revolution, he
assured her she might leave the country without any anxiety; and
she went to Biarritz in ignorance of the truth; thus giving her
enemies the very opportunity they desired. Even now, (they say,)
were she to return, and throw herself upon the generosity of the
people, she would be received kindly; such is the loyalty of
Spaniards to their monarchs. The influence of Bravo banished the
Montpensiers, (the queen's sister and her husband, the son of
Louis Philippe,) who were naturally her best friends, and to whom
she had showed every kindness. He sent away many of her most
popular generals; and now they return, with men and arms, and
British and Prussian gold; the people sympathize with them, the
troops join them; we hear from Cadiz, that there was a perfect
ovation upon their landing.

To-day, we have a fine walk in a beautiful park, on one side of
the city, from whence we have a charming view of the mountains;
on one side, so grand and bold, with olive groves, and white
country houses sparkling in the sunshine; on the other side, the
hills are low, and their graceful, wavy outlines have the
peculiar purple hue belonging to Spain, and form a striking
contrast to the others. Between the two, lies the city, and the
fertile plains about it. We lose our way in the tortuous streets,
and spend the morning peeping into the beautiful patios,
(courts,) which open to the heavens, or have sometimes a linen
awning over them; with marble pavements, over which the cool
fountains play; with orange-trees, and flowers, amongst which
sofas, and chairs, and pictures are disposed; and around which
often runs a marble corridor, with pillars and curtains,
communicating with the other apartments. Here the family sit, and
here take place the "tirtulias," the meetings for talk and music.
A picture of one of these patios is thus charmingly translated
from one of Fernan Caballero's beautiful tales by a late English
traveller; and which any one who has been in Spain will
recognize:

  "The house was spacious, and scrupulously clean: on each side
  the door was a bench of stone. In the porch hung a little lamp
  before the image of our Lord in a niche over the entrance,
  according to the Catholic custom of putting all things under
  holy protection. In the middle was the 'patio,' a necessity to
  the Andalusian. And in the centre of this spacious court an
  enormous orange-tree raised its leafy head from its robust
  trunk. For an infinity of generations had this beautiful tree
  been a source of delight to the family. The women made tonic
  decoctions from its leaves; the daughters adorned themselves
  with its flowers; the boys cooled their blood with its fruits;
  the birds made their home in its boughs. The rooms opened out
  of the 'patio,' and borrowed their light from thence.
{212}
  This 'patio' was the centre of all the 'home;' the place of
  gathering when the day's work was over. The orange-tree loaded
  the air with its heavy perfume, and the waters of the fountain
  fell in soft showers on the marble basin, fringed with the
  delicate maiden-hair fern. And the father, leaning against the
  tree, smoked his 'cigarro de papel;' and the mother sat at her
  work, while the little ones played at her feet, the eldest
  resting his head on a big dog, which lay stretched at full
  length on the cool marble slabs. All was still, and peaceful,
  and beautiful."

We close the day with a farewell visit to the cathedral. Surely
it is the most wonderful building in the world. Even St. Peter's
hardly fills one with greater astonishment. This is altogether
unique; and its grace, and elegance, and harmony win one to love
it. We lingered by the chapel of the holy of holies, finding
beauties which we had not before seen, and bade farewell to it
with deep regret; then wandered to the bridge over the
Guadalquivir, and gazed upon the truly eastern prospect it
reveals.

To-day, a great robber from the mountains, upon whose head a
price had been fixed by the late government, comes boldly into
town. The people cry, "Viva Pacheco!" In half an hour after, we
hear he has been shot--the victim of private revenge.

Cordova is the birthplace of Lucan, the author of the
_Pharsalia_; of the two Senecas; of many eminent Moslem
poets and authors, and of the famous Gonzales de Cordova, "El
Gran Capitan."

----------

                 Pope Or People.
                  [Footnote 50]

    [Footnote 50: The _Congregationalist and Boston
    Recorder_, Boston, March 4th, 1869.]

We confess to having read with no little surprise an elaborate
article in the _Congregationalist and Boston Recorder_
entitled _Pope or People_. Had we met the article in a
professedly Unitarian journal or periodical we should have
thought little of it; but meeting it in the recognized organ of
the so-called orthodox Congregationalists of Massachusetts, we
have read it with no ordinary interest. It shows that the
Protestant, especially the old Puritan mind of the country, is
profoundly agitated with the church question under one of its
most important aspects. He who reads with any attention the
leading American sectarian journals can hardly fail to perceive
that there is a growing distrust in the Protestant world of the
Protestant rule of faith, and a growing conviction that the only
alternative, as the journal before us expresses it, is either
pope or people. Of course the journal in question has no clear
apprehension of either of the alternatives it suggests, but it
does see and feel the need of certainty in matters of religious
belief, and is in pursuit of it. It says:

{213}

  "One of our great men once declared that the thing most to be
  desired in this world, by an intelligent mind, is an
  unfaltering religious belief. In the sense in which he meant
  it, his remark is unquestionably true; and it explains the
  philosophy of much of the success of the Romish Church. Men do
  crave certainty in their conviction; such certainty demands
  infallibility on which to found itself, and the papal system
  offers the promise of just that infallibility. And thousands
  upon thousands of minds rest in that; and being able to receive
  it, it meets that innate and inextinguishable craving of the
  soul for stability under its feet, and gives them a
  great--though it be a fallacious--peace.

  "But multitudes, and some even among the nominal adherents of
  the papacy, are not able so to receive that doctrine, and are
  consequently driven to seek for some other rock on which to
  found the house of their faith; too often with the result of
  building it on the sand, with its seductive security for fair
  weather, and its terrible and irremediable fall when the
  tempestuous night-time of death shall come. But for those who
  reject the pope and that certitude of conviction which he
  offers, what solid ground is there on which to stand secure?"

If the writer knew the Catholic religion better, he would know
that the peace we find in believing is not "fallacious," for "we
know in whom we believe and are certain;" but he does see that to
an unfaltering religious belief infallibility of some sort is
absolutely indispensable, and that the Catholic Church promises
it; yet, unable or unwilling to accept the pope or the church, he
looks around to see if he cannot find elsewhere some infallible
authority in which one may confide, an immovable rock or some
solid ground on which one may stand and feel that his footing is
sure. Does he succeed? We think not. He finds an alternative
indeed, but not an infallible authority, and he has proved very
conclusively that outside of the church there is and can be no
such authority for faith. He says:

  "As we look at it, only two alternatives are possible in this
  matter of an infallible faith; either the conditions of it
  exist outside of the soul in some constituted and certified
  authority, or within the soul in the purest and loftiest
  exercise of its reason--and we use this word as
  _including_ conscience--under the enlightenment of God's
  Spirit through his Word. If outside of the soul, in any central
  and constituted authority, then in the pope; for it may as well
  be in him as anybody, nobody else claims it, and he does. If
  inside the soul, then any pope is an impossibility and an
  insult, and God remits every man to those conditions of secure
  decision which he has established in his breast, and holds him
  responsible for a judgment and a life founded upon them. And
  this latter, precisely, is God's way with men. He never
  commands them to hang their faith on the pope or the bishop;
  but rather inquires--in that tone of asking which is equivalent
  to the highest form of injunction--'Why, _(aph' heauton,)
  out of your own selves_, do ye not judge what is right?'
  Even in that precept which many will be swift to quote against
  us in this connection,'Obey them that have the rule over you,
  and submit yourselves,' it is first true that these 'rulers,'
  as the context proves, are mere (_hëgoumenön_) leaders,
  and men of example who were already dead, with no flavor of
  potentiality therefore about them; whose 'faith' is to be
  imitated rather than whose commands are to be submitted to; and
  true, in the second place, that the entire appeal of the
  apostle is to the tribunal of the Hebrews' reason as the court
  of ultimate decision, inasmuch as he declares that for them to
  fail thus to follow the good example of the illustrious and
  holy dead who had walked before them in the heavenly way, would
  be 'unprofitable' for them; leaving the necessary inference
  that men are bound to do what is for their highest profit, and
  therefore bound to decide, in all solemnity, what will be for
  that profit, and, so deciding, by inevitable necessity, to
  assume in the last analysis the function of positive masterhood
  over themselves and their destiny."

The alternative here presented is not pope or people, but pope or
no external authority for faith. But why, supposing the internal
or subjective authority to be all that is here alleged, is the
pope an impossibility or an insult? Why may there not be two
witnesses, the one internal, the other external? Is the
revelation of God less credible because confirmed by two
witnesses, each worthy of credit?
{214}
The external and the internal do not necessarily exclude, and, if
both are infallible, cannot exclude each other, or stand opposed
one to the other. I do not deny or diminish the need or worth of
reason by asserting the infallibility of the church, nor the
importance and necessity of the infallible church by asserting
the full power and freedom of reason. The Catholic asserts both,
and has all the internal light and authority of reason that our
Puritan doctor can pretend to, and has the infallible church in
addition.

We may say the same when is added to "the purest and loftiest
exercise of reason" the enlightenment of God's Spirit through his
Word. This word, on the hypothesis, must be spoken inside of the
soul, or else it is an authority outside of the soul, which the
writer cannot admit. His rule of faith is reason and the interior
illumination of the Holy Ghost. The Catholic rule by no means
excludes this; it includes it, and adds to it the external word
and the infallible authority of the church. Catholics assert the
interior illumination and inspiration of the Holy Spirit as fully
and as strenuously as the Puritan does or can. The authority
inside the soul, be it more or be it less, does not exclude the
external authority of the church, nor does the external authority
of the church exclude the internal authority of reason and the
Spirit. Catholicity asserts both, and interprets each by the
authority of the other. Catholics have all the reason and all the
interior "enlightenment of God's Spirit" that Protestants have,
and lay as much stress on each, to say the least, as Protestants
do or can.

The great mistake of non-catholics is in the supposition that the
assertion of an external infallible authority necessarily
excludes, or at least supersedes, reason and the interior
illumination of the Spirit. This is false in logic, and, as every
one who understands Catholic theology knows, is equally false in
fact. There is a maxim accepted and insisted on by all Catholic
theologians, that settles, in principle, the whole controversy;
namely, _gratia supponit naturam_. Grace supposes nature,
revelation supposes reason, and the external supposes the
internal; and hence no Catholic holds that faith is or can be
produced by the external authority of the church alone, though
infallible, or without the grace of God, that illuminates the
understanding and inspires the will. Hence our Lord says, "No man
cometh to me, unless the Father draws him." In our controversies
with Protestants we necessarily insist on the external authority,
because that is what they deny; hence is produced an impression
in many minds that we deny the internal, or make no account of
it. Nothing can be more untrue or unjust, as any one may know who
will make himself at all familiar with the writings of Catholic
ascetics, or with the Catholic direction of souls.

But while we assert the internal we do not concede that it is
alone sufficient. "Dearly beloved, believe not every spirit, but
try the spirits, whether they be of God," (I John iv. i.) Saints
may mistake their own imaginations or enthusiasm for the
inspirations of the Spirit, and even in their case it is
necessary to try the spirit, and, in the very nature of the case,
the trial must be by an external test or authority. The test of
the internal by the internal is simply no test at all.
{215}
The beloved apostle in this same chapter of his first epistle
gives two tests, the one doctrinal and the other apostolical: "By
this is the Spirit of God known: every spirit that confesseth
Jesus Christ to have come in the flesh is of God, and every
spirit that dissolveth Jesus (by denying either his humanity or
his divinity) is not of God." "We are of God. He that knoweth God
heareth us; he that is not of God heareth us not; by this we know
the spirit of truth, and the spirit of error." The internal,
then, must be brought to the test of apostolic doctrine and of
the apostolic communion or the apostolic authority, both of which
are external, or outside of the soul. The assertion of the
external does not supersede the internal, nor does the assertion
of the internal supersede the necessity of the external
infallible authority. The error of our Puritan journalist is in
supposing that if the one is taken the other must be rejected; he
should know that no one is obliged to choose between them, and
that both, each in its proper place and function, may be and must
be accepted. It is true, neither reason nor the inspiration of
the Spirit can deceive or mislead, us; but we may be deceived as
to what reason really dictates, and as to whether the internal
phenomena really are interior inspirations of the Spirit; and
therefore to the safety and certainty of our faith, even
subjectively considered, the external infallible authority of the
pope or church is indispensable.

This is evident enough of itself, and still more so from the
article before us. The insufficiency of reason and the spiritual
light, either in the writer or in us, appears in his
understanding of the text of St. Paul, Hebrews xiii., which, as
he cites it, reads, "Obey them that have rule over you, and
submit yourselves;" but as we read it, "Obey your prelates and
submit to them." Which of us has the true version of the words of
the apostle? The Puritan interpreter says these prelates, or
"these rulers," were mere leaders, and men of example, who were
already dead, with no flavor of potentiality, (sic,) therefore,
about them; and whose "faith" is to be imitated, rather than
whose commands are to be submitted to. We are disposed to believe
that they were not dead men, but living rulers placed by the Holy
Ghost over the faithful, to whom the apostle commands them to
submit; and we are confirmed in this view by the reason which the
apostle assigns for his command: "For they watch as having to
give an account of your souls, that they may do this with joy,
not with grief." Which of us is right? The journalist tells us,
moreover, that "the entire appeal of the apostle is to the
tribunal of the Hebrews' reason as the court of ultimate
decision." We hold that the apostle, from beginning to end,
appeals to the revelation held by the Hebrews, and argues from
that and the character of their sacrifices and the levitical
priesthood, that both were types and figures of the real and
everlasting priesthood of Christ and his one all-sufficient
sacrifice. Christ having come in the end of the world, and
offered himself once for all, the types and figures must give way
to the reality they prefigured and announced. Therefore the
Hebrews should accept Christ as the fulfilment of their law. He
undoubtedly reasons, and reasons powerfully, but from revealed
premises. Here we and the journalist are at odds; we cannot both
be right: who shall decide between us? While we thus differ,
supposing us equally able, learned, and honest, how can either
find his cravings for certainty satisfied?

{216}

It is a very common prejudice among Protestants and rationalists
that Catholics eschew reason, and assert only an external
authority which operates only on the will. It seems to be
forgotten that it was the reformers who denied reason, and set up
the authority of the written Word against it. No one, as far as
our knowledge extends, ever spoke more contemptuously of reason
than did Doctor Martin Luther; and the old Puritan and
Presbyterian ministers to whose preaching we listened in our
boyhood were continually warning us to beware of the false and
deceitful light of reason, which "dazzles but to blind." This was
in accordance with the doctrine of total depravity with which the
reformers started; man being clean gone in sin and totally
corrupt in his nature, his reason, as well as his will, must be
corrupt, turned against God and truth, and therefore worthy of no
confidence. No doubt, Protestants have softened the harshness of
many of the doctrines of the reformers, and in several respects
have drawn nearer to what has always been the teaching of the
church; but it is hardly fair in them to charge the errors of
their ancestors, which they have outgrown or abandoned, upon the
church which has always condemned them. The Bishop of Avranches,
Pascal, the Traditionalists, and some others, commonly regarded
as Catholics, yet for the most part tinctured with Jansenism,
have indeed seemed to depreciate reason in order the better to
defend faith; but the church has expressly or virtually condemned
them, and vindicated the rights of reason. Whoever knows Catholic
theology, knows that the church never opposes faith or authority
to reason, but asserts both with equal earnestness and emphasis,
and denies that there is or can be any antagonism between them.

The reformers did not assume that no external infallible
authority is necessary to faith. They denied the infallible
authority of popes and councils, but asserted that of the written
Word, interpreted by private judgment, or rather, by the private
illumination of the Spirit, called by some in our day the
Christian conscience, or consciousness. Our Puritan journalist,
though he rejects not the Scriptures, very ably refutes this
theory of the reformers:

  "There lies before us a recent number of a religious quarterly
  containing an elaborate article entitled 'An Infallible Church
  or an infallible Book--which?' the great object of which is to
  dethrone the Pope and enthrone the Bible, as the subject of
  indubitable faith, with that religious certitude with which it
  may logically comfort the soul. To quote its own language, it
  would make the Bible 'the supreme and only arbiter in things
  spiritual.' And this, it thinks, would cause' divisions to
  cease among us for ever.' But this forgets that the Bible is
  always at the mercy of its interpreters, and that its unity
  becomes continual diversity--being all things to all men, as
  they compel it, by the manner in which they receive it. This is
  not true merely in the extreme cases of those who are--and who
  know that they are--'handling the Word of God deceitfully;' it
  is true, as well, of those who mean to treat it with extremest
  reverence and humility or receptive faith. Here, for example,
  are two meek and lowly, yet wonderfully clear-headed disciples,
  like Francis Wayland and Bela Bates Edwards; both able scholars
  and patient students of the Word; both, so far as human eye can
  judge, eminently seeking and securing the habitual guidance of
  the Holy Spirit: and yet, as a matter of fact, reaching, upon
  certain points which both feel to be of serious importance,
  conclusions as to what is taught in the Bible, diametrically
  opposite, and beyond possibility of reconciliation. And who can
  deny that the one--seeming to himself to find them in the
  Bible--was as sacredly bound to hold, practise, and teach
  Baptist, as the other, Pedobaptist views."

We need add nothing to this refutation. Protestants have had from
the first all the Bible, all the private judgment, or private
illumination, they now have or can hope to have; and yet they
have never been able to agree among themselves on a single dogma
of faith. The only point on which they have been unanimous is
their hostility to the Catholic Church.
{217}
They have no standard by which to try the spirit; and the Bible,
not a few among them are accustomed to say, profanely, "is a
fiddle on which a skilful player may play any tune he pleases."
Protestants may go to the Bible to prove the doctrines they have
been taught by their parents or ministers, or held from
Protestant tradition; but they never, or rarely ever, obtain
their doctrines from the study of the Holy Scriptures. Hence,
sects the most divergent appeal alike to the Bible; and each
seems to find texts in its favor. How can any thinking
Protestant, who knows this, not be perplexed and uncertain as to
what he should believe? The writer admits the difficulty, and
asks:

  "Are we to understand, then, that Christ is divided? Is there
  no such thing as absolute truth? This cannot be admitted, and
  we avoid the admission of it by the claim that God's absolute
  truth is a truth of love and life, through dogma yet not of
  dogma; so that it may be reached and realized by approaches not
  only from different but sometimes from opposite directions."

But this does not, as far as we can see, help the matter. Concede
that charity or love is the fulfilling of the law, and that
nothing more is required of any one than perfect charity, yet the
love here asserted is, though not of dogma, "through dogma."
Unless, then, we are sure of the absolute truth of the dogma, how
can we be sure of the truth of the love and life, since there are
many sorts of love? The dogma, according to the Puritan writer,
is not the principle, indeed, but it is the medium of the love
and life. Will a false medium be as effectual in relation to the
end as a true medium? Can a falsehood be, in the nature of
things, any medium at all? If we say the absolute truth is a
truth of love and life through dogma, it seems to us absolutely
necessary that the dogma should be absolutely true; but, whether
the dogma is absolutely true or not, the writer concedes that
those who reject the infallibility of the church have no certain
means of determining. If it be said that the true love and life
are practicable with contradictory dogmas, as is said in the last
extract made, then dogmas are indifferent; and whether we believe
the truth or falsehood of God or Christ; of the human soul; of
the origin and end of man; of man's duties, and the means of
discharging them,--can make no difference as to the truth of our
love and life. The truth of love and life is not, then, an
intellectual truth; a truth apprehended by the mind; but must be
a mere affection of the heart, or, rather, a mere feeling,
dependent on no operation of the understanding, but on some
internal or external affection of the sensibility. The love will
not be a rational affection, but a simple sentiment, sensitive
affection, or sensible emotion, and as far removed from charity
as is the sensuous appetite for food or drink.

The _Congregationalist and Recorder_ seems aware that it has
not yet found a solid ground to stand on, and fairly abandons its
pretension to be able to arrive at absolute truth at all without
the pope. It says:

  "It is, then, both the privilege and the duty of every man to
  be a law unto himself; and out of his own reason and
  conscience, enlightened from all knowledge that can be made
  available by his own researches and those of his fellows, and
  more especially by the patient and docile study of the
  Bible--all in the most profound, uninterrupted, and prayerful
  dependence upon the Holy Spirit--to judge what is right. From
  the decision which he thus reaches there can be, for him, no
  appeal. Whether it is anybody's else duty to follow the course
  prescribed therein, or not, it is _his_ duty to do so. He
  has plead his cause before his infallible tribunal, and its
  decision over him is necessarily supreme and inexorable.
{218}
  Not to obey it, would be to be false equally to God and to
  himself. _If it be not absolute right which he has reached,
  it stands in the place of absolute right for him; and only
  along its road, however thorny, and steep, and high, can he
  climb up toward heaven_. Practically, then, we insist upon
  it, there is no infallibility possible to man, but that which
  is resident in his own soul."

The conclusion is that to which all who seek their rule of faith
in private judgment and private illumination, or inside the soul,
must come at last; namely, the man is a law unto himself; that
is, is his own law, and, therefore, his own truth. Out of his own
reason and conscience, enlightened by the best study he can make,
he is to judge supremely what is right. This, we need not say, is
pure rationalism. It is man's duty to abide by the conclusion at
which he arrives; for although it may not be the absolute right,
yet it is the absolute right for him. This makes truth and duty
relative; what each one, for himself, thinks them to be. What
infallibility is here to oppose to the infallibility of the
church? Suppose it is announced to a man that God has established
a church which he by his presence renders infallible, to teach
all men and nations; will it not be the duty of that man to
listen to the announcement, and to investigate to the best of his
ability, and with all diligence, whether it be so or not? If,
through prejudice, indifference, or any other cause, he fails to
do so, will his conviction against such church be excusable, and
absolute truth or right, even for him? The article continues:

  "And, in the matter of systems, we submit that there is no
  logical pause possible between the two extremes to which we
  referred, near the beginning of this article--that each man's
  own conscientious reason be his umpire, or that that reason be
  implicitly surrendered to some sole arbiter without. It must be
  pope or people; the absolutism of the papacy or the democracy
  of Congregationalism. There is no intermediate stand-point on
  which the aristocracy of Presbyterianism, or the limited
  monarchy of Methodism, or Episcopacy, can solidly build itself.
  And this is, in point of fact, the unintended confession of
  actions that are louder than words, in all these systems;
  inasmuch as an appeal to the people in their individuality is
  their quick, sharp sword which cuts every knot that draws hard
  and cannot be untied."

But we do not see how this follows. The writer, if he has proved
anything, has proved, not that Congregationalism is a ground on
which one can stand, but that the individual is. He places the
infallible tribunal in the inside of the individual soul;
Congregationalism places it, if anywhere, in the congregation or
brotherhood. He should have said, therefore, that it is either
pope or individualism. We readily agree that there is no solid
ground between the pope and the people, taken individually, on
which any third or middle party can stand; but is individualism,
or the individual soul, a solid ground on which any one can
stand, without danger of its giving way under him? We have seen
that it is not, because an external standard is needed by which
to try the internal; and the writer himself concedes it, if he
understands the force of the terms he uses. He confesses that a
man, after due investigation, with all the helps he can derive
from the Holy Scriptures and the Spirit, cannot be certain of
arriving at absolute truth--that is, at truth at all; he can only
arrive at what is true and right for him, though it may not be so
for any one else. At best, then, he attains only to the relative,
and no man can stand on the relative, for the relative itself
cannot stand except in the absolute.
{219}
His whole doctrine amounts simply to this: What I honestly and
conscientiously think is true and right, is true and right for
me; that is, I may follow what I think is true and right with a
safe conscience: but whether I think right or wrong; in
accordance with the objective reality or not, I do not and cannot
know. What is this but saying that infallibility is both
impossible and unnecessary? Relying on what is inside of the
soul, then, without any authority outside of it, we cannot attain
to that certainty the writer began by affirming to be necessary,
and craved by the soul; and which he proposed to show us could be
had without the pope. All the writer does, is to show us that
without the infallibility of the pope or church, we cannot have
infallible faith; and to attempt to prove that we do not need it,
and can do very well without it. What does he establish, then,
but what Catholics have always told him, that there is no
alternative but pope or no infallibility? He says:

  "We are even prepared to go so far as to claim that, as human
  nature has been divinely constituted, it is a psychological
  impossibility for any man to waive this prerogative of being
  the _supreme authority_ over himself in regard to his
  religion; for if he decides to accept the pope and his dictum
  as conveying to him the sure will of God, that infallibility
  can only be received as such by an express volition of his own
  thus to receive it; that is, the man infallible stands behind
  the pope infallible, and decrees that he shall become to him an
  infallible pope; so that all the infallibility which the pope
  can have is just only what the man had before, and gives to him
  by his volition."

In this it is not only conceded that the internal, as we have
seen, does not give infallibility, but asserted that man is so
constituted that he is incapable of having an infallible faith.
Consequently, there can be no infallible teaching. It goes
farther, and denies the supreme authority of God in matters of
religion; and, like all error, puts man in the place of God. It
says: "It is a psychological impossibility for any man to waive
his prerogative of being the supreme authority over himself in
regard to his religion." This is the necessary conclusion from
the writer's assumption in the outset, that the infallible
authority is inside the soul, not outside of it; therefore,
purely subjective and human. Consequently, man is his own law,
his own sovereign; therefore independent of God, and the author
and finisher of his own faith. This is pretty well for a
Calvinist, and the organ of New England Puritanism! But we
charitably trust that the writer hardly understands the reach of
what he says. He confounds the action or office of reason in
receiving the faith, or the internal act of believing, with the
authority on which one believes, or on which the faith is
received. The act is the act of the rational subject, and
therefore internal. The authority on which the act is elicited is
accredited to the subject, and therefore necessarily objective or
external. I believe on testimony which comes to me from without,
or a fact or an event duly accredited to me. I believe the
messenger from God duly accredited to me as his messenger,
although he announces to me things far above my own personal
knowledge, and even mysteries which my reason is utterly unable
to comprehend. Hence, Christians believe the mysteries recorded
in the Holy Scriptures, because recorded by men duly instructed
and authorized by God himself to teach in his name.

The Puritan writer will hardly deny that St. Peter was a duly
accredited apostle of our Lord, and therefore, that what he
declares to be the Word of God is the Word of God, and therefore
true, since God is truth itself.
{220}
Suppose, then, the pope to be duly accredited to us as the
divinely authorized and divinely assisted teacher and interpreter
of the teaching of our Lord, whether in person or by the mouth of
the apostles, would reason find any greater difficulty in
believing him than in believing St. Peter himself? Of course not.
Now, Catholics look upon the pope as the successor or the
continuator of Peter, and therefore as teaching with precisely
the same apostolic authority with which Peter himself would teach
if he were personally present. It is not more difficult to prove
that the pope succeeds to Peter than it is to prove that Peter
was an apostle of our Lord, and taught by his divine authority.
The same kind of evidence that suffices to prove the one suffices
to prove the other. Suppose it proved, should we not then have an
infallible authority for faith other than that which is inside
the soul? Should we not be bound by reason itself to believe
whatever, in the case supposed, the pope should declare to be
"the faith once delivered to the saints"?

Our Puritan psychologist, and Protestants very generally, contend
that, since the authority of the pope is accredited to reason,
and we by reason judge of the credentials, therefore we have in
the pope only the authority of our own reason. This is a mistake.
We might as well argue that an ambassador accredited to a foreign
court can speak only by authority of the court to which he is
accredited, since it judges of the sufficiency of the credentials
he presents, and not at all by the authority of the court that
sends him. This would be simply absurd. The ambassador represents
the sovereign that sends him, not the sovereign to whom he is
sent or accredited. The credentials of the pope are presented to
our judgment, but what the pope, the accredited ambassador from
God, announces as the will of his sovereign and ours, must be
taken not on the authority of our own judgment, but on the
authority of the ambassador. The pope is not, indeed,
commissioned to reveal the truth, for the revelation is already
made by our Lord and his apostles, and deposited with the church.
The pope simply teaches what is the faith so revealed and
deposited, and settles controversies respecting it. Our own
reason, operating on the facts of the case, judges the
credentials of the pope or the evidences of his divine
commission, but not of the revelation to which he bears witness.
The fact that God has revealed and deposited with the church what
the pope declares God has so revealed and deposited, we take on
his authority. It is a mistake, then, to say that there can be no
authority in faith or religion but the authority which every man
has even of himself. To deny it is simply to deny the ability of
God to make us a revelation through inspired messengers, or
otherwise than through our natural reason.

It is equally a mistake to suppose that belief or an external
infallible authority is simply a volition or an act of the will,
without any intellectual assent. We might as well argue that the
credit a jury yields to the testimony of a competent and credible
witness is simply a volition without any conviction of the
understanding. Infallible authority convinces the understanding
as well as moves the will. We do not believe the revealed truth
on the authority of the pope; we believe it on the word of God,
who can neither deceive nor be deceived; but we believe on the
authority of the pope or church the fact that God has revealed
it. The church or the pope is not authority for the truth of what
is revealed--for God's word suffices for that; and we believe it
on his veracity--but is the infallible witness of the fact that
God has revealed or said it.
{221}
If God has made a revelation of supernatural truth, as all
Christians hold, the fact that he has made it, since it
confessedly is not made to us individually, must be received by
us, if at all, on the testimony of a witness. This is what is
meant by believing on authority. If we believe the fact at all,
we must believe it either on some authority or on no authority.
If on no authority, we have no reason for believing it, and our
belief is groundless. If on some authority, then either on a
fallible or an infallible authority. A fallible authority is no
authority for faith. Then an infallible authority, and as the
authority must be duly accredited to us--therefore, be itself
outside of us--it must be an infallible external authority. The
Puritan journal should therefore have headed its article, not
Pope or People, but, Pope or no Faith. Without the infallible
authority or witness, we may have opinions, conjectures, guesses,
more or less probable, but not faith, which excludes doubt, and
is the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things
not seen. The Puritan is able, but has not mastered his subject.
There are many things for him yet to learn.

We have called attention to the article we have reviewed, as one
of the signs of what is going on in the Protestant evangelical
world. It is beginning to learn that there is no resting in the
infallible Book without an infallible interpreter. It begins to
see that it has therefore no authority for dogmas, and it is
gradually giving them the go-by. Dogmas discarded, Christianity,
as a revelation of mysteries or of truth for the intellect, goes
with them, and Christianity becomes a truth only for the heart
and conscience. Then it is resolved into love, and love without
understanding, therefore a sentimental love, and, with the more
advanced party, purely sensual love. This is whither
Protestantism is undeniably tending, and well may Dr. Ewer say
that, as a system of religion, it has proved a failure. It has
lost the church, lost practically the Bible, lost faith, lost
doctrine, lost charity, lost spirituality, fallen into a sickly
sentimentalism, and is plunging into gross sensuality. Here
endeth the "glorious reformation."

----------

       Translated From The German
        By Richard Storrs Willis.

            Emily Linder.

        II.--Her Conversion.


We are now arrived at the most important period of her life. Miss
Linder often referred with thankful heart to God's guiding
providence; and in the steady progress of her spiritual life thus
far is this not to be mistaken. Naturally religious, and inspired
with an unaffected yearning for the entire truth, she was happily
conducted into a circle of friends where her dawning faith
received both impulse and guidance. Exterior incidents
strengthened a certain interior magnetic bias. Since the day
which rendered Assisi so dear to her, an invisible power had
drawn her toward the visible church, and her leaning to
Catholicity was imperceptibly strengthened.
{222}
Her activity in art deepened her sympathies with a church in
which art finds its true place and consecration. An intellectual
intercourse of many years with friendly Catholic men and families
could not fail to remove many a prejudice. Thus had an unexpected
but powerful combination of circumstances conspired to lead a
mind ingenuously seeking the truth to Catholicity. It would be
quite a mistake, however, to suppose, as has been thought by
some, that the personal influence of any friend whatever had
worked decisively upon her determination to take the final step.
No one could do this; not even Brentano, strong as was his
interest in her spiritual life.

Clemens Brentano had come to Munich in October, 1833, and made
his domestic arrangements in his usual characteristic style at
Professor Schlotthauer's, "in one of the most pious and genial of
Noah's arks," as he facetiously describes it. His associations
led him into the same social circle in which Miss Linder moved,
and soon after his arrival he made her acquaintance. Her pious
earnestness, her cultivated, artistic nature, her charming and
judicious benevolence, enchained his interest; and he believed,
as is stated in his biography, to have found in her just the
nature for the Catholic faith. One knows with what strength and
zeal Brentano devoted himself (and in increasing ratio with
increasing years) to such friends as were dear to him in the
matter, particularly, of their acquaintance with the faith of his
own church, and their participation in her blessings. His
animated desire to instruct, which was ever without affectation
or concealment, expressed itself in just such cases with the
utmost freedom and frankness. Whoever reads that clever letter,
"To a Lady Friend," written during these years at Munich, can
tolerably well judge of the tone and style with which he brought
home to a pious Protestant the warmth and depth of his religious
convictions.

Certain is it that Miss Linder gained, through Brentano, a deep
insight into the inner life of the church and the hidden graces
and forces which stream through her. He had the power, as she
said, "of making some things intelligible which might otherwise
remain for ever closed to one." The life and the visions of
Katharina Emmerich, which he read aloud on her weekly
reading-evenings, made a profound impression upon her. As though
in confirmation of what she heard, she saw with her own eyes at
Kaldern a similar phenomenon in Maria von Mörl, that astounding
living wonder, and was penetrated with the atmosphere of truth
with which, as Gorres expresses it, Maria von Mörl seemed
enveloped. She caused a portrait of this phenomenon to be
executed by her lady friend, Ellenrieder; and always gladly gave
her visitors (as is stated by Emma Niendorf) a full description
of the _stigimated_, just as Brentano was wont to do in his
letters. In this, as in other ways, was her intercourse with
Brentano of service to her. To many an outwork of knowledge did
he build a bridge, a _pontifex maximus_, as he once
jestingly applied the term to himself. Finally, his own Christian
death made a profound and lasting impression upon her.

Any other influence than mild, patient instruction was, once for
all, excluded by her. Even the holiest zeal, if it sought, in any
way, to crowd in upon her, could only force a nature like hers
into antagonism, and check everything like quiet development.
{223}
With all her humility, this lady possessed the self-reliance and
genuine independence of a Swiss. She sought the way of truth with
such deep longing that she willingly accepted guidance; but with
such severe scrutiny, that she was not to be confused, and was
inaccessible to every kind of coaxing from any side. For, from
the quarter of her old theological standpoint there was no lack
of friendly advice, or of opinions bringing great weight with
them,--supposing that mere human opinions could ever have decided
such a question. Even raillery was not lacking. Platen gave his
particular attention to this kind of weapon, and put himself to
no little trouble to ridicule her out of her Catholic
proclivities. The theological tendency she had taken since the
days passed at Sorrento had become to the poet of the
_Abassiden_ altogether "too romantic," and he hoped to cool
her religious zeal with a cold irony. Thus, he once satirically
addressed himself to her from Florence, (February 24th, 1835,)
"Might one be so bold as to enquire what progress you have made
in your conversion to the only saving church; or is this a
secret? In case of a change of religion, I trust you will follow
the advice of a friend, and turn, rather, to the Greek Church.
For, if you prize Catholicism on account of its antiquity, the
Greek Church is doubtless older. And is it the ceremonial which
particularly attracts you; then here, too, is the Greek service
far more aesthetic and imposing." Count Platen doubtless felt
that in a theological controversy he was no match for his
well-informed friend; and therefore, in his letters he appealed
to her as an artiste. True, the barrenness of Protestantism in
art he quietly admitted; but all the better success he promised
himself in an attempt to belittle the merit of the church in the
field of art by certain cunning sophistries. In several of his
letters he stumbled upon the neither very bright nor novel idea
of presenting the church as at an obsolete standpoint.
"Certainly," he admonishes the artist, "Catholicity, as a thing
of a former age, is highly to be esteemed, but not for the
present. Her time is past, even for art. Perhaps by and by an
artera may dawn upon her, but this will be of a purely aesthetic
nature; for a blending of art with religion is no longer among
the possibilities," etc. The thought that his friend, after all,
might take some such fatal step evidently gave the poet much
uneasiness; for even in his last letter to her, written but two
weeks before his death, he makes another attempt at the same
style of argument. It is contained in a description of Palermo,
written at Naples, September 7th, 1835: "I received your welcome
letter shortly after my return from Calabria. I know not how my
mother could write you that Palermo did not please me; or, if so,
to what extent this was the case. I simply remember saying that
the location of Palermo bore no comparison with that of Naples.
There are certainly lacking the islands, Vesuvius, and the coast
of Sorrento; although the mountain background of Palermo is very
beautiful. The Rogers chapel, there, is something that would
please you--a church of the twelfth century, in perfect
preservation; its style that of the old Venetian and Roman
churches; and although of smaller dimensions, yet the finest of
them all. It is the more interesting to attend a service there,
because one sees that Catholic culture was calculated solely for
the Byzantine style of architecture; for with such surroundings,
only, could it be effective. Thus does Catholicity, even as to
architecture, prove itself a thing of the past."

{224}

Enough of this. Such platitudes as these were not calculated to
entangle a nature far too deep for them, or check the development
of a work so earnestly undertaken. Emily Linder well knew that
the church has already outlived many just such "obsolete
standpoints," and many such prophets of evil, who have mistaken
their wishes for reality, and phrases for axioms. How dignified
and how welcome, in comparison with this sophistry from Naples,
must have seemed to her the greeting of an old friend and art
companion addressed to her from Rome, in the spring of 1833: "Be
assured that I often fervently remember you to our Lord. Do you
the same by me. May a holy unrest and impatience fill us to take
'by violence' the kingdom of heaven!"

This holy unrest had indeed for some time possessed her, and on
many an occasion broke forth in expressions of touching and
yearning expectancy. While viewing the cathedral of Cologne, in
the year 1835, she ardently exclaims, "Ah! of a certainty an age
whose lofty inspirations (and of no transient kind) could produce
such monuments as this, deserved neither the epithet of rude nor
dark. There resided in it a light which we, with our (gas!)
illumination, could never produce." Again, as to the interior of
the grand cathedral--"I know not why, but I cannot repress my
tears. An irrepressible melancholy and yearning seizes me here."
The same year, after viewing with Schubert the minster at Ulm,
she makes this noteworthy observation in her journal, "It almost
pained me that the old cathedral is no longer used for Catholic
service, and that the choir and sanctuary are now so desolate."
Already had she adopted many Catholic views. At an early period
she believed in an active sympathy between this and the other
world, and a purification of the soul in that world. The church's
benediction was highly prized by her; for which reason, even as
Protestant, she was in the habit of bearing about with her on her
travels a little flask of holy water. Many of her views were as
yet very undecided; but strong and irrepressible was her longing
for that truth which should bring her peace. This clung by her in
all her wanderings, and often drew from her a deep cry of the
heart. The notes which she made during a trip to Holland, in
company with Schubert, in the year 1835, closed with the
following words, "These lonely days of travel have left me much
time for meditation. To-day a crowd of thoughts and emotions
fairly thronged upon me. I said to myself, To what purpose all
this? Whither is this invisible power impelling us? Are we really
advanced by it, or made the happier? Often this affluence of
emotion rises to a kind of transport; then, again, it turns to
pain, for I know not the why nor the whither. Is there a
connectedness in all this? Is it enduring? Once more, then, why?
During this journey of mine I have often prayed, O Lord, let me
know thy will. Let me follow the path which is pleasing to thee.
Lead me but to thyself, and in any way thou mayst choose. Let it
become clear what thou really desirest of me. By this means I
experienced great relief, and also the certainty that He, who
with such signal fidelity had thus far led me, would clearly make
known to me his will, would guide me into his paths."

{225}

As the interior movement increased, she was impelled to confer
with intelligent friends in the distance concerning this most
momentous interest of her life. Especially with Overbeck there
ensued a correspondence which, continuing for years, was of great
assistance in attaining to religious clearness. Overbeck took
kindest interest in her doubts and scruples. He had formerly gone
over the same ground, and could therefore confer with her about
such matters "as a brother." His letters grew into a connected
vindication of Catholic doctrine, and the truth and beauty of the
church, expressed in the mild, clear, fervent, and touching
language of one equally worthy of respect as man and artist. With
a nature like Overbeck's, where the man and the artist are not
two distinct individualities, but are united in a higher form
--Christianity--words have a more elevated significance; and a
correspondence with him must have necessarily possessed an import
more than usually edifying. Emily Linder deeply felt this. We
take her own testimony when we say that Overbeck's letters
contributed largely toward her religious development; and, by the
overwhelming conviction of his words, no less than by his own
deep spirituality, she attained to a knowledge of very vital
truths. She viewed the assistance he rendered her in the light of
a perpetual obligation; and in later years, long after she became
a Catholic, she breathed, in her letters to the admirable master,
a "God reward you for it."

Meantime, however, she had to pass through many a severe
struggle. The wrestling and testing which her conscientiousness
imposed upon her was of long continuance. The dread of a hasty
step which might afterward plunge her into the deepest unrest,
caused her to advance but cautiously. Her mental vacillation
continued for quite a period, during which she was filled with
unsatisfied spiritual yearnings. She stood just on the portal of
the church, afraid to enter. Many a prayer, far and near,
ascended in her behalf to heaven. Brentano lived not to witness
the conversion he so longed for. But the hope which gladdened his
last days attained a realization the year after his death.

In 1842, she wrote to an artist friend in Frankfort, "I am fully
satisfied that I entertain no prejudices, and honestly wish to
know God's will. He has already cleared away many a spiritual
obstacle, and transformed much within me. When it is his holy
will to lead me into the church, I am confident that he will
remove every remaining hinderance to my conviction." She thought,
however, that the church did not give Protestants a very easy
time. Their acceptance of the Tridentine confession of faith was
a hard matter. Still, her mind had already attained to such
clearness that she now desired the instruction of some competent
priest. Through the instrumentality of Diepenbrock, a theological
teacher was brought to her, who gained her confidence. She
earnestly began her task, zealously and perseveringly devoting to
it several hours a week for an entire year. The structure of
Catholic faith began to open itself to her now with all its
interior consistency and harmony. One scruple after another
vanished, including those which finally troubled her; as, for
instance, the expression, "Mother of God;" the alleged mutilation
of the holy sacrament, by withdrawal of the cup from the laity,
etc. In the words of her spiritual guide, she learned to
distinguish that which is divine, and essential, and immutable in
the church, from that which is human, and incidental, and
mutable; and what had hitherto proved an insurmountable obstacle,
the seemingly mechanical, and often rude devotions of the common
people, as also the worldly splendor of the hierarchy--this
ceased to trouble her more.

{226}

In the autumn of 1843, Miss Linder made another tour to the Tyrol
and Upper Italy, and few could surmise that she was so near to
the decisive step. She writes from Munich, on the 16th of
October, "I have just made with the Schuberts a somewhat
fatiguing trip as far as Verona, where, by the way, I had almost
come to a standstill, to copy a picture there. We then remained
for a couple of weeks in Botzen, where all was so quiet, and
reposeful, and secluded, that it was right grateful to me." Amid
this stillness and seclusion to which she abandoned herself,
still more than in Munich, was finally brought to maturity "the
great work of redemption."

Toward the end of November, 1843, on the approach of Advent,
there burst upon her spiritual life a new era, and her long
suspense and yearning resolved itself into the cry, "I will enter
the church!" The final word of decision was immediately winged to
heaven on a prayer. Upon the threshold of that expectant season,
when the church sings, "Drop down dew, ye heavens, from above,
and let the clouds rain the just," she participated, one morning,
with the most ardent devotion, in a low mass celebrated in
conformity with her intention. This was the decisive hour. She
left the chapel with the joyous and unalterable resolve to enter
into fellowship with the Catholic Church. All was overcome, aided
and enlightened by the grace of God. Standing before her little
house altar, she rehearsed, for the first time, the Catholic
creed.

The first to whom the glad intelligence flew was a noble pair,
Apollonia Diepenbrock and her brother, the latter of whom was
subsequently the celebrated cardinal and bishop of Breslau, but
at that time, the vicar-general of Regensburg. Both were
associated with the pious artiste in a friendship of many years,
and had been long familiar with the course of her religious
development. Melchior von Diepenbrock, during just this last
period, had been a faithful and intelligent adviser to her. The
disciple of Sailers responded to the joyous intelligence with a
peace-greeting befitting a shepherd of the church. He wrote on
the 29th of November, 1843:

  "Hindered by very unwelcome business, I was unable, either
  yesterday or the day before, to express my heartfelt sympathy
  and delight over the surprising intelligence of your note of
  Saturday. Surprising, because I had not anticipated so sudden a
  loosening of the fruit, ripe as it was. But the wind 'which
  bloweth where it listeth,' stirred the tree, and the ripe,
  mellow fruit fell into the lap of the true mother, where it
  will now be well cared for, growing mellower and sweeter until
  the coming of the Bridegroom. My hope and prayer for you now
  is, that peace and rest may be yours after a suspense and
  unrest which has thus loosed itself in the simple and welcome
  words,'I will enter the church.' But you have every reason to
  be at rest; for a church which has given birth to a Wittman, a
  Sailer, a Fénélon, a Vincent de Paul, a Tauler, a Suso, a
  Thérèse, a Bernard, an Augustine, an Athanasius, a Polycarp,
  and so on, up to the apostles themselves, and which has nursed
  them on her breast with the self-same heavenly doctrine; from
  whose mouth and from whose life, in turn, this same identical
  doctrine has been breathed down like a fragrant aroma, through
  a course of eighteen hundred years; in such a church is there
  safe and good travelling companionship for heaven. Following
  their guidance, you need not fear going astray. I therefore,
  from my very soul, bid you welcome to this noble company to
  which you have long since, through your intense yearning, and
  by anticipation, belonged, but now have identified yourself
  with openly, by a grasp of the hand and a kiss of
  reconciliation; with whom you will soon fully and finally be
  incorporated by that most sacred seal and covenant, that
  highest consecration of love, the holy Eucharist. You have had
  a rough and thorny path to travel, and passed through long
  years of struggle, doubt, and conflict, to arrive at this goal.
{227}
  Bind, now, the olive wreath of peace coolingly around your
  heated temples. Let all labor of the brain, all strain of the
  intellect, now subside. Live a life of tranquillity. Open your
  heart to a reception of the holy gifts which the church, as you
  enter, proffers you. And above all, banish all anxiety and
  doubt, for therewith you gain nothing, and spoil all. Let your
  barque, wafted by the breath of God, glide peacefully down the
  broad stream of the church's life. Revel in the stars, and the
  flowers which mirror themselves therein, the denizens that
  disport there; and, should now and then an uncouth, repulsive
  creature catch your eye, reflect that the kingdom of God is
  still entangled in the contradictions of developement. Think
  upon that great world-net which gathers souls of every
  description, and upon the angel who, upon the great day, will
  separate them all. And now I commend you to God. Once more, may
  peace and joy in the Holy Ghost be your morning-gift."

And soon this "morning-gift" possessed her soul. Being fully
prepared, her admission, as she had wished, could be immediate.
But she desired to take the step in all quietness, and only a few
of her friends, like Professor Haneberg and Phillips, were
informed of it the evening before, she desiring to secure for
herself their prayers.

On the 4th of December, 1843, Emily Linder, accompanied by her
friend Apollonia, in the Georgian Seminary chapel made solemn
profession of the Catholic faith. On the day following, the papal
nuncio, Viale Prelà, administered to her, in his house-chapel the
sacrament of confirmation; delivering, at the same time, an
eloquent address in German. The friend before mentioned was
godmother, and, as one present remarked, by her faith, her love,
her prayers, and her efforts, she had indeed proved her spiritual
mother. In company with this friend, she went to Regensburg, in
order to withdraw into retirement, and to be alone with her
new-born joy.

Her letters during this period give animated testimony to what
extent, and with what daily increase, this joy was experienced. A
jubilant rapture pervades the letters which announce the event to
distant friends, particularly those addressed to Overbeck in Rome
and Steinle in Frankfort; both friends and companions in art.
These and a few others had been admitted to her confidence in
spiritual matters. To the latter, whom, of her younger friends,
she particularly prized and respected, she thus announces the
circumstance, "This time I come to you with but few words; words
no longer conditional, but right conclusive. I am a Catholic.
Could I have written to you, as I wished, to ask your prayers for
me before the eventful hour, even then you might have been taken
by surprise; but now the news has doubtless reached you from
Munich, and I write this letter simply as confirmation, and
because I wish that you should be informed of it by me
personally. You have lately hardly thought, I suppose, that it
would come so soon; and yet I was long prepared for it. After
many a struggle, particularly of late, it had become to me a
positive necessity, a natural and necessary development of my
spiritual life. When I had once announced my determination to the
clergyman who for some time had been instructing me, my desire
was to take the step right quickly. My good Apollonia left
Regensburg immediately for Munich, to be present at my reception
into the church; and the day following this I was confirmed. I
have now accompanied my friend hither to escape from all
excitement and pass some days in retirement; needed opportunity
of fortifying myself against much that must necescessarily come,
that is hard and disagreeable.
{228}
Yet has God been inexpressibly kind and gentle in his dealings
with me thus far."

A letter to the same friend on the 19th of January thus reads:

  "My last letter was very, very brief; but the glad tidings had
  to come first, and for this few words were needed. But now six
  weeks have flown, and it may give you pleasure to hear that I
  am daily newly bleat, newly affected by the great goodness of
  God. You may not have doubted this, yet you may be glad to be
  assured of it, having always taken such interest in my welfare.
  Ah dear Steinle! how sweet, how sweet a thing to be in the
  church! I ask myself every day, Why then, I? Why just to myself
  has this grace been vouchsafed, in preference to others so much
  worthier of it? How can this have come about? For no other
  reason, surely, than because so many faithful souls living
  close to God, have interceded, so untiringly interceded for me,
  that God could not resist their importunity. How often, how
  very often must I exclaim, as you have done, God be praised and
  extolled for ever. Now for the first time do I understand that
  deep longing and incessant yearning of the heart. Oh! would
  that all, all were in God's one, great house; would that all
  could experience the friendliness, the inexpressible
  friendliness of the Lord, he whose mercy transcends all
  understanding and conception. Ah dear friend! supplicate and
  implore God for me, that this grace--I will not say may be
  deserved, how could this ever be?--but that I may daily more
  deeply comprehend and appreciate it, and that my life may
  become one song of thankfulness and benediction. I am still
  like a happy little child at rest in the lap of its mother. The
  cross will yet come, and perhaps must necessarily do so; yet am
  I not dismayed; for well I know where, at any hour, courage,
  and strength, and consolation are to be found.

  "Hitherto has God made it very easy to me. My sister--the only
  one I have--was surprised and grieved at the first
  intelligence; but rather, I think, from a loving dread that I
  might be estranged from her. Now that she finds this is not the
  case, I hear no complaint from her. My nieces and my intimate
  friends at home are all unchanged. Just here, too, my friends
  have remained the same; only two of my young lady acquaintances
  thought it due to their religious convictions to break with me;
  but lo! on New Year's day they both came and threw their arms
  around my neck. ... God be with us all! May he purify and
  sanctify us and help us mature to life eternal. Once again,
  pray to God for me. Join me in ascribing thanks to him for his
  inexpressible goodness. With heartfelt friendship,
                                   "Emily Linder."

From this time forth Advent possessed for her a peculiarly
festive significance. She celebrated each recurring anniversary
with feelings of the humblest gratitude, making it a threefold
festival, and greeting it with the joyousness and bliss of a
child who had received on that day the costliest of gifts; for it
was the anniversary of her day of final decision, her reception
into the church, and her confirmation. On the 27th of December,
1844, she thus writes again to the same friend:

  "Shall I attempt to depict to you the experience of my inner
  life? Oh! it is ever yet to me, to use your own expression, the
  pure mother-milk of inexpressible grace and goodness. Such, at
  times, is the intensity of my joy, that it is as though I must
  hold fast my heart with both hands. I have been celebrating of
  late a great festivals of the soul; for at advent time I
  entered the church, but included in my devotional intention,
  also, was the celebration of my decision and confirmation; all
  these were occasions of spiritual festivity. One entire year of
  grace and blessedness! ... The kind Tony F---- calls me 'the
  pet-child of the Lord.' This may be so; but when I enquire,
  Whence this to me? oh! then I must deeply, deeply bow myself,
  and with profoundest shame can only still enquire of my Lord,
  Whence this to. me? ... Nor will I entertain forebodings for
  the future. He who infuses such rapture into the heart,
  can--yes, must--impart strength and courage, when he lays the
  cross upon our shoulders. He will do it, too--benedictions on
  his holy name!"

{229}

How idle, now, appeared all the fears and anxiety as to a too
hasty step, which had rendered her final decision so difficult,
while still standing at the diverging pathways. Not a trace more
of the unrest which had so troubled her. The morning-gift of
peace and joy in faith, which Diepenbrock's kind wishes bespoke
her, had become indeed her assured inheritance. A song of
thankfulness warbled unceasingly in her heart.

A few more expressions which escaped her, will show that the
transport she experienced was not the effect of transient
excitement. On one occasion she thus addresses a friend:

  "You may be assured, of course, without written proof, that I
  often think of you: but how often I breathe to you spiritually
  my joy, my exceeding joy--do you know this? My heart often
  sings like that of a little child before a Christmas-tree, over
  the inexhaustible goodness of God, and knows not how it should
  demean itself in the possession of such imperishable gifts. How
  good, how very good has God been thus to call me into his holy
  church!"

On the recurrence of advent she writes again on the 8th of
December, 1845, as to the celebration of this festive period of
hers:

  "During the past week I have been celebrating my apparently
  quiet but really great and momentous festival, the anniversary
  of my reception into the church. Ah! dear Steinle, what can I
  say more than, Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is
  within me bless his holy name! How inexpressibly great his
  mercy and grace, how past all thinking and conceiving! ... To
  be safe-sheltered in the church in times like these, when no
  hold and no firm footing outside of her can be found! Oh! if
  our brethren but knew what peace is hers--if they could but
  imagine what they are thrusting away from them! It is enough to
  make one's heart bleed. But this I can assure them, that only
  in the church can one really know her; only by living her life
  can one understand that life. Outside of the church can one
  learn much about her, of course, and to a certain extent inform
  himself; but then, she is not only a something that _has_
  been--an historical church--she is a present-existing, living
  church, because Christ is still alive in her, and still active
  in his work of reconciliation. Of such a church-life. we can
  have no outside idea, just because we do not live it. How often
  should I like to tell Clemens how it is with me now. But, God
  willing, he surmises it and rejoices thereat. In all things be
  praise to God!"

In these words there rings out, certainly, the genuine, clear
tone of a heart happy in its faith. Equally evident in these
passages is the fact, that her personal relations with her
Protestant friends and relatives knew no change. With a certain
pious fidelity of friendship, which was peculiar to her, she
sought to hold fast to the old ties which had become so dear, and
always met her former companions in faith with the same simple,
trusting affection. Cornelius, who welcomed her conversion with
heartfelt interest, after his return from Rome writes to her from
Berlin, on the 4th of June, 1844:

  "In Rome I learned that you had at last fully _taken
  heart._ It did not surprise me. God bless you, and protect
  you hereafter both from spiritual pride and indifference."

Certainly no one could less need this admonition than Emily
Linder, who was a pattern of lowly humility. No one was more
sweetly considerate and liberal than she; and Abbot Haneberg most
justly remarked at her grave, that, after her conversion, she was
scrupulous to discharge all the duties of friendship toward her
former companions in faith, and never failed fully to appreciate
all who proved worthy of her respect.

This unchanging fidelity induced her to make a trip, the very
summer after her conversion, to her native city of Basle, and to
Lucerne, where resided other relatives of hers. A personal visit
just at that time seems to her then more a duty than ever, in
order that her relatives might have ocular evidence "that the
Catholic Church is not an estranging one, and cherishes no
feeling like that of hate."
{230}
This sentiment regulated her conduct throughout. A longing for a
universal religious reunion strongly possessed her, and she was
deeply grieved to see many honest Protestants standing so near
Catholicity, who did not recognize "the historic church in the
existing one," mainly (judging by her own experience) from a lack
of proper information and from a certain shyness, which they
could not explain even to themselves. "The emergency is great;
souls are hungering and thirsting; but the more sensitive of the
Protestants shrink from that shock to the feelings and social
relations which they fear will ensue--a great mistake; for love
will experience no diminution; it will be increased. But outside
of the church they know nothing of this. Alas! how much do they
not know!"

This was written in 1846. Three years later she recurred again to
her favorite idea in a charming letter addressed to Professor
Steinle from Regensburg, on Ascension-day, May 17th, 1849:

  "As I stood gazing at the people thronging up the steps and
  through the grand old portals of our superb cathedral, my heart
  was strangely moved. I saw in spirit the time when all people,
  united again and happy, would stream with songs of hallelujah
  through these portals and proclaim the wonderful works of God.
  Could I but see this and then depart in peace! Such may not be
  my lot, but in eternity the intelligence may yet reach me and
  be a theme of thanksgiving to God."

As though from her very childhood a member of the church, she
felt from the first moment entirely at home in her precincts and
in the blessed activity of her communion, becoming quickly and
easily wonted to all Catholic practices, to which she gave
herself up with all the intelligence and abandonment of her soul.
How well she now appreciated the truth of the words addressed to
her on joining the church by the noble Cardinal Diepenbrock, "You
press now the ground which, not only Christ's own footsteps, but
his very hands, betokened as the foundation of his church; which
his spirit consecrated, which, his love hallowed: the soil whence
all those vines should spring, which clinging around and
clambering over his cross, may literally by and on him bear
fruits of love, of humility, of fidelity, to all eternity!" And
following his faithful precepts, she forthwith launched her
barque, and, wafted by the breath of God, it glided peacefully
over the broad stream of the church-life.

Amid the deep peace which flowed in upon her, she now recommenced
with fresh vigor her artistic occupations, devoting herself with
more fervor than ever to religious painting. The forenoon was
regularly passed at the easel. What a pleasure it must have been
to her now to produce altar and other pictures for the house of
the Lord! These she donated to poor churches, sending them
sometimes to great distances, even to poor Catholic communities
in Greece and Paris. Whenever a call for assistance reached her,
according to her capacity she was ready with her offering. Her
great industry in art enabled her to respond to numerous
requests, and in the course of a long life she rendered many a
poor parish happy, which would otherwise have been long compelled
to dispense with churchly embellishment. Free from all artistic
fastidiousness, she never disdained to make copies of other
pictures. Thus with great interest and ability she made a copy of
a picture by Overbeck, which she had in her collection, for the
chapel of the Sisters of Mercy in Munich.
{231}
With a modest esteem for her own abilities, she always worked
under the supervision of an old master, whose judgment never
failed to have its weight with her. A deep and tender sensibility
pervades her pictures; and if she betrays a certain timidity in
the technical execution, there is evidence of great industry and
attention to detail. One of her best works, perhaps, is a
portrait of Brentano, an oil painting remarkable for likeness and
spirituality of expression. After his death, she had this
lithographed by Knauth, and copies struck off. It is given in the
first volume of his complete works, and is accompanied by a verse
which serves as a burthen to one of his most beautiful legends,
as it might to the legend of his life, commencing,

  "O star and flower, soul and clay,
   Love, suffering, time, eternity."

The ancient and laudable habit among lovers of art to enrich, by
special orders and purchases, their own homes--that noble
privilege of educated wealth!--she practised to a lavish extent.
Her collection of pictures embraced gradually works of the most
eminent artists. Besides the masters already mentioned,
(Overbeck, Cornelius, Eberhard,) Steinle was represented in a
series of glorious creations. Several of these, like the
"Manger-Festival of St. Francis," the "Legend of St. Marina,"
were the source of some of Brentano's beautiful inspirations and
are now included in his sacred poems. In addition to these
artists were Schnorr, Schraudolph, Schwind, Führich, Neher,
Eberle, Ahlborn, Koch, etc. In another respect, also, she
approved herself a true artist, namely, by rendering constant
assistance to such pupils of the distinguished masters with whom
she was friendly, as gave evidence of talent. Her helping hand
alone rendered, indeed, many an artistic undertaking possible;
and not a few artists had occasion, in such instances, to admire
not only the liberality but delicacy with which she dispensed
orders and bore with trying delays. She exhibited an
extraordinary degree of patience in the friendly manner with
which she would conform herself to personal circumstances and
private relations which did not at all concern her, even in cases
of work delayed for years and paid for in advance. She would even
heap coals of fire upon their heads by surprising them with
further money advances--a charity which at times was exceedingly
opportune. By this and similar methods Miss Linder, without any
display, accomplished much good, and constantly experienced the
pure pleasure of making others happy. And in yet another manner
she showed a noble liberality. With rare unselfishness she would
allow copies to be made and disseminated of the most valuable
drawings in her collection, her own private property. She not
only encouraged efforts of this kind, but sometimes at her own
expense actually initiated them. By this multiplication of fine
works of art she shared prominently in that noble task undertaken
by Overbeck and his companions--the establishment of a more
dignified and elevated art standard.

True art seemed to assume with her, year by year, a graver
aspect. In judging of a work, she deemed its intent just as
important as its execution. She discerned in art a reflected
radiance from the world of light: and all that did not tend
upward to this she regarded as idle effort and labor lost. She
observed with pain an increasing tendency to the material,
particularly since the year 1850; and nothing more deeply
incensed her than a demeaning of art to low and base uses.
{232}
Even in Munich, after Cornelius left and Louis. I. descended the
throne, there existed no longer the ancient standard. What is now
left of that school of sacred art, once blossoming out with such
inspiriting vigor? It now leads the existence of a Cinderella.
Even in the year 1850, Miss Linder remarked: "Our academy affords
me no longer any very great pleasure: the period of love and
inspiration has passed. Shall we ever see its return?"

The gathering clouds in the political horizon and the disturbance
of social relations were not encouraging to any hope like this.
But at just such a time, when outside life was forbidding, she
found how grateful a definite aim and mission may be, and
experienced the quiet delight of art and art-occupation more than
ever. She thus writes from Pöhl, a favorite resort of hers in
summer, adjacent to the Ammersee, "I shall yet make a little tour
in the Tyrol and then ensconce myself in winter quarters, where I
shall be happy in a work already commenced and which will
immediately engross me. It is a source of the greatest happiness
in these days to have a given task. How much it enables one to
get rid of!" On viewing Gallait's picture of "Egmont and Horn" in
the exhibition, she remarked, "I should not care to own the
picture, and yet there is much to admire in it. The sphere of art
is so extensive and yet so limited--after all, one cannot but
feel that everything not in God's service is, to say the least,
superfluous."

An evening quiet overspread her relations with the outside world.
But uninterruptedly until her death she kept up, in her own home,
the accustomed hospitality. Her house was always a central point
of really good society. No literary or artistic celebrity could
long tarry in Munich without an invitation to her table, around
which every week a little circle was gathered. Privy-Counsellor
von Ringseis usually acted as host, a man whose varied knowledge,
ripe experience, and inexhaustible humor better befitted him than
any other to blend the most opposite characteristics of the
guests. With friends in the distance she maintained an extensive
correspondence, and also cultivated her friendly relations with
them by regular summer trips: a passion for travel and a love of
nature remaining true to her into advanced old age.

A nature so profound, so true, and so enlightened was constituted
for friendship, and Emily Linder served as a model in this
regard. She possessed those two qualities by which it is best
retained--candor and disinterestedness. What she was capable of
as to the latter quality has already been sufficiently shown. An
open frankness was the groundwork of her character. She possessed
a kind but impartial judgment, and in the right place she knew
how to assert it. The same sincerity was expected of others, and
nothing with her outweighed truthfulness. Whoever offended in
this point came to conclusions with her speedily and once for
all. A half-and-half sincerity or prevarication could force even
her dovelike mildness to resentment. When called to pass judgment
upon the work of a friendly artist, there arose a noble contest
between frankness and kindness. Her opinions were always to the
point, and by the soundness of her judgment she gave food for
reflection. But in cases of a change of opinion after more mature
consideration, she was quick to acknowledge herself at fault. A
single incident may illustrate this. On occasion, of a defence,
by an artist, of a celebrated master, to one of whose works she
had taken exceptions, she replied:

{233}

  "My first judgment, then, was unquestionably hasty. But among
  friends I shall never like that degree of caution always
  insisted upon which admits of no quick and impulsive word; for
  thus would all open-heartedness be repressed; a thing which no
  amount of shrewdness or cool deliberation could ever replace. I
  beg for myself the privilege therefore, hereafter, just as
  often, and perhaps just as hastily, to express my opinion."

She reposed the same confidence in the judgment of others. All
the more weighty art matters about which she concerned herself
were submitted to the counsel and decision of intelligent friends
of art. She took the most lively interest, also, in every
important event or crisis in the families of these friends. Her
thoughtful consideration loved to express itself in pleasant
souvenirs and playful surprises of gifts; and her fidelity often
extended even to the departed. Many a friend, after having passed
to a long home, was endowed with a memorial Mass which she
established for the repose of his soul. The Klee and Möhler
memorial, a composition of Steinle, copies of which she caused at
her own expense to be made, she intended (an intention, indeed,
never realized) as an aid to the establishment of a Klee and
Möhler fund; and a lasting monument it would have proved to the
memory of these two noble men. For any expression of fidelity
toward herself she was deeply grateful; particularly in her more
advanced years, after she became more and more aware how rare a
thing is disinterested attachment in this age of unprincipled
selfishness. "Any instance of loyal attachment," said she, "moves
me the more deeply in these times, when truly it is no
fashionable virtue."

A special object of her loving thoughtfulness was her beloved
Assisi, the little convent of the German sisters of St. Francis.
In times of great distress, particularly during the ravages of
the Revolution, it was no small consolation and delight to
receive thence, after a long interval, reassuring intelligence.
Particularly was this the case during the Mazzini terrorism of
1849. In the autumn of this year, she announced to a friend, with
something like motherly pride: "I have received tidings lately
from our German nuns at Assisi. Appalling things have happened at
Rome, and indications of the same have threatened elsewhere, even
at Assisi. But the good women bravely set at naught all
intimidation and threat, and have come out entirely unharmed.
Yes, even the gangs themselves are reported to have said: One
cannot get the better of these Germans, they pray too much. May
we all of us lay hands upon the same trusty weapon!" The
burgher-maiden whom she took with her as candidate to Assisi on
her journey to Rome in 1829, has already been, for the last
twenty-four years, Superior of the German convent; it so chanced
that she attained to this position the very year that Emily
Linder became a Catholic. During that time, more than twenty
Bavarian maidens followed her to Assisi. If the gratitude of
happy people, who praise God daily that they have found "the true
ark of peace," ever proved a blessing, this blessing accrued, in
rich measure, to the artist from Assisi. Her name is entered in
the memorial book of the convent, and, so long as this spiritual
order exists, she will live there as their "best benefactress,
and as their dear, good mother in Christ." Thus is she spoken of
in the numerous and touching letters of the pious sisters.

{234}

Seldom has a human being made a more magnanimous use of a large
income than the departed Emily Linder. Her benevolence was on a
grand scale. Her whole nature was generosity itself; but that
which at first was but natural good will to all became afterward,
by the pious spirit which pervaded her, an element of her
religious worship. She considered herself but as the almoner of
the riches God had entrusted to her. Her goodness was of that
serene character which never showed aught of impatience toward
those begging or initiating charities. She gave to both with
equal friendliness. She contributed lavishly to public
institutions for the sick and suffering. And yet what she gave to
the individual poor, and such special families as were commended
to her, must also have been a very considerable sum. In these
simpler distributions of charity she showed a marked delicacy.
The modest poor who came to her house she never allowed to be
waited on by her servants, but administered to their wants
herself. In some instances she bore her gifts on certain
specified days to their dwellings; and in these cases she was
just as systematic, and as punctual to the day and the hour, as
in all things else. Christmas in her house was a festival of the
poor. The lines of Clemens Brentano in his collection of sacred
poems, entitled _To the Benefactress, on the Occasion of her
Presentation to the Poor_, refer to this incident. To what
extent and in what instances she served as unknown guardian
angel, her intimate friends rather guessed at than knew. The
character of her benevolence, generally, was piously-noiseless
and still. Through hidden channels she often reached far in the
distance, sustaining and rescuing (both physically and
spiritually) where the need was very urgent. Often, thus, a gift
flowed forth from her and sped like a sunbeam into some
languishing heart. Many an obstacle has she removed from the path
of a struggling child of humanity; into many a stout but wounded
spirit has she infused new life and energy. Clemens Brentano
termed this a "heavenly little piece of strategy."

This noiseless activity in art and benevolence did not withdraw
her attention from what was going on outside, and although she
never stepped beyond the natural boundaries of her position, and
was of too quiet a nature to mingle generally in the strife of
parties, she nevertheless, to the last year of her life,
maintained a lively interest in all the great church and
political questions of the day. The prodigious changes which took
place in the world during the fourth period of her life, what
heart would not have been profoundly stirred by them? But,
however painful to her the prevailing Machiavelism of the age,
the insanity of the revolutionary leaders, the pitiable confusion
of the people, and the undermining of all conservative bulwarks
in state and society, courage and hope still maintained the upper
hand. The pressure upon the church and the Pope filled her
perhaps with concern, but did not dismay her. She had the right
standard, and the consolation which it brought, in judging of the
destinies of the nations. When the revolutionary storms of 1848
and 1849 burst upon them and swept over Germany and Italy, she
remarked: "The experience of all history, and the consolation it
imparts, is just this: God allows men their way to a certain
point, and where the end seems just achieved. But then is
inscribed with an almighty hand, the '_Thus far_.' And
though his church be shaken, this is far better for us than to be
reposing upon cushions of ease."

{235}

Her confidence was similarly undisturbed during the succeeding
momentous years. During her attendance upon the drama of _The
Passion_, at Oberammergau, in the year 1860, she was occupied
with reflections upon the stupendous drama of passion of our own
times. "There is something so fearfully grand in the present
events of the world," she wrote to her friend in Frankfort, "that
a certain elevation fills the soul, raising one above this little
life of ours upon earth. The image in our mind of the holy father
is already so spiritualized that it begins to be invested with
the sanctity of the martyr. How many may have to follow in his
martyr footsteps? Shall we live to see the victory? At my time of
life, no; and yet a secret joy often possesses me at the thought
of this glorious era. But I say with you, the great task for us
all is to gain heaven. God vouchsafe this!" The latest period of
German distress she lived through with the intensest sympathy.
She accepted the appalling catastrophe as a severe trial, even to
her own personal feelings and hopes, and recognized in this
calamity the initiation of a still greater. "For me," she wrote
to the same friend, "the hope of any kind of a future is now
past. I must subject my heart to no more disappointment; but the
mercy of God for the individual is still attainable and great; to
every one accessible and possible. You belong, of course, to the
younger generation, and can still dream of a sunrise for our
German fatherland. The result of the present calamity, swiftly as
it may seem to be plunging us into irremediable ruin, will,
nevertheless, never go the length intended by the Prince of Evil.
God stands above him; that is certain. The future will be a
different one; a very different one, from that which we could
ever surmise or guess, even the future of the church. And this
future will be God's. Let that content us."

Her life was a bright contrast to the demoralization, the unrest,
the arrogant selfishness of our age. She presented to those among
whom she lived the picture of a self-sustained, unselfish,
reposeful soul. Humility, trust in God, and compassion, this was
the fundamental harmony of her daily life. Old age, which often,
indeed, smooths away from the good all little imperfections and
blemishes of character, rendered her still more considerate,
patient, and gentle. Her love of simplicity was as great as were
her means. In her own household, well systemized, careful
economy; outside of this, severe, almost noticeable plainness.
But to her applied the line of the poet:

  "A blessing she could see in lowliness to be."

While denying herself, she gave with lavish hand to poverty and
distress, to art and to the church. She moved with measured,
dignified pace; but a certain religious harmony of action
imparted to her being and doing an indescribable grace, which is
always the accompaniment of inward purity, and a religion based
upon humility.

The Abbé Haneberg, in his beautiful tribute at her grave,
remarked, "She seemed, during the last twenty years of her life,
to emulate the most pious of her friends and daughters of Assisi,
and to aim even to outdo them, so systematic and untiring was her
service to God." Of this, however, her friends knew but little.
How much she thus quietly accomplished was never fully known
until after her death. It will suffice here to state that in the
year 1851 she informed herself, through the Superior at Assisi,
of their daily regulations, and the usual succession of religious
exercises. Her everyday life was identified with the daily life
of the church.
{236}
She appreciated the significant beauty and expressive symbolism
of churchly ordinances, and in close observance joined in their
celebration. To this end, she followed the _Ordo_ of her
diocese, and her favorite prayer-book was the Missal. Her
knowledge of languages stood her in good stead here; for, in
addition to the modern languages, she had also learned Latin, and
had become sufficiently familiar with it to follow intelligently
the language of the church. Cardinal Diepenbrock, in 1850, wrote
to her of a lady who was occupying herself with the Latin, or
church, language; "A worthy study," he remarked. "Have you not
also begun it? It strikes me that Clemens was saying something
about it. But perhaps you were able to get no farther than the
_mensa_; the _mensa Domini_ would naturally be enough
for you." But she went farther than this. In her manuscripts were
found Latin exercises, written under the guidance of the worthy
old Bröber. One room of her spacious residence was arranged as a
chapel, in which was the superb altar-piece by Eberhard, "The
Triumph of the Church." This chapel was favored by the ordinariat
with a Mass licence. On the anniversary of her union with the
church she was accustomed to receive holy communion here; and
here the departed Bishop Valentin, of Regensburg, once celebrated
Mass. Here, also, she devoted daily a certain time to meditation
and the perusal of the Holy Scriptures. Her favorite place of
devotion, however, was the little chapel of the ducal hospital
which she frequented twice a day; early in the morning, and again
at evening. She had for years a quiet little place in the organ
gallery where, day by day, in all weather, and at all seasons of
the year, she consecrated a couple of hours to prayer.

As the years flew by, she withdrew herself more and more from the
world, and sought to be "hid in God." The departure to their
final home of so many friends, together with other events, served
as slight admonitions, which by her thoughtful heart were not
unheeded. She recognized in this matter fresh cause of gratitude
to God, who was dealing so tenderly with her to the very end. "I
consider it," she wrote, "a special favor of the Lord that he
grants me so long a preparation for my final hour." Years
previously, she had put herself in Christian readiness for her
last journey, and only hoped that it might prove "a good death
hour." With customary precision, she had ordered all her temporal
affairs. She had even made provision as to her interment, and the
final burial service. Her arrangements for the latter of these,
written in a bold and beautiful hand, were dated the 7th of
October, 1865. On the festival of the Epiphany, 1867, she was for
the last time in her favorite little chapel of the ducal
hospital. Only a few weeks previously, she had begun to feel ill,
and now symptoms of dropsy suddenly developed themselves. The
invalid recognized her condition with Christian resignation, but
did not yet relinquish hope of a recovery. "The task now is, to
resign myself and to be patient. God help me to this," she wrote
at the close of January. It was her last letter. Her friend
Apollonia hastened from Regensburg, and she, who, twenty-three
years before, had stood at her side when received into the
church, was now to stand at her death-bed. The invalid requested
that her friend should remain with her one week; and exactly at
the close of the week she died. During her illness she found
special consolation in the house-altar, where, to her great
spiritual comfort, her worthy confessor repeatedly celebrated
mass.
{237}
From this Eberhard altar, where she first made profession of
Catholic faith and where she yearly commemorated that happy
event, she now received the viaticum and extreme unction. In
conformity with her wish, on the festival of St. Apollonia mass
was again celebrated in her little chapel. It was her last mass,
and the final union of the two friends in holy sacrament. She
seemed now to rejoice in her approaching dissolution as though it
were a return home. One morning as her priest entered, she
stretched out her arms and exclaimed, "May I--oh! may I go home?"
"Yes, the guardian angel accompanies you, he guides you thither,"
was the reply. Thereupon she was silent, remained in deep
meditation, and spoke but little after. Yet she seemed to
participate in all that transpired; if prayer were uttered, she
prayed also; to all who drew near she gave a friendly glance,
but, for the most part, remained absorbed and still.

On the day preceding her death, she summoned all her strength,
and with difficult effort gave expression to several wishes, the
last of her earthly life. She recalled an admirable artist, whom
she held in high personal esteem, from whom she had long desired
a picture as an addition to her collection. She directed a very
considerable sum to be sent to him for a historical picture,
which was now to be painted for the museum at Bale. The future of
her poor, also, such as had been accustomed to receive little
charities, engaged her thoughts; she desired that these charities
should be continued until they had found other benefactors. Her
last words were in allusion to Jerusalem. She bethought herself
of the "Watchers at the Holy Sepulchre," (of the order of St.
Francis,) and also of the "Zion Society," to both of which she
had made yearly contributions, and which she now similarly
remembered. Thus had her life its characteristic close. Her last
mental activity was exercised in works of charity, of art, and of
religion. With a glance at Jerusalem and the sepulchre of her
Saviour, she now went forward toward the new Jerusalem. Her end
was the falling asleep of a child. In the early morning of the
12th of February, 1867, without a single death-struggle, she sank
into slumber--quietly, painlessly, peacefully.

A gentleman, intimately befriended with her, remarked, "After her
death, I had occasion to observe the intense grief of those who
had been recipients of her bounty, and then first became aware
what a truly royal munificence had been hers, which all were
ignorant of, save God and the poor." Such were the tears that
followed her, together with those countless others, which during
her life she had already dried.

On the afternoon of the 14th of February a long funeral
procession, composed of the best Catholic society of Munich, and
throngs of the poor, together with the superintendent of public
charities, (then represented by the mayor of the city,) moved
from the pleasant mansion on the corner of Carl street toward the
cemetery, to render their last homage to this noble friend of art
and the poor. The Abbé Haneberg, an old friend of hers,
pronounced the benediction of the church over her grave, which
was located not far from the grave of Möhler.
{238}
In her written instructions, Emily Linder desired only a simple
stone cross above her, the pedestal of the cross bearing the
inscription:

  The slumberer, here, confides in the mercy of God:

the simplest, but in its simplicity, the most touching testimony
to a being whose interior life was all humility and trust in God,
and whose exterior activity had been the purest mercy itself. To
her might be applied a verse of the beautiful requiem addressed
by Brentano to another departed friend:

  "He, for whom our willing gifts
     On the needy we confer,
   From his eight beatitudes
     Singled Mercy out for her."

The whole spirit which accompanied her through a life of seventy
years still lived on in her bequests. The half of her large
fortune she left to benevolent and charitable objects; chiefly to
schools and hospitals. True Swiss that she was, she was specially
mindful of her native city. The largest amount donated--200,000
florins--was bequeathed to the Bishop of Bale, for the benefit of
his diocese. Her art-treasures were, with few exceptions,
incorporated with the museum of Bale, to whose first
establishment she had originally contributed no small amount, and
which, with true patrician feeling, lavishly endowed during her
life.

In these bequests to art and to the church, Emily Linder reared
for herself a monument which will keep her in blessed
remembrance; and this monument is only the last milestone of
record on the pathway of a life thickly studded with works of
charity. Truly a significant, steadfast existence, harmonious
from its commencement to its very close.

In days of depression and perplexity would we gaze upon a
portrait of true humanity, ennobled and enlightened by
Christianity, (a portrait we might well present as a study to the
young,) we may point with quiet confidence to the departed Emily
Linder, and exclaim: Behold here a character noble, unselfish,
and complete--a nature of rare purity and depth--a transparent
and beautiful spirit, who verified her faith by her love.

----------

              The Irish Church Act Of 1869.

     "They" (the Anglican ministers of Ireland) "will not fleece
     the sheep they cannot feed, and spend the spoils of a people
     conquered, not won.--
                        "_London Times_, March 4th, 1869.

The measure for the disestablishment and disendowment of the
English Church in Ireland, recently introduced by the English
premier into the British Parliament, is one of the most startling
and boldest steps which has yet been taken by that body to
rectify the criminal blunders of three hundred years of mistaken
legislation. Mr. Gladstone, in moving the first reading of the
act, in a very long speech, evidently prepared with great care,
while admitting it to be "the most grave and arduous work of
legislature that ever has been laid before the House of Commons,"
felt the necessity of cautiously and almost apologetically
stating the case and explaining the views of those with whom he
acted. Mr. Disraeli, the leader of the opposition, while agreeing
with his distinguished successor in office in nothing else, was
forced to allow the scheme to be "one of the most gigantic that
had ever been brought before the house"--an opinion which,
judging from the temper of all parties inside and outside of
parliament, appears to be unanimously entertained.

{239}

The friends of the act are numerous in England as well as in
Ireland, embracing all the Catholic population and a very large
portion of dissenting Protestants of more advanced and liberal
views in both countries. The Catholics of Ireland see in it the
destruction of that infamous system which has not only robbed
them of their altars and the graves of their ancestors, but
compelled them to support in idleness and luxury what even
Disraeli himself long since denounced as "an alien church."
Though the partial restitution contemplated at this late day by
this act bears no corresponding comparison with the magnitude of
the evils borne, it is still restitution, and a most significant
and, in a sense, abject admission of the utter failure of the
experiment of the English government to force Protestantism on an
unwilling people. The successful passage of the act will also
necessitate the expenditure of large sums of money for purely
charitable purposes, and what, in a national sense, is of more
importance, it will remove one of the most salient and fruitful
causes of Irish discontent. But it is in England that the
question assumes the most portentous magnitude; for it has become
apparent to every one there that the fall of the Irish
Establishment is but the first act in the drama of the total
severance of church and state in the entire British empire. The
entering wedge well driven home in Ireland, the results in other
parts of the United Kingdom become merely a matter of time. Sir
John Grey, one of the strongest supporters of Mr. Gladstone's
bill, himself a Protestant, hints at this in an article in a late
number of his paper, the Dublin _Freeman's Journal_, in
which he says: "He (Gladstone) will soon have powerful
auxiliaries in the English curates, and they have more influence
in forming public opinion in England than the bench of bishops
and the ten thousand incumbents. The Irish curates will be in Mr.
Gladstone's favor, and if ever disestablishment should be the lot
of England--_and he would be a rash politician who would
negative such a proposition_--the English curates would have
in Mr. Gladstone's Irish measure a precedent for an equal measure
of justice to themselves."

The opposition to the act comes in the first place from the whole
body of Anglican bishops and clergymen in Ireland, if we except
the Bishop of Down and a few badly paid curates who would benefit
by its passage. The Orangemen, that most pestiferous of all
social and political scourges, of course sustain their reverend
friends, and their loyalty on this occasion has culminated in a
remonstrance signed, it is said, by over two thousand noblemen
and landed "gentry." Hostility to the policy foreshadowed by Mr.
Gladstone was very active and virulent in England during the late
elections, and is now exhibited in the Commons by a large and
active tory minority. The English ecclesiastics have also taken
up the cry with equal earnestness and scarcely less vehemence. At
the last sitting of the New Convocation of Canterbury in London,
an address to the queen in opposition to the provisions of the
act was proposed and carried by the upper house, and upon being
sent down to the lower house for adoption, the following and
similar amendments were enthusiastically added:
{240}
"Above all," say those reverend gentlemen, "we are constrained by
our sense of duty to your majesty and to the Reformed Church of
England and Ireland, humbly to represent to your majesty that
disestablishment of the church in Ireland cannot be had without
repudiation, on the part of the nation, of the necessity and
value of the Reformation." This language is explicit and forcible
enough, but the Synod of both Houses of Convocation of the
Province of York, held on the same day, goes a little farther.
"This convocation," they affirm, "view with sorrow and alarm the
proposed attempt to disestablish and disendow the Irish branch of
the United Church of England and Ireland, as seriously affecting
the interests of the church in that part of the British
dominions; as a fatal encroachment on the prerogatives of the
crown; as unsettling the constitution of church and state
guaranteed by engagements entered into by acts of union, and
confirmed to members of the church by the solemn sanction of the
coronation oath."

That part of the coronation oath prescribed by the first William
and Mary, chapter sixth, to which allusion is here made and which
is the straw that the drowning Anglicans are endeavoring to
grasp, reads as follows: "_Question:_ Will you, to the
utmost of your power, maintain the laws of God, the profession of
the Gospel, and the Protestant Reformed Religion established by
law? And will you preserve unto the bishops and clergy of this
realm, and to the churches committed to their charge, all such
rights and privileges as by law do or shall appertain unto them
or any of them? _King and Queen_: All this I promise to do,
(king and queen lay hands on the holy Gospel, saying,) so help me
God." The condition of this solemn oath would at first sight
appear to preclude the queen from signing the act, were we not
assured by the confident tone, and even the express words, of Mr.
Gladstone that her majesty's views were entirely in accord with
those of her first minister, and in fact, that she had already
placed in the hands of parliament her right of ecclesiastical
appointments in Ireland.

The history of the Irish Church Establishment, now happily about
to disappear for ever, is so familiar to most intelligent readers
that it requires but a passing notice. Since its birth at a
so-called Irish parliament, summoned by Lord Grey in 1536, down
to the present time, so unjust have been its proceedings, so
rapacious its ministers, and so oppressive its exactions of an
ill-governed and neglected people, with whom it never had the
least sympathy, that Christendom has stood aghast in mingled
wonder and disgust. Not only were the Catholics of Ireland
despoiled of their churches, abbeys, and convents, the monuments
of piety and learning and the dispensaries of Christian charity,
reared by the hands of benevolent ancestors for over a thousand
years, but the very humblest abodes of worship were handed over
to a foreign clergy, preaching a new religion at the point of the
sword, ignorant of the very language of the country, and by birth
and training bitterly hostile to every interest, spiritual and
temporal, of the people they were sent to teach. Nor was this
all. The despoiled masses were compelled to pay, and still pay,
for the support of this "alien" church a tithe on every foot of
cultivated land in the kingdom, and upon the produce and stock
derived from or raised on the same.
{241}
The amount of property thus filched from the overburdened farmers
and peasantry of Ireland under color of law, and the additional
_annual revenue_ wrung from that half-famished nation, is
thus estimated by no less an authority than the English premier:
[Footnote 51]

    [Footnote 51: This, of course, is but a very small portion
    indeed of the property taken from the Catholic Church in
    Ireland under Henry VIII. and succeeding monarchs. Most of
    the abbey lands were first vested in the crown and then
    granted to courtiers and others at a nominal rent as the
    reward of their apostasy. Many of the wealthiest families in
    Ireland derive their titles to their lands from those acts of
    spoliation.]

  "The commissioners appointed in 1868 estimated the annual value
  at £616,000, but, with all respect for their long labors, he
  must differ from them, for they had placed it too low; for one
  of their body, in a subsequent publication, estimates it at
  £835,000, but for the present purpose he would take it at
  £700,000. The capitalized amount was as follows:

    Tithe rent charge,                £9,000,000
    Land,                             £6,250,000
    Other property in money, etc.,      £750,000
    Total,                           £16,000,000

  The result is that the whole value of the ecclesiastical
  property of Ireland, reduced and cut down first of all by the
  almost unbounded waste of life tenants, and secondly by the
  wisdom or unwisdom of well-intentioned parliaments--the
  remaining value is no less than £16,000,000 of money,
  considerably more than on a former occasion I ventured to
  estimate, but then my means of information were smaller than
  they now are."

From the contemplation of past injustice we can now turn with a
sense of relief to the provisions of the act itself, and which,
under such peculiar circumstances, are perhaps as wisely and
judiciously framed as can be expected. On its passage it may be
slightly altered in some of its minor details, but there is
little room for doubt that the act substantially as first
presented will become law.

And first, those parts of the Acts of Union of the Irish and
English parliaments, passed at the beginning of this century,
permitting certain Irish bishops to sit _ex officio_ as
lords spiritual in the British House of Peers, and giving to the
decrees, orders, and judgments of certain ecclesiastical courts
in Ireland the force and authority of law in that part of the
realm, are unconditionally repealed. The thirteenth section of
the act prescribes: "On the 1st day of January, 1871, every
ecclesiastical corporation in Ireland, whether sole or aggregate;
every cathedral corporation in Ireland as defined by this act
shall be dissolved, and on and after that day no archbishop or
bishop of the said church shall be summoned to or be qualified to
sit in the House of Lords."

Thus we see that Irish Anglican bishops will no longer be
considered worthy to sit beside their right reverend brethren of
England on the benches of that respectable but rather sleepy
conclave known as the House of Lords, and that the Protestant
Church in Ireland will be resolved into a mere voluntary body
consisting of clerics and laity, whose regulations will only
affect themselves as matters of mutual contract, but who will
have no legal jurisdiction nor recognition except such as may be
conferred by subsequent acts of parliament on local corporations.
When we reflect that the prelates thus so unceremoniously thrust
out of the Lords, and who with their _confrères_ are
stripped of all extrajudicial authority, were, and still are, the
most active promoters of the Act of Union and the fiercest
opponents of its repeal, we cannot help admiring the poetic
justice which now offers the bitter draught to their lips. Like
Macbeth, they but taught "bloody instructions, which, being
taught, return to plague the inventor."

{242}

The act next provides for the appointment of a commission which
shall exist for ten years from the commencement of its
operations, and be clothed with full power to reduce to its
possession all the property, lands, tenements, and interests of
or now belonging to the Established Church of Ireland, and to
reconvey, sell, or dispose of the same according to the
provisions of the act, after the 1st day of January, 1871. The
church-buildings now in use by the Established Church will be
handed over, with all their rights, to the "governing body" of
the particular church under the voluntary system of organization;
those not in general use or so dilapidated as to be incapable of
repair, being from their antiquity or the beauty of their
architecture, like St. Patrick's, Dublin, to the number of
twelve, will be transferred by the commissioner to the care of
the Board of Public Works, with an adequate appropriation in
money for their proper care and preservation. Against this latter
arrangement we entirely and emphatically protest. St. Patrick's
Cathedral at least, if not every one of those twelve churches
which the Anglicans have neither the numbers to decently fill nor
the generosity to keep in repair, instead of being put in care of
poor-law commissioners or any other secular body, should be
handed over to the Catholics of the country, the real owners and
spiritual heirs of their founders. This, after all, would be
nothing more than an act of tardy justice, and a reproof not only
to the sacrileges committed in them by the "Reformers" of the
sixteenth century, but to Anglican poverty and niggardliness in
the nineteenth century. In the hands of the poor-law commissions,
who have shown little reverence and less antiquarian lore, those
magnificent temples will become simply objects of wonder to the
passing tourist; surrounded by all the artistic and beautiful
graces of our holy faith, they would be living, breathing
evidences, as it were, of the unswerving devotion to and the
glorious rejuvenation of that faith in the Island of Saints. If
not too late, we wish to see this portion of the act changed; if
this cannot be done, we wish to see the Catholic and the liberal
members of parliament move in the matter by the means of
subsequent legislation.

See and glebe houses and their curtilages and gardens vested in
the commissioners may be sold to the governing body of any church
to which they are attached, for a sum equal to twelve times the
annual value of the house and land so conveyed, payment to be
made in installments within twenty-two and a quarter years. Upon
application from the same or a similar governing body, the
commissioners may sell, in the case of a see house, thirty acres,
and of any other ecclesiastical residence, ten acres, contiguous
land, for such sum as may be agreed upon by arbitration. It is
further provided that, whenever any church or church sites vest
in the commissioners, not subject to the above conditions, they
shall dispose of the same by public sale at their discretion.
This latter clause, though simple in its terms and apparently
unimportant, constitutes in reality one of the most interesting
features in the act. Knowing as we do the intense devotion of the
Irish Catholics for the crumbling ruins of the old churches built
by their brave and zealous ancestors, where in the olden time
walked so many holy men now with the saints in heaven, and the
cold indifference or ignorance of the Anglican clergy in relation
to such sanctified places, we can confidently predict that not
many years will elapse ere those precious memorials of the past
will be in the possession of the people who have so watched in
silence and in tears their desecration by the followers of the
religion of Henry and Elizabeth.
{243}
It will also be remarked in this part of the act the constant
recurrence of the term "governing body," so expressive of the
total reduction of the once proud Church of England in Ireland as
by "law established" to the same condition as that occupied by
mere Methodists and Presbyterians.

Graveyards, a subject scarcely less attractive than churches, is
next dealt with in this elaborate act. When a church having a
burial ground attached to it is vested in the commissioners, and
the church-building is subsequently reinvested in the "governing
body," the burial ground will be included in the order conveying
the same; otherwise the burial grounds will be transferred to the
poor-law guardians within whose district the same may be
situated, to be used by them in a manner similar to those already
taken or purchased by such guardians. This clause when carried
out will change many graveyards now exclusively controlled by
Protestants, but which in reality are and formerly were the
property of Catholics, into places of public burial, and, _a
fortiori_, Catholic.

Having disposed of the material interests and franchises of the
Irish Church, we next come to the most important part (only,
however, as far as the parties immediately affected are
concerned) of the act, though the framers, evidently with a keen
eye to the pockets of the disestablished, place it among the
first in general interest. It appears under the unostentatious
sub-title of "Compensation to persons deprived of Income." It
provides that, on and after the 1st of January, 1871, the
commissioners, having in the mean time ascertained the amount of
annual income of the holder of any archbishopric, bishopric,
benefice, or cathedral preferment, curacy, etc., shall pay to the
holder of the same an annuity equal in amount to such income for
life, or as long as such incumbent continues to perform the
duties of such office; or such incumbent may commute his annuity
in return for a certain payment in bulk, upon his own application
and at the discretion of the commission. For these purposes the
sum of about £5,000,000, or twenty-five millions of dollars, will
be required to be paid out of the assets in the hands of the
commissioners. This amount divided between two thousand
ecclesiastics would give an average of twelve thousand five
hundred dollars for each, but as that number includes the
curates, the most numerous and worst paid of the Anglican
clergymen, the archbishops and other high dignitaries will find
themselves in receipt of enormous revenues during the term of
their natural lives. Then there are other persons who are to
become pensioners on the public bounty to the amount of four
million five hundred thousand dollars; such as parish clerks,
sextons, officers of cathedrals and ecclesiastical courts,
parochial school-masters, organists, and all that sanctimonious
and useless tribe whose mock gravity and unbending advocacy of
church and state so frequently proved a source of amusement and
derision to their less orthodox and perhaps less mercenary
neighbors. With a sigh we part with that grave, shabby-genteel
link between the Protestant curate and the seldom-met poor pauper
of the Anglican Church, well remembering in our early boyhood
with what awe we gazed upon their long, sallow visages as they
stalked by meditatively, clothed in all the little brief
authority of quasi-clerical life.
{244}
Thirty millions of dollars may be considered a large sum with
which to pension off the clergy and their followers of a church
which does not count three quarters of a million of souls, of all
degrees, sexes, and ages; but it will be money well spent if it
heep [helps?] to eradicate an evil which has so long afflicted a
patient people. [Footnote 52]

    [Footnote 52: A late number of _The Catholic Opinion_
    (London) gives us the following statistics: There are, it is
    said 700,000 Anglicans in Ireland and 36,000,000 Catholics in
    France; that is, 51 times as many Catholics in France as
    Anglicans in Ireland. The budget therefore of Catholic
    worship in France should be 51 times £800,000, or
    £40,800,000, to write which is enough to show the monstrous
    iniquity of which Ireland has been the victim. The
    Presbyterians, numbering 523,291 persons, receive a _regium
    donum_ for their ministers amounting to £40,547, and a
    subsidy of £2050 for their theological college at Belfast,
    making a total of £42,597. Protestant dissenters have no
    endowment, nor yet Catholics, excepting a subsidy to the
    college at Maynooth of £26,360. Thus the Anglican
    Establishment in Ireland has a revenue of about £800,000 for
    700,000 persons, or about £1 3s. per head. The Presbyterians
    receive from the government £42,597 for 523,291 persons, or
    about 1s. 7 1/2d. per head. Catholics, £26,360 for 4,505,265
    persons, that is, LESS THAN ONE PENNY HALFPENNY per head.

    According to the last census, that of 1861, there were in
    Ireland:

                                        Per Cent of the
                                        whole Population.

    4,505,265 Catholics, that is,                 77.7
      693,357 members of the Established Church,  11.9
      523,291 Presbyterians,                       9.0
       76,661 Protestant dissenters,               1.2
          393 Jews,                                0.0
    5,798,967 Total                              100.0]


The holders of advowsons, or the right to appoint to church
livings--with the exception of the queen, corporations sole and
aggregate dissolved by the act, and trustees, officers, and
persons acting in a public capacity--are entitled to certain
compensation to be ascertained by arbitration; one million five
hundred thousand dollars being allowed for the liquidation of
this description of claims. As no Catholic can exercise this
right, even though the owner of the land in fee from which the
right to appoint arises, it follows that whatever compensation is
made will go to Protestants only. It would seem to any person
other than an Anglican landlord that this clause is not only not
in harmony with the equitable spirit of the body of the act, but
that it is manifestly unjust. Advowsons are as much a relic of
ancient feudal barbarism as any that were abolished by law under
the commonwealth or Charles II., and should have been swept away
when all the other devices for defrauding the industrious poor
were abolished centuries ago. We waive altogether the question of
their simoniacal character; for a custom so convenient for the
land-holder and so profitable for younger sons of aristocratic
families would hardly be condemned on that account by those who
so largely profit by it. In addition to all the money which the
commissioners are to reimburse as above mentioned, we find that
upon the property of the Irish Church there is a building debt of
some one million and a quarter dollars for the repair of
churches, glebes, etc., which the commissioners are instructed to
pay.

Thus we see that the sum of nearly thirty-two millions of dollars
has been set aside as an inducement to the loosening of the grip
of a very small and mercenary faction on the public purse
ostensibly, but in reality on the very vitals of the industrial
interests of the country. Let us now see what corresponding
compensation has been made for the Catholics and dissenters.

It is well known that for over a century the Presbyterians of
Ireland have been annually in the receipt of a limited sum of
money called the _regium donum_. At first, as the term
indicates, this was simply a gift from the crown, but of late
years it has been regularly voted by parliament, and last year it
amounted to £45,000. This grant is to be withdrawn; and as an
equivalent, a sum of about four millions of dollars is to be
capitalized by the commissioners, the annual interest of which
will be nearly equal to the present donation. In addition to
this, seventy-five thousand dollars are to be bestowed on the
Presbyterian college of Belfast.

{245}

But the Catholics, who, notwithstanding the vast emigration of
the last twenty-five years, form three fourths of the entire
population, fare even worse than their dissenting brethren. The
paltry grant of £26,000 to Maynooth College is to cease, and a
sum equal to less than a half of that appropriated to the
Presbyterians is to be substituted, the interest only of which
will be devoted to the support of that distinguished nursery of
Catholic learning. The building debt of some twenty thousand
pounds which the college owes to the Board of Public Works is to
be paid off by the commissioners; but, apart from this trifling
sum, the Catholics of Ireland gain no direct material advantage
from the enforcement of the new act; and it is to be hoped that,
when time confirms the sagacity of the statesmen who have
suggested the introduction of the present reform, and has done
full justice to the moral courage of the men who have proposed it
to the imperial parliament, the self-denial and disinterestedness
of the Irish Catholic hierarchy, clergy, and people will be duly
appreciated. However little flattering such unequal distribution
of funds may be to the rightful claims of Catholics, we presume
they will not think it worth their while to object to it. Many of
them, we are disposed to think, would be willing to dispense
altogether with state aid, if the rule were made general as far
as regards Protestant sects. The Catholic Church in Ireland has
never been desirous of leaning for support on the arm of the
British government, and the experience of its members at home and
in this country has amply proved that the church is always more
prosperous and more powerful for good in inverse proportion to
its reliance on the secular arm.

There is no provision made for Trinity college, that being left
for future legislation, with an intimation from the premier that,
while its interests will be properly attended to, it shall be
deprived of its exclusively sectarian character. This is well.
Trinity was endowed with many thousand broad acres violently
taken from the rightful owners, the Irish chiefs, by Elizabeth,
which must now yield an enormous revenue. It has been in times
past, to a great extent, the nursery of enlightened intolerance
and philosophic indifference; but when we recall the names of
Swift and Mollineux, Grattan, Curran, the Emmets, Petrie, and
McCullough, and many other illustrious friends of Ireland, who
studied in its venerable halls, and there partially developed the
germs of that keen wit, fiery eloquence, and scientific lore
which graced a nation even in its darkest hour of humiliation, we
can forgive their old _alma mater_ a great many
backslidings. Trinity should be allowed to retain her revenues,
and when her wide gates are thrown open for the reception alike
of the Catholic, the Anglican, and the Dissenter, her sphere of
usefulness will not only be enlarged, but doubly increased by the
competition between the diverse elements of which the population
of Ireland is composed. She will then cease to be sectarian, and
become, in the truest sense, national.

We now come to the matter of assets to be reduced into possession
by the commissioners, out of which the several sums above
mentioned are to be paid--assets which, according to Mr.
Gladstone's estimates, will amount to £16,000,000, or eighty
million dollars.
{246}
Of this sum, £9,000,000, it is expected, will be derived from the
commutation or obliteration of tithe rent charges; that is to
say, the owners of lands from which tithes are now derived can,
by the payment of a fixed sum to the commissioners, be for ever
relieved from the tithe exaction; and, should they be unable to
pay the whole sum down, they are to be allowed forty-five years
wherein to pay it by instalments. Tithes, it must be remembered,
have not, for nearly forty years, been collected directly from
the cultivator of the soil, but from the owner, who, of course,
added it to the rent, and thus, though the objectionable adjuncts
of distrain and imprisonment for tithes, as such, were done away,
the tenant had still to pay the odious tax in another form. As
the clause of the act regulating this branch of the duties of the
commissioners is perhaps the last of such a nature that will ever
be allowed to encumber the statute-book of the British
parliament, we quote it entire, simply premising that it seems
fair enough, and in terms decidedly favorable to the landlords.
Section 32 recites:

  "The commissioners may at any time after the 1st day of
  January, 1871, sell any rent charge in lieu of tithes bestowed
  on them under this act to the owner of the land charged
  therewith, in consideration of a sum equal to twenty-two and a
  half times the amount of such rent charge, and upon any such
  sale being so made, the commissioners shall, by order, declare
  the rent charge to be merged in the land out of which it
  issued, and the same shall merge and be extinguished
  accordingly. Upon the application of any owner so purchasing,
  the commissioners may, by order, declare his purchase money, or
  any part thereof, to be payable by instalments, and the land
  out of which such rent charge issued to be accordingly charged
  as from a day to be mentioned in such order, for forty-five
  years thence next ensuing, with an annual sum equal to four
  pounds ten shillings for every one hundred pounds of the
  purchase money, or part thereof, so payable in instalments. The
  annual sum charged by such order shall have priority over all
  charges and incumbrances, except quit or crown rents, and shall
  be payable by the same persons, and be recoverable in the same
  manner as the rent charge in lieu of tithes, heretofore payable
  out of the same lands. Owner, for the purposes of this section,
  shall mean the person for the time being liable to pay rent
  charge in lieu of tithes under the provisions of the acts of
  the first and second years of the reign of her present majesty,
  chap. 109."

When all the charges incumbent on the commissioners are provided
for, including one million dollars for themselves, a matter which
they will not be likely to neglect, there will be left of the
effects of the defunct Establishment the handsome sum of over
seven million pounds sterling. What disposition to make of this
money was a puzzling question for a long time among the
legislative administrators. That it was to be devoted to some
Irish purpose was understood from the first; but grants of money
to Ireland have heretofore turned out to be mere jobs, much more
beneficial to government employees than to the supposed
recipients of the bounty. Besides, as Mr. Gladstone says, they
wanted to make this measure a finality, and to dispose of the
money once and for ever. To have divided it among all religious
denominations _per capita_, would throw the bulk of it into
possession of the Catholics, to the great chagrin of the sects;
and to have expended it on one or two local internal improvements
would have created sectional jealousy, and given rise to the cry
of favoritism. Appreciating these difficulties, the friends of
the act have resolved, and, we think, very wisely, to devote it
to the general charities of the island, not directly connected
with any particular denomination, as follows:

{247}

  "1. The support of infirmaries, hospitals, and lunatic asylums
  in connection with the grand jury cess or other assessment in
  lieu thereof.

  "2. In support of reformatory and industrial schools, Ireland
  acts, and in aid of other grants for that purpose.

  "3. The salaries of trained or skilled nurses for poor persons
  in sickness or in labor.

  "4. The suitable education and maintenance of the blind and of
  the deaf and dumb poor in separate asylums.

  5. The suitable care, training, and maintenance, in separate
  asylums, of poor persons of weak intellect, not requiring to be
  kept under restraint. The commissioners may, from time to time,
  during their trust, report to her majesty whether there is any
  income available for the purposes mentioned in this section,
  and, upon such report being made, it shall be lawful for her
  majesty, by order in council, to direct such available portion
  of income to be applied for the aforesaid purposes, or any of
  them, under such management and control as aforesaid."

The poor-law commissioners are to be entrusted with this capital
sum, and the distribution of the annual revenue arising
therefrom, which is calculated at £310,000. There are two very
patent reasons for this distribution. Already the sum of £140,000
for similar purposes is annually raised by a tax called "county
cess;" "a heavy tax, an increasing tax," says Mr. Gladstone, "and
a tax not divided, like the poor law, between the owner and the
occupier, but paid wholly by the occupier; and a tax not limited,
like the poor law, to occupations above four pounds in value, but
going down to the most miserable huts and cabins. The holders of
these most wretched tenements are now required in Ireland, and
required increasingly from year to year, to pay, not that which
is done by the wealthier portion of the occupants who contribute
to the poor law, but to pay for that class of want and suffering
which ought undoubtedly to be met, which in every Christian
country should be liberally met, but which can only be met by the
expenditure of considerable funds in comparison with those which
are paid to support the pauper." The frightful increase of those
classes of unfortunates to be thus provided for in view of the
decrease of the entire population by emigration [Footnote 53]
calls loudly for some legal interposition. From 1851 to 1861 the
number of deaf and dumb persons increased from 5180 to 5653; and
during the same decade the blind increased from 5787 to 6879,
while the number of lunatics increased from 9980 to 14,098, or
nearly fifty per cent!

    [Footnote 53: The emigration from Ireland from May 1st, 1851,
    to December 1st, 1865 amounted to 1,630,722 souls.]

With this last act of Christian charity, we hope to see the
traces of former injustice gradually fade away from the public
mind, and the bitter memories and sectarian jealousies of the
past give place to a new era of good feeling and brotherly
affection. Time is not only a great healer of wounds, but a great
reformer of ideas. Taking a retrospective glance at the history
of Ireland for the past hundred years, and watching how, step by
step, the church in Ireland, from the veriest depths of
despondency and contumely, has risen in power, strength, and
numbers by its own innate vitality, we are not too sanguine in
believing that it has a glorious future before it, unsurpassed by
that of any country in Europe. Though its members embrace the
great majority of the poorest classes in the land, they have, in
that short period, studded the country with magnificent
cathedrals and substantial parish churches; though unaided by a
government which, if not positively hostile, was certainly
indifferent, they have built and are generously sustaining,
hundreds of colleges, convents, hospitals, and asylums, where
learning flourishes as in the pristine ages, and where the poor,
the needy, and afflicted are comforted and consoled.
{248}
And though famine has decimated the hardy peasantry, and
emigration has torn millions of the "bone and sinew" from their
native shores, the Catholics of Ireland are still, as they always
will be, the people of Ireland. It is true that a great many
changes have yet to be effected through the means of legislation
before the Irish or English Catholic is placed on an equal
footing with his more favored fellow-subject. In Ireland, he must
eventually have equal representation in the British parliament.
The laws controlling the marriage of persons of different
religious beliefs, those relating to the tenure of lands and
spiritual devises, and to the disqualification for office on
account of religious opinions, must be repealed and sent to dwell
with all the other legal rubbish of a bygone age of bigotry. The
Ecclesiastical Titles Bill, which is a disgrace to an enlightened
government and a standing insult to the bishops and people of the
country, must share the same fate before the crown can expect or
ought to receive that heartfelt loyalty which springs from good
and impartial government. The times in which we live imperatively
demand those reforms, and we are very much mistaken in the
strength and spirit of our co-religionists in the United Kingdom
if they do not also quickly and pertinaciously demand them.

We are gratified, in looking over our files of leading English
journals, to find that they all with one voice, a few old and
obscure tory papers excepted, support the liberal party in its
leading measure, and are waging war with their trenchant pens
against the effete anti-Catholic party in the Commons. We hope,
also, to see our brothers of the American press, secular and
religious, who so generally advocate the support of churches by
voluntary contributions, giving a word of encouragement to their
cousins across the Atlantic.

Granting that the passage and proper execution of the present act
will be a most important step in the right direction, it still
seems to us unfortunate that it was not taken years ago. With a
fatality that so generally attends English political and
religious concessions, it has been so long delayed that it now
appears to be more the offspring of fear and intimidation than
the result of wise and mature conviction. If British statesmen
will yield only to force what they refuse to sound argument and
the logic of facts, they must expect the same motive power to be
again applied when demands neither so reasonable nor so well
founded are to be put forward. In common with our brethren in
every part of the world, we view with great satisfaction this
awakening sense of public justice in the English mind; but let it
not falter now, as if exhausted by one solitary effort. Let a
good landlord and tenant act be passed without unnecessary delay,
and some comprehensive measures be adopted for the development of
the industrial resources of the nation, and then, indeed, that
chronic state of disaffection which has afflicted every
generation in Ireland since the invasion may be radically cured.

-------

{249}

              My Mother's Only Son.

The rain is falling heavily, to-night. It has a dull, desolate,
lonely sound, as if it were bent upon reminding me of another
night more desolate, dull, and lonely even than the present. What
right have I, who have so much happiness about me now, to be
searching the dark annals of past sorrow, or to unearth a hidden
misery, that will come like a blighting shadow between me and all
the pleasures that might be mine? Yet that rainy, dismal night
_does_ come back to me with a force and terror I would
rather not remember.

I would rather not remember it, because my son, just budding into
manhood, has left me to-night, for the first time, and gone to
take his place in an old firm in a neighboring city. The world
and its allurements are temptingly laid out before him. He is a
noble, handsome boy, so bright and promising. They tell me he
will always have friends, plenty of friends; that he has all the
elements of popularity, and is destined to become a general
favorite. Dangerous attractions these; they have made wiser heads
than yours, my darling, very giddy and very light; hearts, too,
have been brought to mourning, while the admiring friends of
yesterday could cast only a look of pity on their lost friends as
they passed by.

My own brother was all this; gifted in an eminent degree with
energy and manly courage to sustain him in any generous
undertaking. We had everything to hope from him; he had
everything to hope from himself. With prospects fair and bright,
an old banker, a friend of my father's, gave him an eligible
situation. It was an office of trust; he was proud of the
confidence placed in him, and left home with the full resolve of
filling it with honor to himself and credit to the good man who
had placed him there. His letters were pleasant and joyous, full
of the new pleasures he had never dreamed of in our quiet life at
home. His graceful manners and natural gentleness soon
established him as a favorite in society; his social pleasures
were daily increasing, and his attention to business was both
active and energetic.

My mother had a slight misgiving. It was only the shadow of a
thought, she said--that Arthur, in the new pleasures that
surrounded him, might become weaned from us or might learn to be
happy without us. In her deep love for her gifted boy she had
never thought such an event possible, and instantly reproached
herself for the thought.

In going from home, my brother had left a great waste, an empty
place behind him, and his letters were our only comfort.

What light and pleasure they brought to our quiet fireside, that
would have been so dreary without them. There were only three of
us, and while his letters were so fresh and vigorous, they almost
kept up the delusion that we were not separated; but there came a
change.

We may have been slow in discovering it, but we did discover it,
and then to miss him as we missed him through the long winter
nights seemed like losing a star that had led us, that we had
followed, until it passed under a cloud and left us, still
waiting, still watching, for it to come again.
{250}
He paid us a flying visit now and then, and my mother,
unconscious of the cause of his disquietude--for he was both
anxious and disturbed--would redouble her exertions to bring back
his waning love, making every allowance for the indifference, the
coldness, and the neglect that were so glaringly apparent to
other eyes, yet so delicately obscured from her motherly vision.
Not that my brother made any effort to conceal his restless
desire to leave us, or that his interests and pleasures were
centred elsewhere. I was very young, yet old enough to see that
there was a mercy in _this_, my mother's blindness.

Her beautiful boy seemed to carry the sunshine of her life with
him; she thought him caressed and petted, the favorite of
society, and the embodiment of all that was noble. He has seen so
much of the luxury and elegance of life in the great city, how
can we expect him to be contented with our home, where everything
is so different? Thus she would reason with me, and thus, I
sometimes thought, she would reluctantly reason with herself.

One day, a letter came to us from the banking-house, where my
brother had gradually risen to an honored position. It was from
the banker himself, our dear old friend; he told, in the
tenderest manner, that Arthur had acquired habits which rendered
him unfit for an office of trust. He deeply regretted the
necessity of making this known to her; he ended by suggesting
that the gentle influence of home might do much toward bringing
him to a sense of his condition.

My mother read the letter, folded it carefully, reopened it, and
read it again. She then handed it to me without speaking a word.
When I had finished reading it, I looked at her; she was still
immovable, helpless as a child in this her great despair. Her
apathy was the more distressing to me as I was entirely alone. I
dare not consult any one, dare not ask the advice of our kind
neighbors. She had roused herself just enough to tell me it must
be kept as secret as death. I was only sixteen, I had never acted
for myself--there had been no occasion in our quiet life for a
display of individual courage or independence. I had grown up
under my mother's guidance, had never been five miles away from
home, where every day was like all the yesterdays that had gone
before it. And now this great journey lay before me. There was no
one else to go; _I_ must take it alone.

We were both ignorant of the nature of my brother's disgrace. Mr.
Lester had made no mention of it further than to say that he
could keep him no longer in the bank. I could only conjecture in
my own mind what it might be. Of course I thought of dishonesty;
what else could have driven him from a situation where he was so
honored and trusted?

The railroad was some miles distant from our little village;
despatch was necessary; I must meet the evening train. My brother
was ill; I was going to him; this would quiet our neighbors and
put an end to curious speculations. Surely I was not far from the
truth--he must have been ill indeed when his proud head was
brought down so low.

Again and again reassuring my mother that I would bring him back,
telling her in all sincerity that I knew he would be able to
clear himself in her eyes so that not a spot or blemish would be
left on his fair name, (Heaven knows how easy this might be.
{251}
Let him lay his head on her faithful breast, and twine an arm
about her neck, and lovingly whisper, "Mother, I am
_innocent_, all is right;" the _world_ might sit in
judgment and cry "_Guilty_," she would heed it not,) I
became so preoccupied, so entirely absorbed with the
_object_ of my journey, that the journey itself had no
novelty for me, though everything was new and startling. Now I
was hurrying to the great city that I had so often thought and
dreamed about. It was only in a confused way that I could settle
it in my mind that I was really going there. That I was strange,
and new, and unused to the busy scenes that lay before me seemed
no part of my business. My brother--would he come home with me?
He might be angry that I had come. Could I ask him to tell me the
truth? No, I could not see him so humiliated; I would rather hear
the story of his shame from other lips than his.

It was near midnight when I reached his lodgings.

"Is Arthur Graham at home?" I, trembling, asked of a kindly
looking woman who opened the door.

"He is, miss, and sorely in need of some one to look after him."

Had it come to this? Was my brother an object of pity, even to
her? I asked to see him, not wishing to prolong this painful
interview. She desired me to enter, and we approached his room. I
opened the door cautiously. The woman's manner was so mysterious,
I trembled and began to be afraid; she had told me he was not
sick. Of course I thought he was a prisoner and perhaps chained
in his own room. The light was very dim, and, as I advanced, I
stumbled and was near falling over--what?--over the prostrate
form of my own brother, lost, degraded, fallen.

As I bent down to see why he did not speak to me, I discovered
the truth. He, the pride and hope of our lives, had sunk into a
drunkard. I uttered no cry; I was no longer terrified; I thought
only of my mother.

I was all that was left her now, and, as I bent over him,
wondered if that face was his, so changed, so sickening; neglect
and ruin had already settled there. I tried to smooth the heavy
hair, that lay in thick, dank masses about his reeking forehead.
How old, how terribly old, he had grown in so short a time! I
dare not cherish a feeling of loathing; he was my brother, and
needed my love as he had never needed it before. For him--for in
him I was protecting my mother--I must set aside all youth and
girlhood. A woman was needed now, a woman calm, firm, and
resolute. Of myself I was weak, but Heaven would help me. A
conviction settled upon me, as I sat there, with my travelling
wrappings still unremoved, that his case was hopeless. I could
see a lonely, dishonored grave, far away from us in a strange
land. I know not why this sight should rise before me, my brother
was young, and others as debased as he had risen to a good and
noble life. Thus I reasoned with myself, and yet that lonely
mound of earth would come before me, and I felt powerless.

But I had no time for misery. I had come to protect and assist.
My girlhood was passing away with the shadows of the night, for
to-morrow's sun must find me a woman, prepared to meet the stern
duties that were now mine.

The night was far advanced, and I was trying to gather up my
newfound energies, when I felt a kindly hand removing my bonnet.
It was the good woman who had met me at the door; she was waiting
to show me my room and to offer me some refreshment.

{252}

"You can do no good here," she continued, as she assisted me to
arise, "until morning."

She shook her head doubtfully as she whispered, "You are very
young, yes, quite too young to undertake it even then. But if you
are afraid he will give you the slip before you are up, (he often
does that,) just lock the door."

She did so and put the key in her own pocket.

The little room assigned me was cleanly; it had an air of comfort
about it greatly in contrast with the slovenly chamber I had just
left. The gentle creature made nothing of undressing me,
lamenting the while as if I had been a stricken child that had
unexpectedly fallen into her motherly hands.

I had made no allusion to my brother as yet. I could not speak of
him, and only ventured to ask the woman as she was leaving me how
long he had been in this condition. "I might ask you the same
question, miss, for surely it is not a day nor a month that has
brought him to _this_."

To _this!_ What a world of misery there was in that one
simple word! It seemed to carry with it the low wailing of a lost
soul.

We were to have paid my brother a visit soon, my mother and I. It
was to have been a surprise, and I had gone so far as to arrange
the dress I should wear, for I was anxious to appear at my best
before Arthur's friends. And here I was spending my first night
in New York. No kin of mine had bid me welcome. No brother had
folded me in his loved embrace, and held me out to see how pretty
I had grown, proudly kissing me again and again, and telling me
how happy my coming had made him.

In my peaceful days I had thought of all this; and oh! how easily
it might have been!

I arose early; but, early as it was, the woman had apprised
Arthur of my arrival. I found him morose and sullen. He demanded
my reasons for coming so abruptly upon him. He had not asked
after my mother, nor given me one word of kindly greeting; and
when, in a harsh tone, he asked why I thus intruded myself, my
great reserve of womanly strength fled from me, and I cried long
and bitterly.

He was naturally kind and gentle. He came to me, wiped the tears
from my cheek, and told me he did not intend to be cruel. His
hand trembled violently, as he laid it on my head, and his whole
frame shook and quivered, though I could see he made a desperate
effort to control himself. When he had recovered his composure,
he seemed to know why I had come, and implored me not to say one
word to him; he was miserable enough already.

"Come home with me, Arthur dear," I whispered. "You can soon
change your life, and be your own self again."

I ventured to tell him that mother had been taken very ill, when,
with a look, he begged me to say no more. He could not bear even
an allusion to his condition, and I had no wish to harass him.
What a slave he had become to the one ruling passion of his life!

Regardless of my presence, he drank again and again from a bottle
near him. Once when I laid my hand upon the glass, he told me
that he needed it to steady his nerves, and he would be all right
soon. It was in vain that I urged him to accompany me home. He
told me he had another situation in view, not anything like the
one he had just left, but very good in its way. I could tell my
mother this; it might comfort her.'Twas all the hope I had to
carry home.

{253}

As years went by our sorrows were softened. We had become
accustomed to Arthur's manner of life. At times he seemed
changing for the better, and again he would go back to his old
habits.

It was in early summer time, when everything on our little farm
was at its best. The solitary womanly habits that had come so
early upon me were still very strong with me. I was not yet old,
only twenty-two; and on this lovely summer night I was planning
our quiet future, when a carriage stopped before the door, and
Arthur came in, leading, or rather carrying, a delicate young
girl.

'Mother," said he, "this is my wife! Grace, this is my mother and
sister."

"Your wife!" we repeated.

"Oh! yes," he replied. "We have been married nearly a year, and I
hoped to better my circumstances before I should make the fact
known to you." We saw that the poor child, for such she seemed,
was sadly in want of woman's kindly care. So pale, so
sorrow-stricken, so young, yet so bowed down and disappointed! I
knew nothing of her story, but she was my brother's wife, and I
gave her a sister's love. That night I watched by her bed; and,
as the pale moonlight fell upon her rippling hair, I wondered
what art, what witchery or power my brother had used to bring
this delicate creature to be a sharer of his misery and shame.
She waked with a sudden start, and called in a wild, frightened
way for help. She was really ill, now, and before morning the
doctor laid a feeble baby in my mother's arms.

My new-found sister and her wailing infant had all our tenderest
care. We were glad that she had come to us that we might, in the
love we gave her, make up in some degree for the sorry life the
poor unfortunate child had taken upon herself. She staid with us;
our home was hers. Arthur returned to New York.

Her history was soon told. She was an orphan, entirely dependent
upon the bounty of an aunt who had daughters of her own to be
settled in life. She met Arthur. The fascination of his manners
and the interest he took in her friendless condition won her
heart. The misfortune of his life was well known to her, but she
trusted to _her_ love, feeling sure that a life's devotion
must redeem him. A dangerous experiment, this; too often tried,
and too often found a hopeless failure. For her sake, he
_did_ try to be firm and strong, and manfully combated his
besetting sin; but an hour of weakness came; old associates
returned, and old habits with them. In a moment of hilarity and
pleasure all his firmness gave way; his delicate young wife was
forgotten, and she awakened all too soon to the knowledge that
her husband's love for liquor was greater than his love for her.
The dear, sweet girl and her pretty infant had lived with us
nearly a year, when, one cold, drizzly night like this, Arthur
came home. He had grown so reckless of late, that we were not
surprised when he came reeling into our presence. He began by
demanding a small amount of money which Grace had been husbanding
with care. She made no reply to any of his angry threats, nor did
she give him the money. Dead to all sense of manhood, he rose to
strike her. Her infant was sleeping on her breast. She leaped to
flee from him, but before we could save her, he struck her. She
fell heavily; the sleeping babe was thrown against the iron
fender. It uttered one feeble cry, and closed its eyes _for
ever_.

{254}

The mother rose, and with a desperate effort snatched her dead
child from my arms, pressed it to her breast, rocked it to and
fro, and tried to give it nourishment. My mother and I spent that
terrible night with a dead infant, a frenzied mother, and a
father lost in hopeless despair. Every rustle in the trees, every
sound in the air, brought the horror of death upon us, for each
murmur seemed fraught with vengeance. Was my brother a murderer?
His own tender infant had fallen dead at his feet. The act must
pass without a name, for in our woe we had none to give it.

He sat there through the weary hours of the night, a haggard,
desperate fear settling upon him. He dare not approach his wife;
the sight of him increased her frenzy, and she prayed that she
might never see his face again.

Misery had made my mother strong and she could help me. Calm,
cool, and deliberate action was necessary now.

Arthur must leave us before morning. No one had known of his
coming. The child's sudden death must be in some way accounted
for, in what way I knew not. My mother whispered God would help
us.

Arthur slunk away in his guilt and misery. He took no leave of
us, but silently crept out in the darkness. There was darkness on
every side, it was bearing down upon him with the weight of an
avenging fury. I watched him, bowed and desolate, stealing away
from us, away from all that was dear to him, from all that had
loved him, and could not, even now, cast him off. I lingered
until the last sound of his footsteps died away. I knew then as I
know now, that we should never see him again. The rain fell upon
him as he passed out. It fell upon me as I stood there, and I
thought it was falling far away where I had seen a lonely grave.

I washed our martyred babe and dressed it for the burial. There
was a mark upon its little neck that the solemn wrappings of the
grave must cover. It might be bared before the judgment-seat to
plead for an erring father.

My mother died soon after of a broken heart. She never recovered
the shock of that terrible night. The curse that settled upon her
poor, misguided son made him none the less her child; and she
would try, with all the tenderness of her wounded spirit, to
think of him as he was, innocent, true, and noble, when first he
left her. When we learned that he had died on foreign shores, and
was buried on a lonely island, she thanked God that he was no
longer a homeless wanderer.

My sister Grace is with me still, loving and cherishing my young
children, leading them and me to better life by the chastened
beauty of her own Christian character.

-------

{255}

        Catholicity and Pantheism.

              Number Six.

	      The Finite.


In the pantheistic theory, the finite has no real existence of
its own. It is a modification, a limit of the infinite. The sum
of all the determinations which the primitive and germinal
activity assumes, in the progress of its development, constitutes
what is called cosmos. The interior and necessary movement of the
infinite, which terminates in all these forms and determinations,
is creation. The successive appearance of all these forms in this
necessary development is the genesis of creation. The finite,
therefore, in the pantheistic system, does not exist as something
substantially distinct from the infinite, but is one form or
other which it assumes in its spontaneous evolutions.

As the reader may observe, this theory rests entirely upon the
leading principle of the system that the infinite is something
undefined, impersonal, indeterminate, and becomes concrete and
personal by a necessary, interior movement; a principle which,
viewed in reference to the finite, gives rise to two others,
first, that the finite is a modification of the infinite; second,
that the finite is necessary to the infinite, as the term of its
spontaneous development. Now, in the preceding articles, we have
demonstrated, first, that the infinite is actuality itself; that
is, absolute and complete perfection; second, that in order to be
personal, he is not impelled to originate any modification or
limit. Hence, two other principles concerning the finite, quite
antagonistic to those of pantheism. First, the finite cannot be a
modification of the infinite, because perfection, absolutely
complete, cannot admit of ulterior progress. Second, the finite
is not necessary to the infinite, because the interior and
necessary action of the infinite does not terminate outside of,
but within himself, and gives rise to the mystery of the Trinity,
explained and vindicated in the last two articles. Consequently,
his necessary interior action being exercised within himself, he
is not forced to originate the finite to satisfy that spontaneous
movement, as Cousin and other pantheists contend. The finite,
therefore, can neither be a modification nor a necessary
development of the infinite. And this consequence sweeps away all
systems of emanatism, of whatever form, that may be imagined.
Whether we suppose the finite to be a growth or extension of the
infinite, as the materialistic pantheists of old seemed to
imagine; or mere phenomenon of infinite substance, with Spinoza;
or ideological exercise of the infinite, as modern Germans seem
to think--according to the principle laid down, the finite is
impossible in any emanatistic sense whatever. To any one who has
followed us closely in the preceding articles, it will appear
evident that these few remarks absolutely dispose of the
pantheistic theory concerning the finite, and close the negative
part of our task respecting this question.

{256}

As to the positive part, to give a full explanation of the whole
doctrine of Catholicity concerning the finite, we must discuss
the following questions:

In what sense is creation to be understood?

Is creation of finite substances possible?

What is the end of the exterior action of God?

What is the whole plan of the exterior action of God?

Before we enter upon the discussion of the first question, we
must lay down a few preliminary remarks necessary to the
intelligence of all that shall follow.

God's action is identical with his essence, and this being
absolutely simple and undivided, his action also is absolutely
one and simple. But it is infinite also, like his essence, and in
this respect it gives rise, not only to the eternal and immanent
originations within himself, but also may cause a numberless
variety of effects really existing, and distinct from him, as we
shall demonstrate. Now, if we regard the action of God, in itself
originating both _ad intra_ and _ad extra_, that is,
acting within and without himself, it cannot possibly admit of
distinction. But our mind, being finite, and hence incapable of
perceiving at once the infinite action of God, and of grasping at
one glance that one simple action originating numberless effects,
is forced to take partial views of it, and mentally to divide it,
to facilitate the intelligence of its different effects. These
partial views and distinctions of our mind, of the same identical
action of God, producing the divine persons within himself, and
causing different effects outside himself, we shall call moments
of the action of God.

There are, therefore, two supreme moments of the action of God,
the interior and the exterior. Whenever we shall speak of the
action of God producing an effect distinct from and outside of
him, we shall call it exterior action, to distinguish it from the
interior, which originates the divine personalities. Moreover, we
shall call exterior action of God, all the moments of it which
produce different effects. We shall call creation that particular
moment of his external action which, as we shall see, causes the
existence of finite substances, together with their essential
properties and attributes.

Now, as to the first question, in what sense can creation be
understood; or, otherwise, what are the conditions according to
which creation may be possible? On the following: First, the
terms laid down by the action of God must be in nature distinct
from him. Second, they must be produced by an act which does not
cause any mutation in the agent. Third, therefore, they must be
finite substances. For, suppose the absence of the first
condition, creation would be an emanation of the divine essence;
since, if the terms created were not different from the nature of
God, they would be identical with it, and consequently creation
would be an emanation or development of the substance of God. The
absence of the second condition would not only render it an
emanation of the substance of God--because, if creation implied a
mutation in him, it would be his own modification--but it would
render it altogether impossible, since no agent can modify itself
but by the aid of another. If, therefore, creation cannot be
either an emanation or a modification of God, it must be distinct
from his substance. Now, something distinct from the substance of
God, and really existing, and not a modification, cannot be
anything but finite substance. Finite, because, the substance of
God being infinite, nothing can be distinct from it but the
finite; substance, because something really existing, and which
is not a modification, gives the idea of substance.
{257}
Creation, therefore, cannot be understood in any other sense
except as implying the causation of finite substances. But is
creation of finite substances possible? In answer to this
question, let it be remarked that the essence of a thing may have
two distinct states: one, intelligible and objective; the other,
subjective and in existence. In other words, all things have a
mode of intelligible existence, distinct from the being by which
they exist, in themselves; the one may be called objective and
intelligible; the other, subjective. To give an instance, a
building has two kinds of states: one, intelligible, in the mind
of the architect; the other, subjective, when it exists in
itself.

Now, the possibility of a thing to have a subjective existence in
itself, depends upon the intelligible and objective state of the
same thing. Because that only is possible which does not involve
any contradiction. But that which does not involve any
repugnance, is intelligible. Therefore the possibility of a thing
implies its intelligibility, and its subjective existence depends
upon its objective and intelligible state. This is so true, that
the transcendental truth of beings, in their subjective state of
existence, consists in their conformity with their intelligible
and objective state. As the truth of a building consists in it
conformity with the plan in the mind of the architect.

From these principles it follows that, in order to establish the
possibility of the creation of finite substances, we must prove
three different things: First, that they have an intelligible
state; in other words, that their idea does not involve any
repugnance. Second, that there exists a supreme act of
intelligence, in which the intelligible state of all possible
finite substances resides. Third, that there exists a supreme
activity, which may cause finite substances to exist in a
subjective state conformable to their objective and intelligible
state. When we have proven these three propositions, the
possibility of creation will be put beyond all doubt. Now, as to
the first proposition, pantheists have denied the possibility of
finite substances. Admitting the general possibility of
substance, they deny the intrinsic possibility of a finite one;
and, as everything which is finite is necessarily _caused_,
the whole question turns upon this--whether, in the idea of
substance, there is any element which excludes causation and is
repugnant to it. Every one acquainted with the history of
philosophy knows that Spinoza coined a definition purposely to
fit his system. He defined substance to be that which exists in
itself, and cannot be conceived but by itself. [Footnote 54]

    [Footnote 54: Eth. 1, Def. 1.]

This definition is purposely insidious. That which exists in
itself may have a twofold meaning; it may express a thing, the
cause of whose existence lies in itself, a self-existing being;
or it may imply a thing which can exist without inhering in or
leaning on any other. Again, that which cannot be conceived but
by itself may be taken in a double sense--a thing which has no
cause, and is self-existent, and consequently contains in itself
the reason of its intelligibility; or it may signify a thing
which may be conceived by itself, inasmuch as it does not lean
upon any other to be able to exist. Spinoza, taking both terms of
the definition in the first sense, had the way paved for
pantheism; for if substance be that which is intelligible by
itself because self-existent, it is evident that there cannot be
more than one substance, and the cosmos cannot be anything but
phenomenon of this substance.
{258}
Hence the question we have proposed: Is there, in the true idea
of substance, any element which necessarily implies
self-existence, and excludes causation? Catholic philosophy
insists that there is none. For the idea of substance is made up
of two elements: one positive, the other negative. The positive
element is the permanence or consistence of an act or being--that
is, the _existing_ really. The second element is the
exclusion or absence of all inherence in another being in order
to exist.

Now, every one can easily perceive, that to exist really does not
necessarily imply self-existence, or contradiction to the notion
of having been caused by another. Because the notion of real
existence or permanence of a being does not necessarily imply
eternity of permanence, or, in other words, does not include
infinity of being. If the permanence or real existence of a being
included eternity of permanence, then it could not have a cause,
and should necessarily be self-existent. But we can conceive a
being really existing, which did not exist always, but had a
beginning. The better to illustrate this conception, let it be
remembered that duration or permanence is one and the same thing
with being; and that, ontologically, being and duration differ in
nothing. The permanence and duration of a being is, therefore, in
proportion to the intensity of a being. If the being be infinite,
the highest intensity of reality, the being is infinitely
permanent; that is, eternal, without beginning, end, or
succession. If the being be finite and created, the permanence or
duration is finite also; that is, has beginning, and may,
absolutely speaking, have an end. Everything, therefore, really
existing without inhering in another, whether it be infinite or
finite reality--that is, whether it have a cause or be
self-existent--is a substance. If it be self-existent, it is
infinite substance; if it be caused, it is finite substance. This
is so evident that none, slightly accustomed to reflect, can fail
to perceive the difference between being self-existent and
existing really. The two things can go separately without the one
at all including the other. A thing may exist as really after
being caused, as the substance which is self-existent and
eternal, so far as existing really is concerned.

To show that the idea of substance, however, is such as we have
been describing, it is sufficient to cast a glance at our own
soul. It is evident from the testimony of consciousness, that
there is a numberless variety of thoughts, volitions, sensations;
all taking place in the _me_, all following and succeeding
each other without interruption, like the waves of the ocean
rolling one upon the other, and keeping the sea always in
agitation. We are conscious to ourselves of this continual influx
of thoughts, volitions and sensations; but, at the same time that
we are conscious of this, we are conscious also of the identity
and permanence of the _me_ amid the fluctuations of those
modifications. We are conscious that the _me_, which
yesterday was affected with the passions of love and desire, is
the same identical _me_ which is to-day under the passion of
hate. This permanence or reality of the _me_, amid the
passing and transitory affections, gives the idea of substance or
real existence; whilst the numberless variety of thoughts and
feelings which affect it, and which come and go while the
_me_ remains, gives the idea of modification, or a thing
which inheres in another in order to exist.

{259}

The above remarks must put the possibility of finite substance
beyond doubt. But before we pass to the second question, we
remark that any one sooner than a pantheist could call in
question the possibility of finite substance; because if, as we
have demonstrated in the second article, the infinite of the
pantheists be not an absolute nonentity, a pure abstraction, it
is nothing but the idea of finite being or substance. Hence, to
prove the possibility of finite substance to the pantheist, we
might make use of the argument _ad hominem_. That which is
intelligible is possible, by the principle of contradiction. But
the idea of finite substance is intelligible to the pantheists,
being the foundation of their system; therefore, finite
substances are possible.

Second question: Is there a supreme act of intelligence, in which
reside all possible finite substances in their objective and
intelligible state?

The demonstration of the second proposition follows from that of
the first.

For the idea of finite substance does not involve any repugnance,
by the principle of contradiction. Therefore it is necessarily
possible, as we have demonstrated. But that which is necessarily
possible, is necessarily intelligible; because everything that is
possible may be conceived. Therefore the idea of finite substance
is necessarily intelligible, and may be conceived by an
intelligence able to grasp the whole series of possible finite
substances. But God is infinite intelligence, and as such is
capable of apprehending all possible finite substances. Therefore
in God's intelligence resides the whole series of possible finite
substances, in their intelligible and objective state.

To render this argument more convincing, let us look into the
ontological foundation of the possibility of finite substances.
Finite substances are nothing but finite beings; consequently
they are not possible, except inasmuch as they agree with the
essence of God, which is the infinite, _the being_, and as
such is the type of all things which come under the denomination
and category of being. God, therefore, who fully comprehends his
essence, comprehends, at the same time, whatever may agree with
it; or, in other words, comprehends all possible imitations, so
to speak, of his essence; and consequently, all the possible
imitations of his essence residing in his intelligence, there
dwells at the same time the intelligible and objective state of
all possible finite substances. St. Thomas proves the same truth
with a somewhat similar argument. "Whoever," he says,
"comprehends a certain universal nature, comprehends, at the same
time, the manner according to which it may be imitated. But God,
comprehending himself, comprehends the universal nature of being;
consequently he comprehends also the manner according to which it
may be imitated." Now, the possibility of finite substance is a
similitude of the universal being. Hence, in God's intelligence
resides the whole series of possible finite substances.

Third proposition: There exists a supreme activity which may
cause finite substances to exist in a subjective state. For St.
Thomas argues that the more perfect is a principle of action, the
more its action can extend to a greater number and more distant
things. As for instance, if a fire be weak, it can heat only
things which are near it; if strong, it can reach distant things.
Now, a pure act, which is in God, is more perfect than an act
mixed of potentiality, as it is in us.
{260}
If therefore by the act which is in us we can not only produce
immanent acts, as for instance, to think and to will, but also
exterior acts by which we effect something; with much greater
reason can God, by the fact of his being actuality itself, not
only exercise intelligence and will, but also produce effects
outside himself and thus be the cause of being. [Footnote 55] The
great philosopher Gerdil, appropriating this reason of St.
Thomas, develops it thus: "In ourselves, and in particular
beings, we find a certain activity; therefore activity is a
reality which belongs to the _being_ or the _infinite_.
The effect of activity when the agent applies it to the patient,
consists in causing a mutation of state. The intensity of acts,
depending on intelligence, has a force to introduce a mutation of
state in the corporal movements. This may be seen in the real
though hidden connection of which we are conscious to ourselves,
between the intensity of our desires and the effect of the
movements which are excited in the body; and better still, in
certain phenomena which sometimes occur, though rarely, when the
imagination, apprehending something vividly and forcibly,
produces a mutation of state in the body which corresponds
somewhat with the apprehension of the imagination. [Footnote 56]

    [Footnote 55: C. G. lib. ii. ch. 6.]

    [Footnote 56: An imminent danger of being burned to death,
    vividly apprehended, has sometimes entirely cured persons
    altogether paralyzed and unable to move.]

Now this change in the body, corresponding to what takes place in
the fancy, that is, in the objective and intelligible state,
shows that there exists a certain, though hidden, force and
energy by which, from what exists in an intelligible state, may
be introduced a mutation in the corresponding state of subjective
existence. Therefore the efficacy of the supreme intelligence,
being the greatest and the highest, in force of the supreme
intensity of being which resides in it, may not only effect a
change conformable to a relative, intelligible state in things
already existing, but also cause them to pass altogether from the
intelligible state into the state of existence. And, assuredly,
if the finite intensity of desire and of imagination may produce
an effort of corporal movement, the supreme intensity of the
Infinite Being may, certainly, produce a substantial, existing
being; since the supreme intensity of the Being bears infinitely
greater proportion to the existence of a thing, than the
intensity of desire does in relation to a corporal movement. The
term, therefore, of the supreme activity, is to effect, outside
of itself, the existence of things which had only an intelligible
and objective being in itself." [Footnote 57]

    [Footnote 57: Gerdil, _Del Senso Morale_.]

It is well to remark here, that the supreme activity is not by
any means determined necessarily to create; for the activity may
be determined to a necessary operation, in that case only when
the agent is actually applied to the subject capable of receiving
a change of state. But creation is not the result of the
application of the supreme activity to a subject coexisting with
itself; because nothing coexists originally with the supreme
activity. Therefore creation cannot be an action determined by
any necessity, but must depend only upon the energy or will of
the supreme intelligence in which the highest activity dwells.
Hence it follows, that creation, as to its term, is not
necessary, either because there is any principle in God impelling
him necessarily to create, as we have seen, or because there is
any principle outside of God forcing him to create; because
outside of the supreme activity nothing exists.
{261}
What is necessary about the creation of finite substances, is
their intelligible and objective state, or their intrinsic
possibility. For everything which does not imply any repugnance
by the principle of contradiction, is intrinsically possible and
intelligible. That which is intrinsically possible is
essentially, necessarily, and eternally so. Consequently, the
objective state of finite substances is necessarily so.

Pantheists, confounding the objective and intelligible state of
the cosmos with its state of subjective existence; in other
words, identifying the ideal with the real, the ideological with
the ontological, have been led to admit the necessity of
creation. This is particularly remarked in the systems of
Schelling and Hegel; the one admitting, as first principle, the
absolute identity of all things; the other identifying the
_idea_ with _being_. Both confounded the objective and
intelligible state of the cosmos with its state of subjective
existence; and once the two are identified, it follows that, as
the one, which is the intelligible, is necessary, eternal, and
absolute, the other, the subjective, becomes also necessary and
eternal; and hence the necessity of creation. Catholicity, on the
contrary, carefully distinguishing between the ideal and the
real, the objective and the subjective, and admitting the
necessity and eternity of the first, because everything
intelligible necessarily and eternally resides in the supreme
intelligence, denies the necessity of the second, because of that
very intelligible state which it admits to be necessarily and
eternally so.

For a finite substance is not, and cannot be conceived as
possible or intelligible, except it is supposed to be contingent
or indifferent in itself to be or not to be, not having in itself
the reason of its existence. This is the only condition according
to which finite substances can be possible. Were it otherwise,
were a finite substance supposed to be necessary, it would be
self-existent, and have in itself the reason of its existence;
and in that case it would no longer be finite, but infinite. To
suppose, therefore, a finite substance not contingent is to
suppose it necessary, is to suppose a self-existing finite
substance, or, in other words, an infinite finite substance,
which is absurd, and, therefore, unintelligible and impossible.

The intelligibility, therefore, or objective state of finite
substances, which is necessary, eternal, and absolute itself,
requires the contingency of their existence in a subjective
state; and, consequently, their contingency is necessary because
their intelligibility is necessary; and their creation is free,
because whatever is indifferent in itself to be or not to be,
absolutely depends, as to its existence, upon the will of the
supreme intelligence.

An objection is here raised by pantheists impugning the
possibility of the creative act. It is as follows: Given the full
cause, the effect exists. Now, the creative act, the full cause
of creation, is eternal; therefore, its effect must exist
eternally. But, an eternal effect is a contradiction in terms;
because it means a thing created and uncreated at the same time.
Therefore, creation is impossible in the Catholic sense, and can
be nothing more than the eternal development and unfolding of the
divine substance. Given the cause, the effect exists. Such an
effect, and in such a manner as the cause is naturally calculated
to produce, it is granted; such an effect and in such a manner as
the cause naturally is not intended to produce, it is denied.
{262}
Now, what is the cause of creation but the will of God? And how
does the will naturally act, except by a free determination, and
in the manner according to which it determines itself?
Consequently, creation being an effect of the will of God, it
will follow just when and how the will of God has determined it
shall. Hence the will of God being eternal, it does not follow
that the effect should be eternal also. In other words, given the
full cause, the effect exists when the cause is impelled to act
by a necessary intrinsic movement. But when the cause is free,
and perfectly master of its own action and energy, the cause
given is not a sufficient element for the existence of the
effect, but, two elements are required, the cause and its
determination, and the free conditions which the cause has
attached to its determination. Nor does this imply any change in
the action of God when creation actually takes place. For that
same act which determines itself from eternity to create, and to
cause substances and time, the measure of their duration,
continues immutable until the creation actually takes place; and
the creation is not an effect of a new act, but of that same
immutable and eternal determination of God.

We conclude, finite substances are intrinsically possible; they
have an intelligible and objective state in the infinite
intelligence of God. God's infinite activity may cause them to
exist in a subjective state conformable to their intelligible
mode of existence. Therefore, creation in the Catholic sense is
possible.

Before we pass to the next question, we must draw some
corollaries.

First. God can act outside himself, since he can create finite
substances with all the properties and faculties which are
necessary elements of their essence, and naturally and
necessarily spring from it.

Second. The creative act implies two secondary moments; one,
called preservation, and the other, concurrence. Hence, if God
does create, he must necessarily preserve his effects, and concur
in the development of their activity. Preservation implies the
immanence of the creative act, or the continuation of the
creative act of God, maintaining finite substances in their
existence. The necessity of this movement is proved by the
following reason:

Every finite being is, in force of its nature, indifferent to be
or not to be; that is, every finite being contains no intrinsic
reason necessarily requiring its existence. Hence, the reason of
its existence lies in an exterior agent or cause. But the finite
being once existing, does not change its nature, but
intrinsically continues to be contingent, that is, indifferent to
be or not to be. Therefore, the reason of the continuation of its
existence cannot be found in its intrinsic nature, but in an
exterior agent; that is, in the action of the Creator. So long,
therefore, as the action of God continues to determine the
intrinsic indifference of contingent being to be or not to be, so
long does the finite exist. In the supposition of the act
ceasing, the finite would simultaneously cease to be.

Nor does this argument impugn the _substance_ of finite
beings. For, as we have seen, substance is that which exists
really, though the reason of its existence lie in the creative
act; whereas, what we deny here in the argument is the
continuation of existence by an intrinsic reason, which would
change the essence of the finite, and, from contingent, render it
necessary.

{263}

The second moment of the creative act is concurrence. Finite
substance is a being in the way of development; a being capable
of modification. Now, no being can modify itself, can produce a
modification of which it is itself the subject, without the aid
of another being who is pure actuality. Therefore, finite
substances cannot modify themselves without the aid of God. The
action of God aiding finite substances to develop themselves, is
called concurrence. We have already proved, in the second
article, the principle upon which this moment of the action of
God is founded. We shall here add another argument. A finite
substance is a being in the way of development; a being in
potency of modification; and when the modification takes place,
it passes from the power or potency to the act. Now, no being can
pass from the power to the act except by the aid of being already
in act. Consequently, finite substances cannot modify themselves
except by the aid of being already in act. Nor can it be supposed
that finite substances can be at the same time in potency and in
act with regard to the same modification; for this would be a
contradiction in terms. It follows, then, that having power of
being modified, they cannot pass from the power to the movement
without the help of another being already in act. This cannot be
a being which may itself be in power and in act, for then it
would itself require aid. It follows, therefore, that this being,
aiding finite substances to modify themselves, must be one which
is pure actuality, that is, God.

Third corollary: From all we have said follows, also, the
possibility of God acting upon his creatures by a new moment of
his action, and putting in them new forces higher than those
forces which naturally spring from their essence, nor due to them
either as natural properties, attributes or faculties. For, if
God can act outside himself, and effect finite substances
distinct from him; substances endowed with all the essential
attributes and faculties springing from their nature; if he can
continue to maintain them in existence, and aid them in their
natural development, we see no contradiction in supposing that he
may, if he choose, grant his creatures other forces superior
altogether to their natural forces, and, consequently, not due to
them as properties or attributes of their nature.

For the contradiction could not exist either on the part of God
or on the part of the creature. Not in the former, because God's
action being infinite, may give rise to an infinity of effects,
one higher and more sublime, in the hierarchy of beings, than the
other. Not in the latter, because the capacity of the creature is
indefinite. It may receive an indefinite growth and development,
and never reach a point beyond which it could not go. Therefore,
the supposition we have made does not imply any repugnance either
in God or in the finite, the two terms of the question. Now, that
which involves no repugnance is possible. It is possible,
therefore, that God may act upon his creatures by a moment of his
action distinct from the creative moment, and put in them forces
higher than their natural forces, and not due to them as any
essential element or faculty.

The other questions in the next article.

-------

{264}

           Aubrey de Vere in America.
          [Footnote 58]

    [Footnote 58:
    _Irish Odes and Other Poems_.
    By Aubrey De Vere.
    New York: The Catholic Publication Society,
    126 Nassau street. 1869.]

The first if not the strongest attraction this book will have for
American curiosity is not in its contents, but in their
selection. The poems presented are culled from a much greater
number, especially and expressly for the American market, and the
choice interests us vividly as indicating an English author's
deliberate _business_ opinion of that market. This edition
has not been prepared without thought: Mr. De Vere does not often
do anything without thought. Moreover, it has been, if we are not
misinformed, somewhat unusually long in press, and several of the
poems already published have been actually revised and improved
on by their painstaking author to the very last copy, and differ
in quite a number of minutiae from their former selves. Hence
Americans must be all the more surprised at the singular estimate
of taste and the singular conception of their character, which
appear to underlie this book. We cannot help thinking--nay, we
cannot help seeing--that Mr. De Vere has not selected so well as
he would have done if he had ever lived in America, or, if he had
had intelligent, practical, and experienced American advice.
There was only one way to do this thing rightly. It was to
consider either what we, the Americans, ought to like the best,
or what we would like the best; to weigh the facts well, to
settle on some definite plan or theory of selection, and carry
this out with some little sternness to the end, only leaving the
path for the very choicest flowers. We cannot trace any
strictness of system in this book: it has neither spinal column
nor spinal cord, but is made up of miscellaneous
samples--_disjecta membra poetae_. Sometimes we imagine it
to be a compromise of plans, and sometimes a random jumble. Too
many of the best poems we miss, and some of the author's most
taking _lines_ of thought stated nearly, and some totally
unrepresented. On the other hand, some mediocre pieces abound as
to which we seek but cannot find an extrinsic cause for their
reproduction. Our own suggestion to Mr. De Vere would have been
to make _general interest_ his prime criterion in choosing.
We are a very heterogeneous nation, and it is not every topic
that can unite our various tastes. For any wide or national
success here, a book must have at least a kernel of thought or
sentiment which shall appeal directly to almost the only thing we
have in common here--our humanity. Next to such poems--and Mr. De
Vere has written not a few--we should have taken the best
expressed; the boldest or most beautiful. This indeed is but a
branch corollary of the other principle, because we all love fine
expressions of ideas. On these two principles we think we could
have made up from the copies of Mr. De Vere's poetry one of the
most attractive books of the year. We think he has missed this in
several ways. To begin with, we cannot see anywhere that he ever
once grasped the idea of addressing himself to the whole American
people. There is pabulum enough for Boston, and for devout
Catholics everywhere; but where is the intelligence of Georgia,
or California, or Ohio in his estimates for the popularity of
this volume?
{265}
Some of the poems err in the direction of abstruseness, many in
being founded on obscure facts; a few embody the gross fault of
being occasional pieces--the flattest and most surely flat of all
possible forms of dulness. That Mr. De Vere could forget himself
to this last degree is to us proof positive that he never thought
of pleasing the whole American reading community.

We have heard this praised as sagacity, since this work's
appearance, on the ground that, as an outspoken Catholic and
Irishman, he could never have succeeded. To this the American
observer says, "_Distinguo_." Mr. De Vere is too elevated
and refined a thinker to be a poet of the people anywhere; but it
is, if anything, his religion, not his Celtic outbursts, that
stand in his way here. We are--heaven knows with good
reason--tolerably well past literary prejudices against
foreigners. A foreign author, having no friends nor enemies, no
clique nor counter-clique among the critics here, will have a
fair trial by American public opinion always, on the one
condition that he do not stand upon his being a foreigner and
insist on cramming pet theories down our throats.

But we do question whether there may not be a measure of truth in
the suggestion that Mr. De Vere, here as everywhere, is too
conspicuously Catholic for popularity. We see little of sectarian
prejudice among our best non-Catholic men; perhaps because so
many of them are freethinkers or indifferentists in religion. But
Protestant prejudice controls some otherwise first-class
criticism, much more of lower grade, and very many ordinary
readers and buyers of books. Perhaps Mr. De Vere is too
pronounced for these--too full and too proud of his faith. Many a
bigoted Protestant who can just barely make up his mind to hear a
man out in spite of his being a "Romish idolater," etc., etc.,
lays down a book the instant he suspects--what Protestantism is
always peculiarly quick to suspect--propagandism. Such men might
know that if proselyte-making were Mr. De Vere's aim, his
obviously shrewder plan would have been, first to gain influence
and popularity by neutral poems, and then, entrenched on the
vantage-ground of public favor, to bombard the community with his
explosive Catholic notions to some purpose. But this would be far
too much thinking for a bigoted man to go to the trouble of,
especially when it is so much cheaper, as well as more sweet to
the deacons and elders, to be unjust and slurring. So we fear
that many Protestant organs of opinion will reject the poetry for
the religion, and so do Mr. De Vere's book harm as an American
venture so far as the non-Catholics are concerned.

On the other hand we do believe that his Irish pieces would be
his best hold on public favor; for he certainly is one of the
best-informed men in Irish history of all the late writers; and
if there is one thing an American admires more than another--in
literature or anything else--it is a man that knows what he is
talking about.

But this is all of the dead past now; the book is upon us. We go
on to this question--since Mr. De Vere did not aim to please us
all, what was his aim? He has not told us in the natural
place--the preface--and we can only ask the reader to decide for
himself whether it is, as we said, compromise or jumble. The
selection of the Irish pieces is infinitely the worst of all. The
best, because the most truly Irish, of these, are in Inisfail.
{266}
There are very many Irishmen indeed who would not appreciate the
sonnet to Sarsfield and Clare, and who could make neither head
nor tail of "The Building of the Cottage;" but take up Inisfail
and read out "The Malison," or "The Bier that Conquered," or the
"Dirge of Rory O'More," to any Irish audience, and see if they
understand it or not!

There lay one main element of strength of a book like this; and
yet we do not recall a single piece from "Inisfail" in the entire
collection! It is inconceivable to us except upon the very
well-known and extremely ill-understood principle that an author
always differs with his readers, and generally with posterity, as
to what is his best. In our own humble opinion, for instance,
"The Bard Ethell" or "The Phantom Funeral," as historical
pictures, or the "Parvuli Ejus" or "Semper Eadem" as pure poetry,
is singly worth the whole fifty pages of Irish Odes, sonnets, and
interludes that begin this new volume: and we doubt as little
that Mr. De Vere would smile in benign derision at our notion. So
we will not dispute about tastes, and simply say that we do not
understand the classification of the main body of the Irish
pieces. Especially is this hard to discover the reason for
omitting Inisfail in the light of the following passage from the
preface: "I cannot but wish that my poetry, much of which
illustrates their history and religion, should reach those Irish
'of the dispersion,' in that land which has extended to them its
hospitality. Whoever loves that people must follow it in its
wanderings with an earnest desire that it may retain with
vigilant fidelity, and be valued for retaining, those among its
characteristics which most belong to the Ireland of history and
religion."

The remainder of the selected poems are purely miscellaneous, and
are chiefly remarkable to us as again showing how curiously
authors estimate themselves. We do indeed meet with much of the
best there is; but we miss, as we have said, very much more. And
having, as we have, a personal intimacy with many of Mr. De
Vere's poems, we feel really resentful to see our favorites
slighted and supplanted by others which--as it seems to us, be it
remembered--no one could ever like half so well.

After all, Mr. De Vere may be right and we wrong; but we feel so
interested in his success, and so earnestly desirous of
recognition for his high abilities, that--we do wish he had done
it our way!

The first sixty pages of the present volume are composed mainly
of a sort of rosary of ten odes, all strung on Ireland and the
Irish. Now, odes we disbelieve in generally. We think they
contain more commonplace which we imagine we admire, and which we
don't and can't admire, than any other variety of composition in
English literature. They are the supremely fit form of a few
peculiar orders of thought. The cause of Ireland is not one of
these, and Mr. De Vere has tried hard and failed, to prove the
contrary. Irish griefs are too human, Irish sympathies too
heartfelt, to be reached by this road in the clouds. One good
ballad or slogan is worth practically a million odes. As Ode I.
in this very series beautifully puts it,

  "Like severed locks that keep their light,
     When all the stately frame is dust,
   A nation's songs preserve from blight
     A nation's name, their sacred trust.
   Temple and pyramid eterne
     May memorize her deeds of power;
   But only from her songs we learn
     How throbbed her life-blood hour by hour."

{267}

But, waiving their final cause, three of the odes are good, the
first two, and the seventh--the best of all--which, as also the
ninth, is republished from the book of 1861. The close of this is
singularly touching and true, and well worth recalling even to
many who must have admired it before.

  "I come, the breath of sighs to breathe,
     Yet add not unto sighing;
   To kneel on graves, yet drop no wreath
     On those in darkness lying.
   Sleep, chaste and true, a little while,
     The Saviour's flock and Mary's,
   And guard their reliques well, O Isle,
     _Thou chief of reliquaries!_

  "Blessed are they that claim no part
     In this world's pomp and laughter:
   Blessèd the pure; the meek of heart
     Blest here; more blest hereafter.
  'Blessed the mourners.' Earthly goods
     Are woes, the master preaches:
   Embrace thy sad beatitudes,
     And recognize thy riches!

  "And if, of every land the guest,
     Thine exile back returning
   Finds still one land unlike the rest,
     Discrowned, disgraced, and mourning,
   Give thanks! Thy flowers, to yonder skies
     Transferred, pure airs are tasting;
   And, stone by stone, thy temples rise
     In regions everlasting."

  "Sleep well, unsung by idle rhymes,
     Ye sufferers late and lowly;
   Ye saints and seers of earlier times,
     Sleep well in cloisters holy!
   Above your bed the bramble bends,
     The yew tree and the alder:
   Sleep well, O fathers and O friends!
     And in your silence moulder!"

Scattered about between these odes we find a miscellany of minor
pieces whose function seems to be that of interludes or thin
partitions. Of these _hors-d'oeuvres_ some are new, some
old; the majority, for Mr. De Vere, commonplace. He cannot write
a page without hitting on some happy phrase or just thought, but
there is a little more than this to be said of almost all. The
best is this sonnet which we do not remember having seen before:

     "The Ecclesiastical Titles Act.

  "The statesmen of this day I deem a tribe
   That dwarf-like strut, a pageant on a stage
   Theirs but in pomp and outward equipage.
   Ruled inly by the herd, or hireling scribe.
   They have this skill, the dreaded Power to bribe:
   This courage, war upon the weak to wage:
   To turn from self a Nation's ignorant rage:
   To unstaunch old wounds with edict or with jibe.
   Ireland! the unwise one saw thee in the dust,
   Crowned with eclipse, and garmented with night,
   And in his heart he said,'For her no day!'
   But thou long since hadst placed in God thy trust,
   And knew'st that in the under-world, all light,
   Thy sun moved eastward. Watch! that East grows gray!"

We have also a long series of selections from the entire body of
our author's published works. Here we are glad to welcome to
America many of his best poems. The sonnets especially are as a
rule well chosen. We miss many a lovely one, but we should miss
these that are before us just as much. Mr. De Vere has also with
excellent judgment honored with a place in this book his three
charming idylls, "Glaucè," "Ione" and "Lycius"--among his very
finest pieces of word-painting, and which have more of the old
classic mode of expression than any modern poems in our language
save Landor's, and perhaps Tennyson's "OEnone." We wonder, by the
way, why a man who could write these idylls has never given us
any classical translations. We are sure they would be remarkably
good. The long poem of "The Sisters" is also reprinted in full.
It is good, and we will not say that it is not a good piece here;
but on reading it over, the discussion and description which
frame the picture seem to us better than the picture itself.
Indeed, we have begun to suspect more and more that Mr. De Vere's
strength lies in his descriptive powers. It might surprise many
other readers of his, as much as it did us, to examine for
themselves and discover how many of their most admired passages
are portraits. In mere verbal landscape-painting he stands very
high. His very earliest books abound in felicities of this sort,
and the _May Carols_ are fairly replete with them, and in
fact contain a whole little picture gallery in verse.
{268}
And from the "Autumnal Ode--one of the very latest in his latest
book [Footnote 59] --we select one of many passages which amply
prove that Mr. De Vere's hand has not forgotten her cunning:

  No more from full-leaved woods that music swells
    Which in the summer filled the satiate ear:
  A fostering sweetness still from bosky dells
    Murmurs; but I can hear
  A harsher sound when down, at intervals,
  The dry leaf rattling falls.
  Dark as those spots which herald swift disease,
  The death-blot marks for death the leaf yet firm.
  Beside the leaf down-trodden trails the worm.
  In forest depths the haggard, whitening grass
  Repines at youth departed. Half-stripped trees
    Reveal, as one who says,'Thou too must pass,'
  Plainlier each day their quaint anatomies.
  Yon poplar grove is troubled! Bright and bold
  Babbled his cold leaves in the July breeze
  As though above our heads a runnel rolled.
    His mirth is o'er; subdued by old October,
    He counts his lessening wealth, and, sadly sober,
  Tinkles his minute tablets of wan gold."

    [Footnote 59: Dated in October, 1867.]

This is very vivid, and the closing fancy extremely graceful and
pleasing. Poplars, by the way, seem to be a favorite theme of our
author. Every one familiar with his poems will recall another
beautiful description in his idyll of "Glaucè," in which occur
these lines:

                     "How indolently
  The tops of those pale poplars bend and sway
  Over the violet-braided river brim."

And there are other instances also.

But it is waste of argument to go on giving illustrations of Mr.
De Vere's power to depict the external world; it is like proving
Anacreon a love-poet. What we wish to call attention to is the
nature, not the existence, of his talent for description. It
seems to us that, throughout his works, the faculty of
delineation is not the ordinary sensuous susceptibility of poets,
but rather a clear, tender truthfulness in reproducing
impressions alike of thought and sense. The somewhat unusual
result from which we deduce this opinion is, that he describes
quite as happily in the moral order as the physical. This has not
been adequately noticed by his critics, His beautiful
_genre_ pictures appear to have absorbed almost all of the
public attention. We think this is more than their due. Indeed,
whenever he sets out to paint traits, Mr. De Vere is quite as
sure to make a hit as in his landscape sketches. This volume
chances to afford us one striking set of examples of this. There
are in it three several summaries of the characteristics of
different nations. One--the remarkable epitome of England in the
sonnets on colonization--has been published in this magazine
before, (Vol. iv. No. 19, p. 77.) The next we take from the
"Farewell to Naples," (p. 70.) We think it will bear quoting,
though it has been in print since 1855, and was written as long
ago as 1844.

  'From her whom genius never yet inspired,
   Nor virtue raised, nor pulse heroic fired;
   From her who, in the grand historic page,
   Maintains one barren blank from age to age;
   From her, with insect life and insect buzz,
   Who, evermore unresting, nothing does;
   From her who, with the future and the past
   No commerce holds, no structure rears to last;
   From streets where spies and jesters, side by side,
   Range the rank markets, and their gains divide;
   Where faith in art, and art in sense is lost,
   And toys and gewgaws form a nation's boast;
   Where Passion, from Affection's bond cut loose,
   Revels in orgies of its own abuse;
   And Appetite, from Passion's portals thrust,
   Creeps on its belly to its grave in dust;
   Where Vice her mask disdains, where Fraud is loud,
   And naught but Wisdom dumb and Justice cowed;
   Lastly, from her who, planted here unawed,
   'Mid heaven-topped hills, and waters bright and broad,
   From these but nerves more swift to err hath gained,
   And the dread stamp of sanctities profaned,
   And gilt not less with ruin, lives to show
   That worse than wasted weal is wasted woe--
   We part, forth issuing through her closing gate
   With unreverting faces not ingrate."

Is this not stingingly true? If only the critics found it in
Byron, would it not be inevitable in all the select readers and
speakers, and rampant in the "Notes on France," "Letters from
Italy," "Thoughts while Abroad," etc., which ministers are so
sure to write, and which we hope congregations buy?

{269}

The other is a still stronger, and, coming from Mr. De Vere, a
very bold as well as trenchant portraiture--no less than the
English idea of Ireland. True, Mr. De Vere does not even pretend
to agree with it, but that, an Irishman himself, and a devoted
patriot, he can see her so exactly as others see her, makes it
wonderfully good, and raises what would otherwise have been a
mere success of exact expression, to the rank of a high
imaginative effort.

  "How strange a race, more apt to fly than walk;
   Soaring yet slight; missing the good things round them,
   Yet ever out of ashes raking gems;
   In instincts loyal, yet respecting law
   Far less than usage: changeful yet unchanged:
   Timid yet enterprising: frank yet secret:
   Untruthful oft in speech, yet living truth,
   And truth in things divine to life preferring:
   Scarce men; yet possible angels!--'Isle of Saints!'
   Such doubtless was your land--again it might be--
   Strong, prosperous, manly never! ye are Greeks
   In intellect, and Hebrews in the soul:
   The solid Roman heart, the corporate strength
   Is England's dower!"

We cannot devise an addition that could complete this picture of
the Sassenach's view of the Gael. It is to the life--the
"absolute exemplar of the time." Only we fear that Mr. De Vere
has furnished those who do not particularly love his country with
rather an ugly citation against her, and Irishmen may perhaps
complain of him for giving to such a powerful delineation the
sanction of an Irish name. If so, it will be the highest
compliment in the world; yet it has ever been a dangerous gift to
be able to see both sides of the shield.

We have only suggested our belief, not asserted it as a fact,
that Mr. De Vere's fullest power is in description; but the idea
grows on us every year, and we wish he would set the question
finally at rest in some future work. Let him for once in his life
make this great gift of his the essential, instead of the
incident, and write something purely descriptive.

There is another thing--rather a curious thing, perhaps--that we
note in the choice of the old poems. In a former review, some
little time since, we took occasion to speak of the
chameleon-like way in which Mr. De Vere's style--always in its
essence his own--unconsciously reflects his reading of certain of
our best authors. There are poems that recall Shakespeare, and
Wordsworth, and Landor, and Tennyson, and Shelley. But there are
also others--many of them among his best--which are all himself.
Consciously or unconsciously, Mr. De Vere has come back to these
at the last, and they constitute a notable majority of those he
has picked out for this volume. The ode on the ascent of the
Apennines, the "Wanderer's Musings at Rome," the "Lines written
under Delphi," the beautiful "Year of Sorrow," "The Irish Gael
(_alias_ Irish Celt) to the Irish Norman"--all these are of
this class. Perhaps the poet has come to love the best those of
his poems which hold the purest solution of his own nature, or
perhaps it may be mere chance; only certain it is that the most
characteristic of his pieces predominate very largely throughout.

We cannot, however, pass on to the new poems without expressing
our profound disrespect for one selection in this volume. It is
notorious that, as we hinted before, authors are poor judges of
the relative excellence of their own works. To this rule there
are, apparently, no exceptions. Let us take one rankling example.
No lover of Tennyson but groans inwardly with disgust over that
insane hoot called "The Owl," with its noble description of the
very witching hour of night:

  "_When cats run home_, and night is come,"

and the impotent beauty of the poet's ejaculation:

  "I would mock thy chant (!) anew,
     But I cannot mimic it.
   Not a whit of thy tuwhoo,
     Thee to woo to thy tuwhit," etc., etc.

--human nature can stand no more of it.

{270}

We had long loved to believe that this was a sceptred hermit of
an example, wrapped in the solitude of its own unapproachable
fatuity. It has gone blinking and tu-whooing through edition
after edition, with the muffy solemnity characteristic of the
eminent fowl, its subject. But Mr. De Vere has paralleled it at
last with a certain "Song" which we find in this volume. On the
4th of September, 1843, in a preface to his first book of verses,
[Footnote 60] he tells us that this poem was written considerably
earlier than 1840.

    [Footnote 60: _The Search after Proserpine_. Oxford and
    London. 1855.]

Three years ago, we remember observing and laughing at it, and
thinking whether it would not be well to speak of it as the one
blemish in all his works, on his elsewhere perfect grammar.
Deeming it a mere Homeric dormitation, we passed it by. And now,
after thirty years face to face with it, comes Mr. De Vere, at
last, and drags from utter and most laudable oblivion this
hapless

            "SONG.

  "He found me sitting among flowers,
     My mother's, and my own;
   Whiling away too happy hours
     With songs of doleful tone.

  "My sister came, and laid her book
     Upon my lap: and he,
   He too into the page would look,
     And asked no leave of me.

  "The little frightened creature laid
     Her face upon my knee--
  '_You_ teach your sister, pretty maid;
     And I would fain teach _thee_.'

  "He taught me joy more blest, more brief
     Than that mild vernal weather:
   He taught me love; he taught me grief:
     He taught me both together.

  "Give me a sun-warmed nook to cry in!
     And a wall-flower's perfume--
   A nook to cry in, and to die in,
     'Mid the ruin's gloom."

If Mr. De Vere had only attended in 1840 to the very reasonable
request of the young person in the last verse, we should have
been spared one of the very silliest little things in the English
language. And yet in thus haling it from the

  "nook to sigh in and to die in
    'Mid the ruin's gloom,"

where public opinion had long since left it in peace, he has done
good. It is instructive to his admirers to see for themselves how
very badly he could write before the year 1840. If intended as a
public penance of this nature, it is perfect of its kind, and the
humility of it will rejoice all Christian souls, excepting,
perhaps, the indignant shade of Lindley Murray.

Not far behind this in inanity is the "Fall of Rora," all the
good part of which was published years ago, and all the bad part
of which is raked up and added for this edition. But from this to
the end of the book are new poems of a very different order. To
begin with, we have a number of miscellaneous sonnets. They are
none of them poor, but the first that particularly arrests
attention, by its fine harmony and happy illustration, is

             "Kirkstall Abbey.

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

The arrangement of the double rhymes, which gives the peculiar,
rich rhythm, is a very unusual one with these sonnets. In the
whole two hundred and fifty before this, we only recall one or
two other instances, notable among which is the famous one
beginning,

  "Flowers I would bring, if flowers could make thee fairer,"

and the effect is almost always excellent.

{271}

On the heels of this treads another (of the same rhythm also) too
good to pass by:

          "Unspiritual Civilization.

  "We have been piping, Lord; we have been singing!
   Five hundred years have passed o'er lawn and lea
   Marked by the blowing bud and falling tree,
   While all the ways with melody were ringing:
   In tented lists, high-stationed and flower-flinging
   Beauty looked down on conquering chivalry;
   Science made wise the nations; Laws made free;
   Art, like an angel ever onward winging,
   Brightened the world. But O great Lord and Father!
   Have these, thy bounties, drawn to thee man's race
   That stood so far aloof? Have they not rather
   His soul subjected? with a blind embrace
   Gulfed it in sense? Prime blessings changed to curse
   Twixt God and man can set God's universe."

Better, perhaps, than either of these, as combining the best
qualities of both, is the one on

             "Common Life.

  "Onward between two mountain warders lies
   The field that man must till. Upon the right,
   Church-thronged, with summit hid by its own height,
   Swells the wide range of the theologies:
   Upon the left the hills of science rise
   Lustrous but cold: nor flower is there, nor blight:
   Between those ranges twain through shade and light
   Winds the low vale wherein the meek and wise
   Repose. The knowledge that excludes not doubt
   Is there; the arts that beautify man's life:
   There rings the choral psalm, the civic shout,
   The genial revel, and the manly strife:
   There by the bridal rose the cypress waves:
   And there the all-blest sunshine softest falls on graves."

This is, we think, one of the author's very best. It evolves a
happy allegory very neatly with a happy description, to express a
thought too large, it is true, for development in such brief
space, but highly suggestive. The question, how far wisdom lies
in action, may be raised in a sonnet, and remain unsettled by a
thousand treatises.

Several versions from Petrarch's sonnets are admirable, and serve
to confirm our already expressed opinion that Mr. De Vere could
give us excellent translations.

Perhaps, however, readers of our author will be most interested
by the following, which is in an altogether different vein from
the general run of these sonnets, and indeed is perhaps rather a
curious subject for a sonnet to be made about at all. Still there
is no accounting for these poets. Here it is, with all its
oddities upon its head:

              "A Warning.

  "Why, if he loves you, lady, doth he hide
   His love? So humble is he that his heart
   Exults not in some sense of new desert
   With all thy grace and goodness at his side?
   Ah! trust not thou the love that hath no pride,
   The pride wherein compunction claims no part,
   The callous calm no doubts confuse or thwart,
   The untrembling hope, and joy unsanctified!
   He of your beauty prates without remorse;
   You dropped last night a lily; on the sod
   He let it lie, and fade in nature's course;
   He looks not on the ground your feet have trod.
   He smiles but with the lips, your form in view;
   And he will kiss one day your lips--not you."

Where did our pious philosopher, of all men, learn to discourse
thus sagely and plainly of the uncertainty of all things amorous?
We think he makes a very good case, and only add our emphatic
indorsement, if that can serve the young lady, and join in
warning her to find a warmer lover, unless the untrembling and
unsanctifled is very, very handsome, in which case we know better
than to advise her at all.

The next particularly good piece is the opening one of a
miscellany, and is called

          "The World's Work.

  "Where is the brightness now that long
     Brimmed saddest hearts with happy tears?
   It was not time that wrought the wrong:
     Thy three and twenty vanquished years
   Crouched reverent, round their spotless prize,
     _Like lions awed that spare a saint_;
   Forbore that face--a paradise
     No touch autumnal ere could taint.

  "It was not sorrow. Prosperous love
     Her amplest streams for thee poured forth,
   _As when the spring in some rich grove
     With blue-bells spreads a sky on earth._
   Subverted Virtue! They the most
     Lament, that seldom deign to sigh;
   O world! is this fair wreck thy boast?
     Is this thy triumph, vanity?

  "What power is that which, being nought,
     Can unmake stateliest works of God?
   What brainless thing can vanquish thought?
     What heartless, leave the heart a clod?

{272}

   The radiance quench, yet add the glare?
     _Dry up the flood; make loud the shoal!
   And merciless in malice, spare
     That mask, a face without a soul?_

  "Ah! Parian brows that overshone
     Eyes bluer than Egean seas!
   One time God's glory wrote thereon
     Good-will's two gospels, love and peace.
   Ah! smile. Around those lips of hers
     The lustre rippled and was still,
   As when a gold leaf falling stirs
     A moment's tremor on the rill!"

We wish to call attention here to the very curious image
italicized in the second verse. Every one is struck by it at
once; every one sees the great beauty of it at once: and yet the
code of a narrow and merely rhetorical criticism would weed it
out like a wildflower shyly intruding in "ordered gardens great."
The simile is not at all a particularly happy one in relation to
the preceding idea; it is well enough, but there have been apter
similes, and there will be. And reducing it to fact, probably it
is one of the most exaggerative images ever written. But yet it
is beautiful--really beautiful, not a verbal juggle that entraps
the imagination in fine words. The force lies in the bringing
into juxtaposition in a new way those old emblems of beauty,
flowers and sky, and the daring inaccuracy of it only adds a
charm. It does a poetical thought sometimes no harm to be loose.
Nature can do clear-cut work enough when she makes things for
use; but all the visible loveliness of this world is in vague
outlines, formless masses, incomplete curves. The law that
softens the distant mountain-tops is the same that makes the
beauty of these lines. Theirs is the rarer excellence that rises
above rule. We notice it the more in Mr. De Vere that his
strength lies generally in the other direction, of photographic
exactness in reproduction. We like the very looseness of such
expressions; they are like the flowing robes of beautiful women.
The third verse also is excellent throughout, especially in the
fine metaphor in the sixth line, and the intensity of "merciless
in malice." This makes it so much the more provoking that the end
is weak, insignificant, and abrupt, and in a vicious style that
seems to be more and more the fashion of to-day. Still, there
have been worse things; does not Horace end an ode with
_"Mercuriusque"?_

The next short song, though nothing remarkable, perhaps, as pure
poetry, we cite because it is so like the author--Aubrey De Vere
all over, and the shortest epitome of his style we have yet seen
in any of his works.

              "A Song Of Age.

                   I.

  "Who mourns? Flow on, delicious breeze!
     Who mourns, though youth and strength go by?
   Fresh leaves invest the vernal trees,
     Fresh airs will drown my latest sigh.
   What am I but a part outworn
     Of earth's great whole that lifts more high
   A tempest-freshened brow each morn
     To meet pure beams and azure sky?

                   II.

  "Thou world-renewing breath, sweep on,
     And waft earth's sweetness o'er the wave!
   That earth will circle round the sun
     When God takes back the life he gave!
   To each his turn! Even now I feel
     The feet of children press my grave,
   And one deep whisper o'er it steal--
     The soul is His who died to save.'"

We like the honesty and earnestness of this none the worse for
knowing that Mr. De Vere is no longer a young man. And yet does
it not seem hard to realize that so good a writer has been before
the public nearly thirty years, and seen a generation of flimsy
reputations hide him from the eyes of the herd? We can only with
difficulty realize, beside, that any one with so romantic and
novel-like a name can ever be old. And will he ever be? Is it not
true in a deeper and other sense, that whom the gods love die
young?

{273}

The "Lines on Visiting a Haunt of Coleridge's" are not excelled
by anything in all the volume, but hang so closely together,
that, having to quote all or nothing, we are constrained by their
length to pass on to an interpolated copy of verses by S. E. De
Vere, which gives us a moment's pause. We do not know whether the
unknown S. E. is a gentleman or lady; whether the mysterious
initials stand for Saint Elmo or Selah Ebenezer, Sarolta
Ermengarde or Sarah Elizabeth. But we do know that in this poem,
"Charity," (p. 276,) is one passage of some beauty, as thus:

  "O cruel mockery, to call that love
   Which the world's frown can wither! Hypocrite!
   False friend! Base selfish man! fearing to lift
   Thy soilèd fellow from the dust! _From thee
   The love of friends, the sympathy of kind
   Recoil like broken waves from a bare cliff,
   Waves that from far seas come with noiseless step
   Slow stealing to some lonely ocean isle;
   With what tumultuous joy and fearless trust
   They fling themselves upon its blackened breast
   And wind their arms of foam around its feet,
   Seeking a home; but finding none, return
   With slow, sad ripple, and reproachful murmur!"_

We find concluding the work a set of sonnets called "Urbs Roma,"
dedicated to the Count de Montalembert; all smooth, polished,
elegant, and dim; with no salient beauties anywhere that
distinguish one above another--golden means. The real climax of
the volume is at the "Autumnal Ode." This is far the best of the
new poems, and one of the best of any of its author's, new or
old. In structure it bears a general resemblance to the rest of
Mr. De Vere's longer odes; and the style is ripe, lofty, easy,
and well-sustained. We have already given one citation from its
rich stores, but there are two more especially worthy of
attention. The first is a description like the one cited, and
quite in Mr. De Vere's own vein.

  "It is the autumnal epode of the year;
     The nymphs that urge the seasons on their round,
   _They to whose green lap flies the startled deer
       When bays the far-off hound,
   They that drag April by the rain-bright hair,
   (Though sun showers daze her and the rude winds scare)
       O'er March's frosty bound,
   They whose warm and furtive hand unwound
   The cestus falls from May's new-wedded breast--_
   Silent they stand beside dead Summer's bier,
   With folded palms, and faces to the west,
   And their loose tresses sweep the dewy ground."

                   III.

  "A sacred stillness hangs upon the air,
     A sacred clearness. Distant shapes draw nigh:
   Glistens yon elm-grove, to its heart laid bare,
     And all articulate in its symmetry,
   With here and there a branch that from on high
     Far flashes washed as in a watery gleam;
   _Beyond, the glossy lake lies calm--a beam
   Upheaved, as if in sleep, from its slow central stream._"

The images, and the way the allegory is sustained, are the beauty
of the first stanza. The second is perhaps more artistic still.
The adjective "sacred" is an artful and ingenious one. Without
any apparent particular propriety in its places--a hundred other
words might be effective as qualifications of "stillness" and
"clearness"--yet, we find, on passing to the next thought, that
it has had its result in preparing the mind for a more vivid and
imaginative view of the whole scene. The remaining delineation is
exact and cumulative, as our author's descriptions always are;
and the closing lines are a singularly true and acute observation
of an effect of light that very few would notice in the actual
landscape, or will appreciate even now their attention is called
to it. But people who are sensible enough to _bask_ now and
then in the ripeness of an autumn day will feel an electric
contact of recognition.

Perhaps we cannot do better than to close this rambling notice
with the closing lines of this elegant and thoughtful poem:

  "Man was not made for things that leave us,
     For that which goeth and returneth,
   For hopes that lift us yet deceive us,
     For love that wears a smile yet mournetlh;
   Not for fresh forests from the dead leaves springing,
     The cyclic re-creation which, at best,
   Yields us--betrayal still to promise clinging--
     But tremulous shadows of the realm of rest;
       For things immortal man was made,
     God's image, latest from his hand,
       Co-heir with Him, who in man's flesh arrayd
     Holds o'er the worlds the heavenly-human wand:
     His portion this--sublime
     To stand where access none hath space or time,
     Above the starry host, the cherub band,
     To stand--to advance--and after all to stand!"

{274}

These lines are the real end and culmination of a book which
will, on the whole, do much to raise Mr. De Vere's reputation in
this country to a level nearer his deserts. With its human share
of faults, it is a truer, an abler, and a more scholarly book
than often issues from an American press, and contains everywhere
lofty and pure thought, with never a taint of evil, and never a
morally doubtful passage. And we only wish for our country, that,
of his readers, there may be many in whom these his poems may sow
motives as unselfish and aims as noble as those which, we
sincerely believe, inform the inner life of the true poet and
Christian, Aubrey De Vere.

----------

             About Several Things.


And, to begin with, about the poverty and vice of London! Hood
and and Adelaide Anne Procter, Dickens, James Greenwood,
[Footnote 61] have made these more familiar to us than the
streets of our own cities. We have talked with Nancy on London
bridge and skulked with Noah Claypole beneath its arches--swept
crossings with poor Joe and starved with the little ragamuffin in
Frying Pan Alley.

    [Footnote 61: _Author of a Night in a London Workhouse_,
    and of the _True History of a Little Ragamuffin_.]

The poor of London are representative beings to us all. As we
walk through the streets, each ragged or threadbare wanderer
tells us a story heard long ago and half forgotten. That
miserable woman huddled up in a doorway is a brickmaker's wife,
and the thin shawl drawn about her shoulders hides the only marks
of attention she ever receives from her pitiful husband. Her baby
is dead, thank God! safe beyond the reach of blows and hunger and
cold. Her story will soon be ended, if we may judge by her thin
face, and the eager look in her eyes, and the short, hacking
cough. The shilling you slip into her hand will only prolong her
misery, but it gives you a moment's consolation, and brings a
flash of gratitude into her poor face. Good-by, Jenny! When we
meet you at the judgment-seat of God, we wonder if it will occur
to us we might have done more for you to-day than give you a
shilling and a glance of recognition.

  "Alas for the rarity
   Of Christian charity
     Under the sun.
   Oh! it was pitiful!
   In a whole city-full
     Home she had none."

We wonder if Thomas Hood was much better than other people? If he
found homes for the homeless and food for the hungry? We cannot
get Jenny out of our head. Her wants would be so easily supplied.
In all London is there no place where lodging and fire and food
are provided for the decent poor?

{275}

The portly policeman at the street corner says yes, there are
several refuges, but the one in this district is kept by Sisters
of Mercy, in Crispin street, No.30 or thereabouts. Asking poor
Jenny to follow us, (she manifests a mild surprise at our
sympathy,) we cross Finbury Circus, pass Bishopsgate street,
without; and soon find ourselves in Crispin street, standing at
the modest entrance of the House of Mercy. We are not the only
applicants for admission this dreary November afternoon. Women
with children and women without them are sitting on the steps or
leaning against the wall, waiting for the hour of five to strike,
blessed signal for the door to open. It is only half-past four
now, says the sister portress. Jenny must join the throng
lingering about the house; but we as visitors may come in and see
the preparations made for their entertainment.

This then is the refuge described by Miss Procter, and her pretty
garland of verses is still sold for its benefit. In 1860, there
was no Catholic refuge in England, and excellent as were those
supported by Protestants, they did not supply all demands. Rev.
Dr. Gilbert of Moorfields Chapel found in a block of buildings,
called by a pleasant coincidence, "Providence Row," a large empty
stable separated by a yard from No. 14 Finsbury Square. The
Sisters of Mercy were then seeking a house more suited to their
needs than the one in Broad street. The two projects fitted each
other like mosaic; No. 14 Finsbury Square should be the convent,
the stable should be the refuge. Benches and beds were provided
at first for fourteen persons only; but in February, 1861,
additional provision was made for forty-six women and children.
Before the month of April, 1862, 14,785 lodgings, with breakfast
and supper, had been given.

But charity is as unsatiable in its desires as self-indulgence,
and Dr. Gilbert's ideas soon outgrew the stable in Providence
Row. The present refuge, giving accommodation to three hundred
adults and children, was opened last autumn. It will be in
operation from October to May of every year, on week-days from
five P.M. to half-past seven A.M.; on Sundays, throughout the
twenty-four hours. In this room on the ground floor, with its
blazing fire, the women are received for inspection. If any one
shows herself unworthy of assistance, either by intoxication or
by the use of bad language, she is turned away. Without doubt
many sinners are admitted to the refuge, and the sisters rejoice
in being able to check their course of evil for twelve hours; but
no one receives hospitality here unless she can conform outwardly
to the habits of decent persons. This is the only refuge where
admission depends on the good character of the applicant. It has
proved an efficient preventive of the contamination so much to be
dreaded whenever the poor and ignorant are brought together in
large numbers.

The selection of guests being made, their dresses and shawls, wet
with London fog and mud, are dried by the fire; and the fixture
basins round the room are placed at their service with a
bountiful supply of water.

From the inspection-room they pass to a large apartment, where
they have supper, and sit together in warmth and comfort until
bedtime. The supper consists of a bowl of excellent gruel and
half a pound of bread for each person. It is to be observed that,
though the accommodations are good of their kind, affording a
decent asylum to the homeless, they are not calculated to attract
those who can find comfortable shelter elsewhere.

{276}

At an early hour night-prayers are said by a sister, and the
women are shown to the dormitories. The beds are constructed in
an ingenious manner, economizing space and making perfect
cleanliness practicable. Two inclined planes, fastened together
at the higher end, pass down the middle of the dormitory. Two
more inclined planes pass down the sides of the room with the
higher end next the wall. These platforms are partitioned off by
planks into troughs about two feet wide and six feet long, (that
is to say, the length of the slope of the platform,) looking much
like cucumber frames without glass. These are the beds, and at
the foot of each is a little gate, which can be opened to admit
of drawing out a sliding plank in the bottom of the trough. This
is done every morning by the sisters in charge of the
dormitories, and the floor beneath is swept. But now the little
gates are closed and the beds are ready for their forlorn
occupants. Each is furnished with a thick mattress and pillow
covered with brown enamel cloth and with a large coverlet of
thick leather. As the women go to bed thoroughly warm and wear
their clothing, they sleep comfortably under these odd-looking
quilts; especially the mothers, who often hold one little child
in their arms while another nestles at their feet. The bedding is
wiped carefully every morning, and thus the dormitories are kept
free from vermin. A cell partitioned off at each end of the
dormitory, with two or three windows, provides the sisters in
charge with a private room and at the same time with a post of
observation. The arrangements for water throughout the house are
excellent, including a hose fixed in the wall of every dormitory,
ready to be used in case of fire.

At half-past six in the morning, the sleepers are roused; at
seven they have breakfast, consisting, like the supper, of a
basin of gruel and half a pound of bread. At half-past seven,
they leave the refuge, some times to be seen no more, sometimes
to return night after night for weeks together. On Sunday they
can remain all day. But, as persons are admitted without
distinction of creed, they are allowed to leave the refuge during
the hours of morning service to go to church. A short lesson in
the catechism is given every evening at the refuge; but only
Catholics are allowed to attend the classes unless occasionally
by especial permission. They have, for their Sunday dinner, as
much strong beef soup as they can eat with bread.

The arrangements for men are similar to those for women, though
less extensive. The entrances are separate, and there are
watchmen in the male dormitory. The refuge provides thirty-two
beds for men and one hundred and fifty for women. It is by
packing in children with their parents that so many individuals
are lodged.

The survey of the building ended, we pass out of the front door
just as five o'clock strikes, and the tattered throng, Jenny
among them, present themselves for admission. This institution
could be copied with good effect in several American cities. Its
system of management guards against two evils. Provision being
made only for the bare necessities of life, no temptation is
offered to impostors. Propriety of behavior being ensured by
strict surveillance, the chance of contamination is materially
lessened, perhaps wholly removed.

{277}

It is no unusual thing, even in the United States, for men and
boys, women and girls, to spend a night in the station-house
because they have no other place to sleep. A refuge is less
expensive than other charitable establishments. The first cost of
a building is considerable; the annual outlay in provisions,
fuel, and light, comparatively trifling. The money spent every
year in indiscriminate almsgiving in a large city would serve to
support a night refuge for several hundred persons. But while
providing for the houseless poor of to-day, we should remember
that their numbers are increasing with every successive
generation. The children of our poorest class must be rescued
from their present migratory life, divided between street, jail,
and penitentiary.

Much has been done for girls, and we can only desire an extension
of the work. With an increase of funds, the Sisters of Charity,
of Mercy, of the Good Shepherd, and of Notre Dame could
accomplish a mission of great importance to the future prosperity
of our country. These ladies devote their lives to saving from
misery and degradation the children of those who cannot or will
not perform a parent's duty. They need money to accomplish this.
We too often dole it out to them as if they had asked alms for
themselves. Let us give them not only money but sympathy and
encouragement. Many a good work has failed for want of friendly
words to give the strength for one final vigorous effort.

But what is to be done for the boys? They may be divided into
three classes. First, children guilty of no worse crime than
friendlessness. Second, small boys obnoxious to the police for
petty infringements of the laws; third, newsboys, bootblacks, and
costermongers, more or less familiar with the vices of city life.
The third class is developed from the other two, because
neglected poverty naturally gravitates to vice and crime.

The development of a true ragamuffin is a process painfully
interesting to watch. At an age when the children of the rich
take sober walks attended by nursery-maid or governess, he knows
the streets as well as any watchman. At seven years old, he is
arrested by some energetic policeman for throwing stones,
bathing, stealing a bunch of grapes, or some other first-class
felony. Once in the hands of the law, there is no redress for him
unless he is "bailed out." He must go to jail to wait for
trial-day--perhaps three or four weeks. The turnkeys do their
best for him; find him a decent companion if he is frightened,
or, still better, give him a cell to himself, where he looks more
like a squirrel in a cage than a criminal offender. I have seen
in one day four mere babies in prison for "breaking and
entering!"

But, with all the precautions used in a well-ordered jail to
prevent mischief, our infant ragamuffin comes out older by many
years than he went in. He has been in prison, and his tiny
reputation is gone for ever. A few years later he comes back,
arrested for some grave misdemeanor; a sly, old-fashioned little
rogue by this time, gifted with an ingenuity fitting him
admirably to be the tool of some professional thief. Then begins
a course of sojourns in workhouses and juvenile penitentiaries.
By and by he reappears in jail with a smart suit of clothes, the
fruit of a successful burglary, and you are informed with an air
of conscious superiority that this time it is a house of
correction or State's prison offence. There is ambition in crime
as well as in other careers, we may be sure. He grows up to be a
drunkard, a libertine, a bad husband, and the father of children
more degraded than himself. We know of an entire family having
been in prison at one time, father, mother, and all the children.

{278}

Who is to blame for this career of vice and crime? Not the
officers of the jail, who bitterly regret the necessity of
receiving children, but cannot set them free. Not the judges, who
are sworn to administer the laws as they stand, not to improve
upon them.

The police are to blame for exercising their enthusiasm for order
upon babies, instead of making examples of grown men guilty of
similar misdemeanors, but harder to catch.

The public is to blame for making insufficient provision for the
reclamation of juvenile offenders. Above all, we Catholics are to
blame, because these are usually the children of foreign parents,
and Catholics, at least in name.

Let us build an asylum in the air for these poor little urchins.
Aerial philanthropy requires no funds, and very little executive
ability. Who knows but our plan may be carried out in earnest,
one of these days, by some Dr. Gilbert, trustful of small
beginnings, and content to let his project first see the light in
a stable?

We would have _one division_ devoted to little orphans, and
children whose parents are willing to resign them for a time or
for ever.

A second division should be given to the infant criminals of whom
we have just spoken. Their offences are always bailable. A
trustworthy person should be employed to go bail for all children
under ten years of age, and bring them to the asylum to await
their trial. The judges gladly sentence children to serve out a
term at a juvenile home instead of sending them to
penitentiaries. Thus we should recover them after their trial,
for a length of time proportioned to the importance of severing
old associations. Their circumstances should be thoroughly
investigated and reported to the judge--character of parents,
place of residence, etc., etc.

These two divisions should be under the charge of female
religious; with several male attendants to do menial work and
enforce discipline in the few instances where strong measures
might be necessary, but without possessing any authority except
the reflected one of acting under the matron's orders. The
necessity of vigilance can hardly be exaggerated. One child of
vicious habits can corrupt many more. But since direct
surveillance is irritating even to children, a routine of light
and frequently-varied occupation would be found useful in giving
vent to restless activity, which is at the root of many childish
misdemeanors. The superintendents must learn to distinguish fun
from mischief; energy from insubordination.

A third division should provide a refuge for newsboys and others
of the same tribe. These older boys should be under the charge of
the Christian Brothers. An evening school, a library of books
such as boys enjoy, and a collection of innocent games would form
an important element in the plan of management. They should be
persuaded to put a portion of their earnings in the savings bank,
and induced if possible to alter their roving life and learn a
trade. Preference should be shown to lads of correct life over
those who have been in prison, but encouragement and countenance
given to every boy willing to conform to the rules of the refuge.
We lay less stress upon separating the good from the bad among
the lads for two reasons. A boy of fourteen or fifteen who has
not been corrupted by street life must be temptation-proof. It is
difficult to judge the respective merits of lads of that age or
to learn their past histories. They must to a great extent be
taken on trust.

{279}

In the course of a few years a fourth division would become
necessary to provide for the little boys grown too old for
petticoat government. This division should also be under the
charge of the Christian Brothers.

The institution would be very expensive, unless it were made
partially self-supporting. There is a good deal of light work
connected with trades that might be done by boys resident in the
house. Perhaps in time city governments would wake up to the fact
that it costs less to give boys a good plain education than to
support rogues and paupers; but our dream of charity is rudely
dispersed by a yawn from our companion and a suggestion that we
should reach Piccadilly sooner by the underground railroad than
on foot. The gaslights stare despondingly at me through the
yellow fog. A London Arab solicits a penny for clearing the slimy
crossing, and wonders at the glow of charity with which we press
sixpence into his grimy palm. Where are we? In London? Yes, but
there are orphans wandering homeless about the streets of
American cities, too; bootblacks going to destruction by scores;
tiny children falling victims to the misplaced zeal of policemen;
and not even the corner-stone of our asylum is laid!

----------

     A Chinese Husband's Lament For His Wife.
  Translated From The French Of M. Stanislas Julien,
    Professor Of The Chinese Language, Paris.


                    I.

It was in the fifth watch of the first day of the year, when the
winter's cold was most intense, that my tender wife died. Can
there be on earth a man more unhappy than I? O my wife! if thou
wert still here, I would give thee a new robe for the new year;
but woe is me, thou art gone down to the sombre abode where flows
the yellow fountain. Would that husband and wife could see one
another again! Come to me in the night--come to me in the third
watch--let me renew for a little while the sweetness of the past.

                   II.

In the second moon, when spring has come, and the sun stays each
day longer in the sky, every family washes its robes and linen in
pure water, and husbands who have still their wives love to adorn
them with new garments. But I, who have lost mine, am wasting my
life away in grief; I cannot even bear to see the little shoes
that enclosed her pretty feet!
Sometimes I think that I will take another companion; but where
can I find another so beautiful, wise, and kind!

{280}

                   III.

In the third moon, the peach-tree opens its rose-colored
blossoms, and the willow is bedecked with green tresses. Husbands
who have still their wives go with them to visit the tombs of
their fathers and friends. But I who have lost mine go alone to
visit _her_ grave, and to wet with my hot tears the spot
where her ashes repose. I present funereal offerings to her
shade; I burn images of gilded paper in her honor. "Tender wife,"
I cry with a tearful voice, "where art thou, where art thou?" But
she, alas! hears me not. I see the solitary tomb, but I cannot
see my wife!


                   IV.

In the fourth moon, the air is pure and serene, and the sun
shines forth in all his splendor. How many ungrateful husbands
then give themselves up to pleasure and forget the wife they have
lost! Husband and wife are like two birds of the same forest;
when the fatal hour arrives, each one flies off a different way.
I am like a man, who, beguiled by the sweet fancies of an
enchanting dream, seeks, when he awakes, the young beauty that
charmed his imagination while he slept, but finds around him only
silence and solitude. So much loveliness, so much sweetness
vanished in one morning! Why, alas! could not two friends, so
dearly united, live and grow gray together!

                   V.

In the fifth moon, the dragon-headed boats float gaily on the
waters. Exquisite wines are heated, and baskets are filled up
with delicious fruits. Each year at this season, I delighted to
enjoy the pleasures of these simple feasts with my wife and
children. But now I am weary and restless, a prey to the
bitterest anguish. I weep all day and all night, and my heart
seems ready to break. Ah! what do I see at this moment? Pretty
children at merry play before my door. Yes, I can understand that
they are happy; they have a mother to press them to her bosom. Go
away, dear children, your joyous gambols tear my heart.


                   VI.

In the sixth moon, the burning heat of the day is almost
unbearable. The rich and the poor then spread their clothes out
to air. I will expose one of my wife's silken robes, and her
embroidered shoes to the sun's warm beams. See! here is the dress
she used to wear on festal days, here are the elegant little
slippers that fitted her pretty feet so well. But where is my
wife? Oh! where is the mother of my children? I feel as if a cold
steel blade were cutting into my heart.



                   VII.

In the seventh moon, my eyes overflow with tears; for it is then
that Nieaulan visits his wife Tchi-niu in heaven. Once I also had
a beautiful wife, but she is lost to me for ever. That fair face,
lovelier than the flowers, is constantly before me. Whether in
movement or at rest, the remembrance of her that is gone from me
never ceases to rack my bosom. What day have I forgotten to think
of my tender wife--what night have I not wept till morning?


                  VIII.

On the fifteenth day of the eighth moon, her disk is seen in its
greatest splendor, and men and women then offer to the gods
melons and cakes, ball-like in form as the orb of night. Husbands
and wives stroll together in the fields and groves, and enjoy the
soft moonlight.
{281}
But the round disk of the moon can only remind _me_ of the
wife I have lost. At times, to solace my grief I quaff a cup of
generous wine; at times I take my guitar, but my trembling hand
can draw forth no sound. Friends and relations invite me to their
houses, but my sorrowful heart refuses to share in their
pleasures.


                   IX.

In the ninth moon, the chrysanthemum opens its golden cup, and
every garden exhales a balmy odor. I would gather a bunch of
newly-blown flowers if I had still a wife whose hair they could
adorn! My eyes are weary with weeping--my hands are withered with
grief, and I beat a fleshless breast. I enter the tasteful room
that was once my wife's; my two children follow me, and come to
embrace my knees. They take my hands in theirs, and speak to me
with choking voices; but by their tears and sobs I know they ask
me for their mother.


                   X.

On the first day of the tenth moon, both rich and poor present
their wives with winter clothing. But to whom shall I offer
winter clothing? I, who have no wife! When I think of her who
rested her head on my pillow, I weep and burn images of gilded
paper. I send them as offerings to her who now dwells beside the
yellow fountain. I know not if these funereal gifts will be of
use to her shade; but at least her husband will have paid her a
tribute of love and regret.


                   XI.

In the eleventh moon, I salute winter, and again deplore my
beautiful wife. Half of the silken counterpane covers an empty
place in the cold bed where I dare not stretch out my legs. I
sigh and invoke heaven; I pray for pity. At the third watch I
rise without having slept, and weep till dawn.


                  XII.

In the twelfth moon, in the midst of the winter's cold, I called
on my sweet wife. "Where art thou," I cried; "I think of thee
unceasingly, yet I cannot see thy face!" On the last night of the
year she appeared to me in a dream. She pressed my hand in hers;
she smiled on me with tearful eyes; she encircled me in her
caressing arms, and filled my soul with happiness. "I pray thee,"
she whispered, "weep no more when thou rememberest me. Henceforth
I will come thus each night to visit thee in thy dreams."

-------

{282}

            A May Flower.

  A look and a word, my sweet lady;
    A thought of your kind heart, I pray,
  For a flower that blooms by the roadside,
    This beautiful morning in May.

  I know that engagements await you;
    I know you have many to meet;
  Yet, pray, linger here for a moment,
    And look at this flower of the street.

  'Tis but May, my sweet lady, and hardly
    Has spring had the time to look bright;
  Yet this flower it called into being
    Already is smitten with blight.

  Already upon its fair leaflets
    Lie heavy the grime and the dust;
  Its shrivelled and lack-lustre petals,
    Tell a story--stop, lady!--you must.

  For a soul is in danger, my lady,
    The soul of this drooping street flower;
  And you by a look can recall it
    To life, or 'twill die in an hour.

  Ah me! if you knew but the power
    Of one word of kindness from you;
  Could you see what a tempest of passion
    A glance of your eye would subdue!

  What hope once again would awaken
    To arm this poor soul for the right!
  Thanks, my lady! Go happily onward,
    The tempted is strengthened with might.

-------

{283}

          New Publications.

  The Formation Of Christendom.
  Part II.
  By T. W. Allies.
  London: Longmans, Green, Reader & Dyer.
  New-York: The Catholic Publication Society.

This volume is the dictation of a scholarly mind and the work of
an experienced pen. It forms the second volume of a work not yet
complete, the first part of which appeared in 1865. In the six
chapters which composed the first volume, as the author tells us
in his advertisement to the present one, he described
Christianity creating anew, as it were, and purifying and
introducing supernatural principles into the individual soul;
showing how the new religion restored the fallen dignity of man
by insisting on his individuality and personal responsibility, by
consecrating the married and counselling the virginal life. The
vile secrets of that viler pagan society are partly revealed, and
the influence of the Gospel is shown in a graceful parallel
between St. Augustine and Cicero. The author further says, that,
having examined the foundations, he has now reached the building
itself and comes "to consider the Christian Church in its
historical development as a kingdom of truth and grace; for while
the soul of man is the unit with which it works, 'Christendom'
betokens a society." It is then the first epoch of such a kingdom
that the author would describe in the present volume.
Accordingly, we have a graphic account of the polytheism which,
at the birth of Christ, reigned throughout the world, save in one
of its most insignificant lands, the frightful power of this
false worship, its relation to civilization, to the political
constitution of the empire, to national feeling in the provinces,
to despotism and slavery, and its hostile preparations for the
advent of the "Second Man." Then follows the teaching of Christ
and the institution of his church, a statement of the nature of
the latter, its manner of teaching and propagation, its
episcopacy and primacy. Then, a picture of the history of the
martyr church through the first three centuries, its sublime
patience under persecution, and its struggle with swarming
heresies that menaced from within. After this, the author
prepares for a dissertation on that strife between Christianity
and heathen philosophy, which terminated on the downfall of the
Alexandrian school, by sketching the history and influence of
Greek philosophy until the reign of Claudius; and, reserving this
dissertation for a future volume, the author closes the present
number of his contemplated series. It is a serious disadvantage
to any work to be published piecemeal. Nevertheless, English
readers, interested in the study of the early ages, and
especially those who have read with pleasure Mr. Allies's former
productions, will be glad to notice the publication of this
volume. But Mr. Allies's work, also, belongs to a class, small
indeed, but all the more worthy of encouragement, namely, that of
original Catholic histories in the English language. It is,
therefore, an attempt to partially supply a want which no one
book, however popular, can adequately meet. In the face of an
ungrateful heathenism that to-day secretly sighs after the
Augustan age, and openly asks, "What has been gained by all this
religion?" daring to draw unjust parallels between the heroes of
Christian tradition and contemporary pagan models, it is the duty
of all who love the Christian name to encourage true historical
criticism; that men may know all that they at present owe to the
Catholic Church; and if they will not acknowledge her to-day as
the guide to true civilization, may learn from the record of the
past how her genius has presided over all that is greatest and
noblest in the past history of mankind.

-----

{284}

  Thunder And Lightning.
  By W. De Fonvielle.
  Translated from the French, and
  edited by T. L. Phipson, Ph.D.
  Illustrated with thirty nine engravings on wood.
  1 vol. 12mo, pp. 216.

  The Wonders Of Optics.
  By F. Marion.
  Translated from the French,
  and edited by Charles W. Quinn, F.C.S.
  Illustrated with seventy engravings on wood.
  1 vol. 12mo, pp. 248.
  New York: Charles Scribner & Co. 1869.

These two volumes are the first issues of the "Illustrated
Library of Wonders," to be published by Messrs. Scribner & Co.
They are highly interesting to the general reader, as well as to
persons of scientific attainments. The accounts given of the
peculiar and novel freaks of lightning are curious and
instructive. The illustrations in both volumes are well executed,
and make these books specially attractive to young people. In the
work on optics, the telescope, magic lantern, magic mirror, etc.,
are fully explained.

----

  Why Men Do Not Believe;
  Or, The Principal Causes Of Infidelity.
  By N.J. Laforet, Rector of the Catholic University of Louvain.
  Translated from the French.
  New York: The Catholic Publication Society,
  126 Nassau Street.
  Pp. 252. 1869.

Whoever has had the happiness of attending the Catholic Congress
of Belgium must have noticed among the distinguished gentlemen
seated by the side of the president the prepossessing,
intellectual countenance of Mgr. Laforet, the Rector Magnificus
of the University of Louvain. Although still a young man, he
holds a high place among the writers who adorn European Catholic
literature. His best known and most elaborate work is an
excellent _History of Philosophy_. In the present volume,
which is quite unpretending in size, and written in such a simple
and easy style as to be easily readable by any person of ordinary
education, he has, perhaps, rendered even a greater service to
the cause of religion and sound science than by his more
elaborate works. It is an excellent little treatise on the causes
of infidelity, which has already produced happy fruits among his
own countrymen by bringing back a number of persons to the
Christian faith, and we trust is destined to accomplish a still
greater amount of good in its English as well as its French
dress.

Mgr. Laforet assigns as the causes of the infidelity which
prevails, unhappily, to such a considerable extent in our days,
ignorance of the real grounds and nature of the Christian
religion, materialism, and the consequent moral degradation which
it has produced. He denies in a peremptory manner that it has
been caused by progress in science or the more perfect
development of the reasoning faculty, and supports this denial by
abundant and conclusive proofs. The origin of modern infidelity
he traces historically and logically to Protestantism, showing
that it has been transplanted into France and other Catholic
countries from England and Germany. Anti-Catholic writers are
fond of retorting upon us the charge that Protestantism breeds
infidelity by the countercharge that Catholicity breeds
infidelity. They say that it lays too great a burden on reason by
teaching, as Christian doctrine, dogmas that intelligent,
educated men cannot receive without doing violence to their
reason. They point to the infidelity that prevails to a certain
extent among educated men in Catholic countries as a proof of
this assumption. The writer of an article in a late number of
_Putnam's Monthly_, entitled, "The Coming Controversy," has
reiterated this charge, and alleges the fact that some of the
educated laymen belonging to the Catholic Church in the United
States do not approach the sacraments, as an evidence that they
have lost their faith, which is a corroboration of the alleged
charge against the Catholic religion of breeding infidelity in
intelligent, thinking minds.
{285}
The whole of this specious argument is a fabric of sand. In the
first place, it is no proof that men have lost their faith
because they do not act in accordance with it. The entire body of
negligent Catholics are not to be classed among infidels, any
more than negligent Jews or Protestants. Nevertheless, we would
call the attention of those Catholic gentlemen of high standing
who neglect the practice of their religious duties, and fail to
take that active part on the side of the church and of God which
they ought to take, to the scandal they thus give and to the
occasion which the enemies of the church take from their criminal
apathy to revile that faith for which their ancestors have
suffered and contended so nobly. Neither is it true that anywhere
in the world the apostates from the faith are superior in
intelligence and culture to its loyal adherents. We hear too much
of this boasting from free-thinkers and infidels of their
intellectual superiority. On the field of philosophy and positive
religion they have been completely discomfited by the champions
of religion. Some of their ablest men have passed over to our
camp convinced by the pure force of argument, as, for instance,
Thierry, Maine de Biran, Droz, and to a certain extent Cousin.
Many others, and recently one most notorious individual, Jules
Havin, the chief editor of the infamous _Siècle_, of Paris,
have repented at the hour of death. D'Holbach, one of the chiefs
of the infidel party in France, thus writes: "We must allow that
corruption of manners, debauchery, license, and even frivolity of
mind, may often lead to irreligion or infidelity. ... Many people
give up prejudices they had adopted through vanity and on
hearsay; these pretended free-thinkers have examined nothing for
themselves; they rely on others whom they suppose to have weighed
matters more carefully. How can men, given up to voluptuousness
and debauchery, plunged in excess, ambitious, intriguing,
frivolous, and dissipated--or depraved women of wit and
fashion--how can such as these be capable of forming an opinion
of a religion they have never examined?" [Footnote 62] La Bruyère
says, "Do our _esprits forts_ know that they are called thus
in irony?" [Footnote 63] It is no argument against either
Catholicity or Protestantism that infidelity exists in Catholic
or Protestant countries. Before this fact can be made to tell in
any way against either religion it must be proved that it
contains principles which lead logically to infidelity, or
proposes dogmas which are rationally incredible, and thus
produces a reaction against all divine revelation. This has never
been done, and never can be done in respect to the Catholic
religion. So far as Protestantism is concerned, it has been done
repeatedly and can be done easily. We do not rejoice in this; on
the contrary, we grieve over it, and our sympathies are with
those Protestants, such as Guizot, Dr. McCosh, President Hopkins,
and others who defend the great truths of spiritual philosophy,
of Theism, the divine mission of Moses and Christ, and other
Christian doctrines against modern infidelity. Nevertheless, we
cannot help pointing out the fact that they are illogical as
Protestants in doing this, and are unable, after giving the
evidences of the credibility of Christianity, to state what
Christianity is in such a manner as completely to satisfy the
just demands of human reason, or to justify their own position as
seceders from the genuine Christendom.

    [Footnote 62: _Système de la Nature_, tom. ii. c. 13.
    Cited on page 106. ]

    [Footnote 63: _Les Caractères_, ch. xvi. Cited on page
    188.]

Our own youth are exposed to the temptation of infidelity on
account of their imperfect religious education, and the influence
of the Protestant world in which they live, saturated as it is
with the most pestilent and poisonous influences of heresy,
infidelity, and immorality. Good Protestants they will never
become. They can only be good Catholics, bad Catholics, or
infidels. Our friends of the Protestant clergy have no reason,
therefore, to count up and exult over those who are lost from the
Catholic fold, for Satan is the only gainer.
{286}
Let us have a sufficient number of clergy of the right sort, an
ample supply of churches, colleges, schools, and Catholic
literature, and we will engage that the desire for a purer and
more spiritual religion will never lead our Catholic youth to
become Protestants, or the desire for a more elevated and solid
science make them infidels. Such books as the one we are noticing
are of just the kind we want, and we recommend it warmly to all
thinking young men and women, to all parents and teachers, and to
all readers generally.

----

  The Montarges Legacy.
  By Florence McCoomb.
  Philadelphia: P. F. Cunningham. 1869.

We thank the gentle author of this charming story for the
satisfaction derived from its perusal. Not wishing, by entering
into detail of plot or incident, to diminish the pleasure in
store for its readers, we will merely say that, while
sufficiently exciting, it is by no means morbidly sensational;
that the characters are well portrayed; the incidents varied; the
dialogue not strained, yet not monotonous; the descriptive
portion easy and natural; and that, pervading all, is a true
Catholic spirit.

----

  Anne Severin.
  By Mrs. Augustus Craven.
  New York: The Catholic Publication Society.
  1 vol. 12mo, pp. 411. 1869.

We do not like the controversially religious novel. There is
generally too much pedantry; too great an admixture of theology,
politics, and love, to suit our taste. But the story of _Anne
Severin_, by the gifted author of _A Sister's Story_, is
not of this kind, it is permeated throughout with a purely
religious feeling; just enough, however, to make it interesting,
and to give the reader to understand that the writer is truly
Catholic in all she writes. The scene of the story opens in
England, about the beginning of this century, when there were
"troublous times in France," and changes to the latter country,
where the thread of the narrative is spun out. The heroine, Anne
Severin, is not an ideal character. It is one that is not rare in
Catholic countries, or in Catholic society. She is a true woman,
in the truest sense of the word, a model for our daughters. The
contrast between her and the English-reared girl, Eveleen
Devereux, is clearly drawn. The one truthful, religious,
conscientious in all her actions, kind, amiable, and loveable;
the other, fickle-minded, constantly wavering, and a flirt,
courting admiration for admiration's sake, yet intending to do
right in her own way, but failing because she did not have the
_true_ religious teaching that Anne Severin had. No better
book of the kind could be put in the hands of Catholics as well
as non-Catholics of both sexes. No one can help for a moment to
see in what consists the difference between these two women. Anne
Severin had a positive, soul-sustaining faith to fall back upon
in her troubles. Eveleen Devereux had nothing but the emptiness
of a religion of the world which failed her in the hour of
tribulation.

----

  Eudoxia: A Picture Of The Fifth Century.
  Freely translated from the German of Ida,
  Countess Hahn Hahn.
  Baltimore: Kelly, Piet & Co. Pp. 287. 1869.

This historical tale, which has already appeared as a serial in
an English periodical, and also in an American newspaper, has
been very favorably received on both sides of the Atlantic. It is
now issued in handsome book form, and will, no doubt, have, as it
deserves, an extensive circulation.

----

  The Illustrated Catholic Sunday School Library.
  Third Series. 12 vols. pp. 144 each.
  New York: The Catholic Publication Society,
  126 Nassau Street. 1869.

{287}

The titles of the volumes contained in this series are:

  Bad Example;
  May-Day, and other Tales;
  The Young Astronomer, and other Tales;
  James Chapman;
  Angel Dreams;
  Ellerton Priory;
  Idleness and Industry;
  The Hope of the Katzekopfs;
  St. Maurice;
  The Young Emigrants;
  Angels' Visits;
  and The Scrivener's Daughter, and other Tales.

That in the variety of its contents this series is fully equal to
its predecessors is evident from the above list; and the careful
supervision to which each issue is subjected renders it
unnecessary to say another word in its praise. We can safely
promise a rare treat to our young friends when, either
well-deserving at school, or an indulgent parent, will have made
them happy in its possession.

----

  The Sunday-school Class-book.
  New York: The Catholic Publication Society. 1869.

This last work of The Catholic Publication Society will be
appreciated by every Sunday-school teacher who has experienced
the torments of an ill-arranged and poorly-made classbook. The
chief characteristics of this small but important work are
_clearness_ and _completeness_. Its new feature is the
plain, brief, but very decided rules to be found on the inside of
each cover. In size it allows a goodly space for marks in detail.
In binding and quality of paper, it is far in advance of anything
yet offered to the Catholic Sunday-school teacher. It provides a
"register" for eighteen or twenty scholars, in which should be
plainly and neatly written the names, etc., of each member of the
class. Then comes a monthly record, extending across two pages,
in which allowance is made for "the fifth" Sunday, and a space
for a "Monthly Report." And in this we have the grand improvement
on all other classbooks in use.

Twelve such double pages are furnished, thus covering the space
of one year; and on the last half-page there are columns provided
for a yearly report, in which plain figures must be placed by
every teacher to the satisfaction of superintendents, who have so
often experienced the mortifying necessity of declaring teachers'
methods of marking more mysterious than hieroglyphics.

What has long been needed is not a class-book fitted for the
educated few who devote their spare hours to Sunday-school
teaching, nor a mere record book for large and continually
changing classes of beginners, but a plain, comprehensive book
which any teacher can understand at a glance, and which will
enable him to influence the conduct, if not the studious habits,
of those committed to his charge, instead of calling for an extra
waste of time, in order to mark with precision in perhaps a badly
lighted school-house. Let every teacher send for a copy, examine
it for himself, and see how simple this often neglected duty can
be made. If the rules which are contained therein be attended to,
there will be no necessity of carrying the book away from the
school, which arrangement insures the double object of marking
while the impression of each recitation is fresh and of having
the book in readiness to mark at the next recitation. And, until
every teacher attends to both these duties, in spite of
qualifications in other respects, he will still have much to
learn before he becomes a perfect Sunday-school teacher.

This little book is substantially bound in cloth, and is sold for
twenty cents a copy, or, to Sunday-schools, at two dollars per
dozen.

----

  Studious Women.
  From the French of Monseigneur Dupanloup, Bishop of Orleans.
  Translated by R. M. Phillimore.
  Boston: P. Donahoe. Pp. 105. 1869.

This able essay of the Bishop of Orleans was translated for and
appeared in _The Catholic World_ very soon after its
appearance in France, nearly two years ago. We see Mr. Donahoe
has used the London translation.

-------
{288}

  Poems.
  By James McClure.
  New York: P. O'Shea. Pp. 148. 1869.

We cannot praise the "poems" contained in this volume, and the
modesty of the author's preface disarms adverse criticism.

----

  A Manual Of General History:
  being an outline history of the world
  from the creation to the present time.
  Fully illustrated with maps.
  For the use of academies,
  high-schools, and families.
  By John J. Anderson, A.M.
  New York: Clark & Maynard. Pp. 401. 1869.

This compendium is in some respects inaccurate; much that is
comparatively trivial is admitted, while really important events
are entirely ignored; and on certain points there is, if not an
actual anti-Catholic bias, an absence, at least, of that strict
impartiality to be demanded, as of right, in all compilations
intended for use as text-books in our public schools.

----

The Catholic Publication Society has now in press the Chevalier
Rossi's famous work on the Roman Catacombs--_Roma
Sotterranea_. It is being compiled, translated, and prepared
for the English reading public by the Very Rev. J. Spencer
Northcote, D.D., president of Oscott College, Birmingham, and
author of a small treatise on the catacombs. The present work
will make a large octavo volume of over five hundred pages, and
will be copiously illustrated by wood-cuts and
chromo-lithographs--the latter printed under De Rossi's personal
supervision. This will be an important addition to our
literature, and will, we doubt not, attract considerable
attention in this country. The same Society will have ready about
May 1st, _Why People do not Believe_--a library edition as
well as a cheap edition; _Glimpses of Pleasant Homes_, by
the author of _Mother McCauley_, with four full-page
illustrations; _Impressions of Spain_, by Lady Herbert, with
fifteen full-page illustrations. The two last-mentioned books
will be very appropriate for college and school premiums. _In
Heaven we know Our Own _ will be ready in June. The Fourth
Series of the _Illustrated Catholic Sunday-School Library_
is also in preparation. _The Life of Mother Margaret Mary
Hallahan, O.S.D._, founder of the Dominican Conventual
Tertiaries in England, is announced, and will be ready in June or
July.

----

Messrs. John Murphy & Co., Baltimore, announce as in
press _The Life And Letters Of The
Rev. Frederick William Faber, D.D._,
Priest of the Oratory of St. Philip Neri.
By Rev. John E. Bowden, priest of the same oratory.


P. F. Cunningham, Philadelphia, has in
press, and will soon publish,
_Ferncliffe_.

----

        Books Received.

From Joseph Shannon, Clerk of the Common Council, New York.
Manual of the Corporation of the City of New York for 1868.


From P. Donahoe, Boston:
America in its Relation to Irish Emigration.
By John Francis Maguire,
Member of Parliament for the City of Cork.
Swd. Pp. 24.


From Fields, Osgood & Co., Boston:
The Danish Islands: Are we bound in honor to pay for them?
By James Parton. Swd. Pp. 76. 1869.

-------
{289}

          The Catholic World.

     Vol. IX., No. 51.-June, 1869.

----------

         Spiritism And Spiritists.
            [Footnote 64]

    [Footnote 64: 1. _Planchette; or, the Despair of
    Science_. Being a full Account of Modern Spiritualism, its
    Phenomena, and the various Theories regarding it. With a
    Survey of French Spiritism. Boston: Roberts Brothers. 1869.

    2. _Des Rapports de l'Homme avec le Démon_. Essai
    Historique et Philosophique. Par Joseph Bizouard, Avocat.
    Paris: Gaume Frères et J. Duprey. 1863 et 1864. Tome VI.,
    8vo.

    3. _The Spirit-Rapper. An Autobiography_. By o. A.
    Brownson. Boston: Little, Brown & Co. 1854.

    4. _Interesting Facts in relation to Spirit Life and
    Manifestations_. By Judge Edmonds. New York: Spiritual
    Magnetic Telegraphic Agency.

    5. Spiritualism Unveiled, and shown to be the Work of Demons.
    By Miles Grant. Boston: _The Crisis_ Office.]


Worcester, in his dictionary, gives as the second meaning of the
word _spiritualism_, "the doctrine that departed spirits
hold communication with men," and gives as his authority O. A.
Brownson. We think this must be a mistake; for Dr. Brownson uses
in his _Spirit-Rapper_, the term _spiritism_, which is
the more proper term, as it avoids confounding the doctrine of
the spiritists with the philosophical doctrine which stands
opposed to materialism, or, more strictly, sensism, and the moral
doctrine opposed to sensualism. We generally use the word
_spiritual_ in religion as opposed to natural, or for the
life and aims of the regenerate, who walk after the spirit, in
opposition to those who walk after the flesh, and are
carnal-minded. To avoid all confusion or ambiguity which would
result from using a word already otherwise appropriated, we
should use the terms _spiritism_, spiritists, and spirital.

The author of _Planchette_ has availed himself largely of
the voluminous work of the learned Joseph Bizouard, the second
work named on our list, and gives all that can be said, and more
than we can say, in favor of spiritism. He has given very fully
one side of the question, all that need be said in support of the
reality of the order of phenomena which he describes, while the
French work gives all sides; but he passes over, we fear
knowingly and intentionally, the dark side of spiritism, and
refuses to tell us the sad effects on sanity and morality which
it is known to produce. A more fruitful cause of insanity and
immorality and even crime does not exist, and cannot be imagined.

{290}

We have no intention of devoting any space specially to
_Planchette_, or the "little plank," which so many treat as
a harmless plaything. It is only one of the forms through which
the phenomena of spiritism are manifested, and is no more and no
less the "despair of science," than any other form of alleged
spirital manifestations. Contemporary science, indeed, or what
passes for science, has shown great ineptness before the alleged
spirit-manifestations; and its professors have, during the twenty
years and over since the Fox girls began to attract public
attention and curiosity, neither been able to disprove the
alleged facts, nor to explain their origin and cause; but this is
because contemporary science recognizes no invisible existences,
and no intelligences above or separate from the human, and
because it is not possible to explain their production or
appearance by any of the unintelligent forces of nature. To deny
their existence is, we think, impossible without discrediting all
human testimony; to regard them as jugglery, or as the result of
trickery practised by the mediums and those associated with them,
seems to us equally impossible. Mr. Miles Grant in his
well-reasoned little work on the subject, says very justly, it
"would only show that we know but little about the facts in the
case. We think," he says, p. 3,

  "No one, after a little reflection, would venture to say of the
  many thousands and even millions of spiritualists,
  [spiritists,] among whom are large numbers of men and women
  noted for their intelligence, honesty, and veracity, that they
  are only playing tricks on each other! ... Can any one tell
  what object all these fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters,
  children, dear friends, and loved companions can have in
  pretending that they have communications from spirits, when
  they know, at the same time, that they are only deceiving each
  other by means of trickery?"

In our judgment such an assumption would be a greater violation
of the laws of human nature or the human mind and belief, than
the most marvellous things related by the spiritists, especially
since the order and form of the phenomena they relate are nothing
new, but have been noted in all lands and ages, ever since the
earliest records of the race, as is fully shown by M. Bizouard.

The author of _Planchette_ says the Catholic Church concedes
the facts alleged by spiritists. This, as he states it, may
mislead his readers. The church has not, to our knowledge,
pronounced any official judgment deciding whether these
particular facts are real facts or not; for we are not aware that
the question has ever come distinctly before her for decision.
She has had before her, from the first, the class of facts to
which the alleged spirit-manifestations belong, and has had to
deal with them, in some place, or in some form, every day of her
existence; but we are not aware that she has examined and
pronounced judgment on the particular facts the modern spiritists
allege. She has, undoubtedly, declared the practice of spiritism,
evocation of spirits, consulting them, or holding communication
with them--that is, necromancy--to be unlawful, and she prohibits
it to all her children in the most positive manner, as may be
seen in the case of the American, or rather Scotchman, Daniel
Home, the most famous of modern mediums, and the most dangerous.

For ourselves, we have no doubt of the order of facts to which in
our view the spirit-manifestations so called belong; we have no
difficulties, _a priori_, in admitting them, though we do
not accept the explanation the spiritists give of them; but when
it comes to any particular fact or manifestation alleged, we
judge it according to the generally received rules of evidence,
and we require very strong evidence to convince us of its reality
as a fact.
{291}
We adopt, in regard to them, the same rule that we follow in the
case of alleged miracles. We have not a doubt, nor the shadow of
a doubt, that miracles continue to be wrought in the church, and
are daily wrought in our midst; but we accept or reject this or
that alleged miracle according to the evidence in the case; and,
in point of fact, we are rather sceptical in regard to most of
the popularly received miracles we hear of. Credulity is not a
trait of the Catholic mind. It is the same with us in relation to
this other class of alleged facts. We believe as firmly in the
fact that prodigies are wrought as we do that miracles are; but
do not ask us to believe this or that particular prodigy, unless
you are prepared with the most indubitable evidence. We are far
from believing every event which we know not how to explain is
either a miracle or a prodigy.

We have examined with some care the so-called
spirit-manifestations which the spiritists relate, and we have
come, according to our best reason, to the conclusion that much
in them is trickery, mere jugglery; that much is explicable on
natural principles, or is to be classed with well-known morbid or
abnormal affections of human nature; but, after all abatements,
that there is a residuum inexplicable without the recognition of
a superhuman intelligence and force. We say _superhuman_,
not _supernatural_. The supernatural is God, and what he
does immediately or without the intermediation of natural laws,
as has been more than once explained in this magazine. The
creation of Adam was supernatural; the generation of men from
parents is not supernatural, for it is done by the Creator
through the operation of natural laws or second causes. What is
done by created forces or intelligences, however superior to man,
is not supernatural, nor precisely preternatural, but simply
superhuman, angelic, or demoniac. There is a smack of paganism in
calling it, as most contemporary literature does, supernatural;
for it carries with it the notion that the force or intelligence
is not a creature, but an uncreated _numen_, or an immortal.

Now, what is this superhuman intelligence and force revealed by
these spirit-phenomena? We know that many who admit the phenomena
refuse to admit that they reveal any superhuman force or
intelligence. They explain all by imagination or hallucination.
These, no doubt, play their part, and explain much; but the
author of _Planchette_, as well as M. Bizouard, have, it
seems to us, fully proved that they do not and cannot explain
all, even if they themselves did not need explanation; others
again, to explain them, have recourse to what they call animal
magnetism, or to a force which they call od, odyle, odyllic, or
odic force; but these explain nothing, for we know not what
animal magnetism or what odic force is, nor whether either has
any real existence. These terms do but cover our ignorance. Mr.
Grant ascribes them to demons, and endeavors to show that the
demon mesmerizes the medium who wills with his will, and acts
with his force and intelligence; but our modern science denies
the existence of demons.

{292}

The spiritists themselves pretend that the phenomena are produced
by the presence of departed spirits. But of this there is no
proof. It is acknowledged on all hands that the spirits can
assume any outward form or appearance at will. What means, then,
have we, or can we have, of identifying the individuals
personated by the pretended spirits? The author of
_Planchette_ says, in a note, p. 62:

  "If spirits have the power, attributed to them by many seers,
  of assuming any appearance at will, it is obvious that some
  high spiritual sense must be developed in us before we can be
  reasonably sure of the identity of any spirit, even though it
  come in bearing the exact resemblance of the person it may
  claim to be. We think, therefore, that the fact that the spirit
  ... bore the aspect of Franklin, and called itself Franklin, is
  no sufficient reason for dismissing all doubts as to its
  identity. It may be that we must be in the spiritual before we
  can really be wisely confident of the identity of any spirit."

That is, we must be ghosts ourselves before we can identify a
ghost, or die in the flesh, and enter the spirit-land, before we
can be sure of the identity of the spirits, or of the truth of
anything they profess to communicate not otherwise verifiable!

It is pretended that the spirits have latterly rendered
themselves visible and tangible. Mr. Livermore, of this city,
sees and embraces his deceased wife, who caresses and kisses him,
and he feels her hands as warm and fleshlike as when she was
living. Suppose the phenomena to be as related, and not eked out
by Mr. Livermore's imagination; the visible body in which she
appeared to him could have been only assumed, and no real body at
all, certainly not her body during life--that lies mouldering in
the grave. And all the spirits teach that the body thrown off at
death does not rise again. They nowhere, that we can find, teach
the resurrection of the flesh, but uniformly deny it. If the
spirits, then, do really render themselves visible and tangible
to our senses, it must be in a simulated body; and why may they
not simulate one form as well as another? The senses of sight and
touch furnish, then, of themselves, no proof that a departed
spirit or a human spirit once alive in the flesh, is present,
communicating through the medium with the living.

The assertion of the pretended spirit of its identity counts for
nothing, whether made by knocks or table-tipping, by writing or
by audible voice and distinct articulation; for the spiritists
themselves concede that some of the spirits, at least, are great
liars, and that they have no criterion by which to distinguish
the lying spirits from the others, if others there are, that seek
to communicate with the living. Conceding all the phenomena
alleged, there is, then, absolutely no proof or evidence that
there are any departed spirits present, or that any communication
from them has ever been received. The spirit of a person may be
simulated as well as his voice, features, form, handwriting, or
anything else characteristic of him. Spiritism, then, contrary to
the pretension of the spiritists, proves neither that the dead
live again, nor that the spirit survives the body. It does not
even prove that there is in man a soul or spirit distinct from
the body. We call the special attention of our readers to this
point, which is worthy of more consideration than it has
received.

The spiritists claim that the alleged spirit-manifestations have
proved the spirituality and immortality of the soul, in
opposition to materialism. This is their boast, and hence it is
that they call their doctrine spiritualism, and seek to establish
for it the authority of a revelation, supplementary to the
Christian revelation. Their whole fabric rests on the assumption
that the manifestations are made by human spirits that have once
lived in the flesh, and live now in the spirit-world, whatever
that may be.
{293}
Set aside this assumption, or  show that nothing in the alleged
spirit-manifestations sustains it, and the whole edifice tumbles
to the ground. There is nothing to support this assumption but
the testimony of spirits that often prove themselves lying
spirits, and whose identity with the individual they personate,
or pretend to be, we have no means of proving. Unable to prove
this vital point, the spiritists can prove nothing to the
purpose. The spirits all say there is no resurrection of the
dead, and therefore deny point-blank the doctrine that the dead
live again. If we are unable, as we are, to identify them with
spirits that once lived united with bodies that have mouldered or
are mouldering in their graves, what proof have we, or can they
give, that they are, or ever were, human spirits at all? If they
are not proved to be or to have been human spirits, they afford
no proof that the soul is distinct from the body, or that it is
not material like the body, and perishes with it. If, then, the
men of science have shown themselves little able to explain the
origin and cause of the phenomena, the spiritists have shown
themselves to be very defective as inductive reasoners.

"But the phenomena warrant the induction that they are produced
by spirits of some sort, or that there are intelligences not
clothed with human bodies between whom and us there is more or
less communication." Of themselves alone they warrant no
induction at all, but are simply inexplicable phenomena, the
origin and cause of which lie beyond the reach of scientific
investigation; but, taken in the light of what we know
_aliunde_, they warrant the conclusion that they proceed
from a superhuman cause, and that there are spirits which are, in
some respects, stronger and more intelligent than men; but
whether the particular spirits to whom the spirit-manifestations
in question are to be ascribed are angelic or demoniac, must be
determined by the special character of the manifestations
themselves, the circumstances in which they are made, and the end
they are manifestly designed to effect.

We make here no attack on the inductive method followed in
constructing the physical sciences. We only maintain that the
validity of the induction depends on a principle which is not
itself obtained or obtainable from induction. Hence Herbert
Spencer and the positivists who follow very closely the inductive
method, relegate principles and causes to the "unknowable." The
principle on which the inductive process depends cannot be
attained to by studying the phenomena themselves, but must be
given immediately, either in _a priori_ intuition or in
revelation. Books have been written, like Paley's _Natural
Theology_ and the _Bridgewater Treatises_, to prove, by
way of induction, from the phenomena of the universe, the being
and attributes of God, and it is very generally said that every
object in nature proves that God is, and that no man ever is or
can be really an atheist; but no study of the phenomena of nature
could originate the idea or the word in a mind that had it not.
Men must have the idea expressed in language of some sort before
they can find proofs in the observable phenomena of nature that
God is. Hence, those _savants_ who confound the origination
of the idea or belief with the proofs of its truth, and who see
that the idea or belief is not obtainable by induction, are
really atheists, and say with the fool in his heart, God is--not.
We do not assert that God is, on the authority of revelation; for
we must know that he is before we have or can have any means of
proving the fact of revelation; yet if God had not himself taught
his own being to the first man, and given him a sign signifying
it, the human race could never have known or conceived that he
exists.
{294}
The phenomena or the facts and events of the universe which so
clearly prove that God is, and find in his creative act their
origin and cause, would have been to all men, as they are to the
atheist, simply inexplicable phenomena.

So it is with the spirit-manifestations, whether angelic or
demoniac. The existence of spirits must be known to us, either by
intuition or revelation, before we can assign these phenomena a
spirital origin and cause. We do not and cannot know it
intuitively; and therefore, without recurring to what revelation
teaches us, these manifestations, however striking, wonderful, or
perplexing they might be, would be to us and to all men
inexplicable, and we could not assign them any origin or cause.
Revelation--become traditionary, and so embodied in the common
intelligence through language as to control, unconsciously and
unsuspected, the reasonings even of individuals who pride
themselves on denying it--furnishes the principle needed as the
basis of the induction of the principle and cause of the
spirit-manifestations. Revelation teaches that God has created an
order of intelligences superior to man, called angels, to be the
messengers of his will. Some of these remained faithful to their
Creator, always obedient to his command; others kept not their
first estate, rebelled against their sovereign Lord, were, with
their chief, cast out of heaven into the lower regions, and
became demons or evil spirits.

The spiritists complain of our scientific professors, but without
just reason; for, on the principles of modern science, the proofs
they offer of their doctrines prove nothing but their own logical
ineptness. Science, if it will accept no revelation, and
recognize no principle not obtained by the inductive method, has
no alternative but either to deny the manifestations as facts, or
to admit them only as inexplicable phenomena. The class of facts
are as well authenticated, as facts, as any facts can be; but the
explanation of them by the spiritists is utterly inadmissible,
and sound inductive reasoners, who exclude all revealed
principles, must reject it. The professors are not wrong in
rejecting that explanation as unscientific; for it would be even
more unscientific to admit it; and perhaps, if compelled to do
one or the other, we should hold it more unreasonable to admit it
than to deny outright the facts themselves.

The fault of the professors is in denying the necessity to the
validity of induction of principles neither obtainable nor
provable by induction, and in supposing that we can construct an
adequate science of the universe without the principles which are
given us only by divine revelation. Without these principles we
can explain nothing, and the universe is a vast assemblage of
inexplicable phenomena; for it is only in those principles we do
or can obtain a key to its meaning. Hence, modern science, which
excludes both revelation and intuition _a priori_, explains
nothing, reduces nothing to its principle and cause, and only
generalizes and classifies observable phenomena, which, we
submit, is no science at all. Certainly, we do not pretend that
science is built on faith, as the traditionalists do, or are
accused of doing; but we do say that, without the light of
revelation, we cannot construct an adequate science of the
universe, or explain the various facts and events of history.
{295}
If I did not know from revelation that the devil and his angels
exist, I might observe the facts of satanophany, but I should not
know whence they came, or what they mean. I might be tempted,
vexed, harassed, besieged, possessed, by evil spirits as the
spiritists are; but I should be ignorant of the cause, and
utterly unable to explain my trouble, or to ascribe it to any
cause, far less to satanic invasion. The prodigies would be for
me simply inexplicable prodigies. But, taught by revelation that
the air swarms with evil spirits, the enemies of man, and enemies
of man because enemies of God, we can see at once the explanation
of the spirit-manifestations, and assign them their real
principle and cause.

We know that many who call themselves Christians are disposed to
doubt, if not to deny, the personal existence of satan, and to
maintain that the word, which means an enemy or adversary, is
simply a general term for the sum of the evil influences to which
we are exposed, if not subjected. As if a generalization were
possible where there is nothing concrete! We get rid of no
difficulty by this explanation. Influence supposes some person or
principle from whom or from which proceeds the influence or the
in-flowing. If you deny satan's personal existence, you have no
option but either to deny evil altogether or to admit an original
eternal principle of evil warring against the principle of good,
that is, Manichaeism, or Persian dualism, which, though
Calvinism, indeed, in teaching that evil or sin is something
positive, may imply it, is neither good philosophy nor sound
Christian theology. According to sound philosophy and theology,
God alone hath eternity, and by his word has created heaven and
earth, and all things therein, visible and invisible. All the
works of God are good, very good; and as there is nothing in
existence except himself that he hath not made, it follows
necessarily that evil is not a positive existence, but is simply
negative, the negation or absence of good. It originates and can
originate only in the abuse of his faculties by a creature whom
God hath created and endowed with intelligence and free-will, and
therefore capable of acting wrong as well as right. To assert
that man is subjected or exposed to evil influences leads
necessarily to the assertion of a personal devil who exerts it.
You must, then, either deny all evil influences from a source
foreign to or distinguishable from man's own intrinsic nature, or
else admit the personal existence of satan and his hosts.

Satan and his hosts having rebelled against God, and in refusing
to worship the incarnate Son as God, were cast out of heaven, and
became the bitter enemies of him and the human race. Satan, as
the chief of the fallen angels, evil demons, or devils, carries
on incessant war against God, and seeks to draw men away from
their allegiance to him, and to get himself worshipped by them in
his place. Hence, he seeks by lying wonders to deceive them; by
his prodigies to rival in their belief real miracles; and, by his
pretended revelations of the spirit-world, to substitute belief
in his pretended communications for faith in divine revelation,
and thus reestablish in lands redeemed by Christianity from his
dominion the devil-worship which has never ceased to obtain in
all heathen countries. The holy Scriptures assure us that all the
gods of the heathen are demons or devils. These took possession
of the idols made of wood or stone, gold or silver, [Footnote 65]
had their temples, their priests and priestesses, their service,
and were worshipped as gods.

    [Footnote 65: This explains _Planchette_, which is a
    step toward the revival of heathen idol-worship.]

{296}

They gave forth oracles, and were consulted, through their
mediums, in all great affairs of state, and their omens and
auguries, which the people consulted to learn the future, as the
spiritists do their mediums. Spiritism belongs to the same order.
The spirits, as Mr. Grant well proves, are demons, and the whole
thing has for its object to reestablish, perhaps in a modified
form, the devil-worship which formerly obtained among all nations
but the Jews or chosen people of God, and still obtains among all
nations not yet Christianized. It began in the grand apostasy of
the Gentiles from the patriarchal religion, which followed the
confusion of tongues at Babel; and the spiritists are doing their
best to revive it in the grand apostasy from the Christian
church, which took place in the sixteenth century, and of which
we have such clear and unmistakable predictions in the New
Testament. So adroitly has satan managed, that, if it were
possible, the very elect would be deceived. So much we say of the
origin and cause of the spirit-manifestations.

If we examine more closely these manifestations, we shall find
evidence enough of their satanic character. All satanic invasions
bring trouble or perturbation, while the angelic visitations
always bring calm, peace, and order. The divine oracles are
clear, precise, distinct, free from all ambiguity; for he who
gives them knows all his works from their beginning to their end.
Satan's oracles are always ambiguous, stammering, and usually
deceive or mislead those who trust them. Satan is a creature, and
his power and intelligence, though superhuman, are not unlimited.
The universe has secrets he cannot penetrate, and he can do no
more than his and our Creator permits. He has no prophetic power,
for God keeps his own counsels. He can only guess or infer the
future from his knowledge of the present. He has no creative
power, and can never produce any thing as first cause. Hence, he
can operate only with materials fitted to his hand. The
spiritists tell us that it is not every one that can be a medium.
It is only persons of a certain temperament, found much oftener
among women than among men, and, among men, only with those of a
feminine character, and wanting alike in manly vigor and robust
health. The spirits can communicate only through such as nature
or habit has fitted to be mediums, and the communications have
always something of the character of the medium through which
they are made. The limited power of satan, his inability to know
the future, which exists only in the divine decree, and his lack
of power to form his own medium, render the spirit-communications
extremely vague, uncertain, obscure, and feeble.

The dependence of satan on the medium is manifest. The spirits
will not communicate if anything disturbs the medium, or puts the
pythoness out of humor, like the presence of hard-headed
sceptics, or a too critical examination by keen-sighted
scientific professors determined not to be deceived. Their
communications, oral or written, from the pretended spirits of
distinguished authors, poets, philosophers, statesmen, are by no
means creditable to satan as a scholar or a gentleman. Then
again, the spirits really tell us nothing that amounts to
anything of the spirit-world. Their representations make it a dim
and shadowy region, in which the spirits of the departed wander
about hither and thither, without end or aim, apparently worse
off than in the Elysian fields of the ancients, which resemble
more the Christian hell than the Christian's heaven.
{297}
There is an air of unreality about them; they are the umbrae of
heathen philosophy, not living existences; and their region, or,
more properly, their state, would be distressing, if one believed
at all in the representations given by them. One thing is
evident--the spirits know or can say nothing of the beatific
vision, which proves that they are not blessed angels. They do
not see God, and are clearly banished from his presence. He forms
not the light nor the blessedness of their state. They seem, like
troubled ghosts, to linger around the places where they lived in
the body, pale, thin, shadowy, miserable, anxious to communicate
with the living but only occasionally permitted to do so, and
even then only to a feeble extent. Friends and acquaintances in
this life may recognize, we are told, each other in the
spirit-world, but whether with pleasure or pain, it is difficult
to say. The picture of their disembodied life is very sad, and
the Christian soul finds it dark, hopeless, cheerless, and
depressing; as the condition of those doomed to take up their
abode with the devil and his angels must necessarily be.

The doctrines the spirits teach and confirm with lying wonders
are what the apostle calls "the doctrines of devils." They are
unanimous in declaring that there is no devil and no hell. God
may not be absolutely denied, but his personality is obscured,
and he appears only in the distance, as an infinite abstraction,
being only in the sense in which, Hegel might say, being and
not-being are identical--remote from all contemplation,
indifferent to what is going on in the world below him, asking
neither prayers nor worship, love nor veneration, praise nor
thanksgiving, and receiving none. The spirits echo the dominant
sentiments of the age, and especially of the circle with which
they communicate. They are, where they are not held in check by
the lingering respect of the circle for Christianity, furious
radicals, great sticklers for progress without divine aid, and of
development without a created germ. Yet the doctrines they teach
are such as they find in germ, if not developed, in the minds of
their mediums. They sometimes deny every distinctively Christian
doctrine, and are sure to pervert what of the faith they do not
expressly deny. In general, they assert that the form of religion
called Christianity has had its day, and that there is a new and
sublimer form about to be developed, and that they come to
announce it, and to prepare the way for it. The new form of
religion will free the world from the old church, from bondage to
the Bible, to creeds and dogmas, the old patriarchal systems and
governments, and place the religious, social, and political world
on a higher plane, and moved by a more energetic spirit of
progress. This is the mission of spiritism. It is destined to
carry on and complete the work commenced by Christ, but which he
left unfinished, and inchoate.

The special object of the spirits, it is pretended, is to
convince the world of the immortality of the soul; but in what
form, what condition, what sense? The immortality of the soul, or
its survival of the body, was generally believed by the heathens,
however addicted to demon-worship they might be; but the life and
immortality brought to light by the Gospel they did not believe,
and the spirits do not teach it or affirm it. The spirits seem to
know nothing of immortal life in God, and into which the
sanctified soul enters when it departs this life, and is purified
from all the stains it may have contracted in the flesh.

{298}

The only immortality they offer is the immortality of evil demons
or the angels who kept not their first estate. But even of such
an immortality for the human soul, they offer no proof. They are
lying spirits, and their word is worthless, and their identity
with human souls once united to human bodies which they
personate, is not and cannot be established. They deny the
resurrection of the dead, which St. Paul preached at Athens, and
they give, as we have seen, no proofs that the soul does not die
and perish with the body. Their doctrines are simply calculated
to deceive the unwary, to draw them away from their allegiance to
the Lord of heaven, and to drag them down to the region where
dwell the angels that fell.

The ethical doctrines of the spirits are as bad as can be
imagined, and the morals of the advanced spiritists would appear
to be of the lowest and most revolting sort. It matters not that
the spirits give, now and then, some good advice, and say some
true things; for the object of satan is to deceive, and his
practice is usually to lie and deceive by telling the truth. The
truth he tells gains him credit, and secures confidence in him as
a guide. But he takes good care that the truth he tells shall
have all the effect of falsehood. He gives good moral advice, but
he removes all motives for following it, and takes away all moral
restraints. He wars against authority in matters of faith and
morals, as repugnant to the rights of reason, and in political
and domestic life as repugnant to liberty and the rights of women
and children. All should do right and seek what is good, but no
one should be constrained; only voluntary obedience is
meritorious; forced obedience is no virtue. The sentiments and
affections should be as free as the air we breathe, and to
attempt to restrain them is to war against nature herself. They
are not voluntary either in their origin or nature, and therefore
are not and should not be subjected to an outward law. Love, the
apostle tells us, is the fulfilling of the law, the bond of
perfection. How wrong, then, to undertake to put gyves on love,
to constrain it, or to subject it to the petty conventionalities
of a moribund society, or the rules of an antiquated morality!
Taking no note of the distinction between the supernatural love,
which Christians call charity, and love as a natural sentiment,
and as little of the distinction between the different sorts of
love even as a natural sentiment, as the love of parents for
children and children for parents, the love of friends, the love
of country, the love of truth and justice, and the love of the
sexes for each other, or simply sexual love, satan lays the
foundation, as we can easily see, if not blinded by his
delusions, for the grossest corruption and the most beastly
immorality.

Hence the spiritists very generally look upon the marriage law as
tyrannical and absurd, and assert the doctrine of free love. The
marriage is in the love, and when the love is no more, the
marriage is dissolved. None of our sentiments depend on the will;
hence, self-denial is unnatural, and immoral. Prostitution is
wrong, for no love redeems and hallows it; and for the same
reason it is immoral for a man and a woman to live together as
husband and wife, after they have ceased to love each other. It
is easy to see to what this leads, and we cannot be surprised to
find conjugal fidelity not reckoned as a virtue by spiritists; to
find wives leaving their husbands, and husbands their wives, or
the wife choosing a new husband as often as she pleases or wills;
and the husband taking a new wife when tired of the old, or an
additional wife or two, Mormon-like, when one at a time is not
enough.
{299}
Indeed, Mormonism is only one form and the most strictly
organized form, of contemporary spiritism, and woman's-rightism
is only another product of the same shop, though doubtless many
of the women carried away by it are pure-minded and chaste. But
the leaders are spiritists or intimately connected with them. The
_animus_ of the woman movement is hostility to the marriage
law, and the cares and drudgery of maternity and home life. It
threatens to be not the least of the corrupting and dangerous
forms of spiritism.

Mr. Grant, who is a staunch Protestant, and hates Catholicity
with a most hearty hatred, gives, on adequate authority, a sketch
of the immorality of spiritists which should startle the
community: we make an extract:

  "We pass to notice some further facts relative to the
  _moral_ tendency of spiritualism. We have read its
  _claims_, and found them very high; but there is abundant
  proof to show that, instead of its being 'ancient Christianity
  revived,' it is the worst enemy Christianity ever had to meet.
  We believe it to be satan's last grand effort to substitute a
  false for the true Christianity. His snares are laid most
  ingeniously; and, unless very watchful, ere people are aware of
  it, they will be caught in some of his traps. Thousands and
  millions are already his deluded victims, and, like a terrible
  tornado, he is sweeping with destruction on every side.
  Occasionally we hear a warning voice from one who has escaped
  from his power, like a mariner from the sinking wreck; but
  most, after they once get into the spiritualist 'circle,' are
  like the boatman under the control of the terrible whirlpool on
  the coast of Norway--destruction is sure.

  "The next witness we introduce is Mr. J. F. Whitney, editor of
  the New York _Pathfinder._ He was formerly a warm advocate
  of spiritualism, and published much in its favor. He says:

     "'Now, after a long and constant watchfulness, seeing for
     months and years its progress and its practical workings
     upon its devotees, its believers, and its mediums, we are
     compelled to speak our honest conviction, which is, that the
     manifestations coming through the acknowledged mediums, who
     are designated as rapping, tipping, writing, and entranced
     mediums, have a baneful influence upon believers, and create
     discord and confusion; that the generality of these
     teachings inculcate false ideas, approve of selfish,
     individual acts, and endorse theories and principles which,
     when carried out, _debase_ and make them _little
     better than the brute_.'

     "Again he says: 'Seeing as we have the gradual progress it
     makes with its believers, particularly its mediums, from
     lives of _morality_ to those of _sensuality_ and
     _immorality_, gradually and cautiously undermining the
     foundation of good principles, we look back with amazement
     to the radical change which a few months will bring about in
     individuals.'

     "He says in conclusion: 'We desire to send forth our warning
     voice; and if our humble position as the head of a public
     journal, our known advocacy of spiritualism, our experience,
     and the conspicuous part we have played among its believers;
     the honesty and the fearlessness with which we have defended
     the subject, will weigh anything in our favor, we desire
     that our opinions may be received, and those who are moving
     passively down the rushing rapids to destruction, should
     pause, ere it be too late, and save themselves from the
     blasting influence which those manifestations are causing.'


     "Forbidding To Marry.

  "Among other instructions of the spirits, the apostle Paul has
  assured us that they will be opposed to the marriage
  laws,'forbidding to marry.' I Tim. iv. 3.

  "At the Rutland (Vt.) Reform Spiritualist Convention, held in
  June, 1858, the following resolution was presented and
  defended:

  "'_Resolved_, That the only true and natural marriage is
  an exclusive conjugal love between one man and one woman; and
  the only true home is the isolated home, based upon this
  exclusive love.'

  "The careless reader may see nothing objectionable in the
  resolution; but please read it again and observe what
  constitutes _marriage_, according to the resolution,'an
  exclusive conjugal LOVE between one man and one woman.'
{300}
   The poison sentiment is covered up by the word '_one_.'
   What constitutes marriage now, according to the laws of the
   land? Do we understand that, when we see a notice of a
   marriage in a paper, which took place at a certain time and
   place, that then the parties began to love each other
   exclusively? Certainly not; but at that time their love was
   sanctioned by the proper authorities, and thus they became
   husband and wife. But the resolution states that the
   _marriage_ should consist in the 'exclusive conjugal
   _love_.' Then it follows, when either party loves another
   exclusively, the first marriage is dissolved, and they are
   married again; and if the other one does not happen to find a
   spiritual 'affinity,' then there is no alternative left but to
   make the best of it, as many have been compelled to do.
   According to this resolution, one is married as often as his
   love becomes '_exclusive_' for any particular individual.
   This is one item in the boasted 'new social order,' which the
   spirits propose to establish when the political power is in
   their hands. It is called by them the 'Divine Law of
   Marriage.' A large number of spiritualists are already
   carrying out this resolution practically, regardless of the
   laws of the land.

  "A similar resolution was presented at the National Spiritual
  Convention held in Chicago, from Aug. 9th to 14th, 1864 It was
  offered by Dr. A. G. Parker, of Boston, chairman of the
  committee on social relations. This point is strongly urged by
  the spirits and spiritualists.

  "At the Rutland Reform Convention, which closed June 27th,
  1858, the resolution under consideration was earnestly
  advocated by able men and women. Said Mrs. Julia Branch, of New
  York, as reported in _The Banner of Light_, July 10th,
  1858, when speaking on the resolution: 'I am aware that I have
  chosen almost a forbidden subject; forbidden from the fact that
  any one who _can_ or _dare_ look the marriage
  question in the face, candidly and openly denouncing the
  institution as the sole cause of woman's degradation and
  misery, are objects of suspicion, of scorn, and opprobrious
  epithets.'

  "She further remarked in the defence of the resolution, and the
  rights of women, 'She must demand her freedom; her right to
  receive the equal wages of man in payment for her labor; _her
  right to have children when she will, and by whom_.'"

Much more to the same effect, and even more startling, we might
quote; we might give the account of the spiritist community at
Berlin, Ohio; but we have no wish to disgust our readers, and
this is enough for our purpose; it is sufficient to prove to all,
not under the delusion, that spiritism is of satanic origin, and
to be eschewed by all who wish to remain morally sane, and to
lead honest and upright lives. We are not disposed to be
alarmists, and, like the majority of our countrymen, are more
likely to err on the side of optimism than of pessimism; but we
cannot contemplate the rapid spread of spiritism since 1847, when
it began with the Fox girls, without feeling that a really great
danger threatens the modern world, and that there is ample reason
for all who do not wish to see demon-worship supplanting the
worship of God throughout the land, to be on their guard. Mr.
Grant, who seems to be well informed on the subject, tells us
that since that period, spiritism "has become world-wide in its
influence, numbering among its ardent supporters many of the
first men and women of both continents. Ministers, doctors,
lawyers, judges, congressmen, governors, presidents, queens,
kings, and emperors, of all religions, are bowing to its
influence, and showing their sympathy with its teachings."

Mr. Grant should not say, "of all religions;" some Catholics may
have become spiritists, but they cannot become so, and persist in
following spiritism without severing themselves from the church.
Some spiritists have been told by the spirits to become
Catholics; but the church has required them to give up spiritism,
and they have either done so, or left her communion, like Daniel
Home, and returned to their communion with the demons. The church
forbids her children to have any dealings with devils. But with
this rectification the statement is not exaggerated.
{301}
The spread of spiritism has been prodigious, and proves not only
the power and cunning of satan, but that the way for his success
had been well prepared, and that no small portion of the modern
world were in the moral condition of the old world at the epoch
of the great Gentile apostasy, and ready to return to the heathen
darkness and superstition, the vice and corruption, from which
the Gospel had rescued them, or, at least, had rescued their
ancestors.

We know not the number of spiritists in our country. We have seen
it stated that they reckon their numbers by millions; but there
can be no doubt that they include a very large portion of our
whole population. Has this fact anything to do with the
astounding increase of vice and crime in our country within the
last few years, the undeniable corruption of morals and manners,
and the growing frequency of murder and suicide? Senator Sprague,
an honorable and an honest man and a true patriot, stated, the
other day, in his place in the Senate of the United States, that
our country is morally and politically more corrupt than any
other country in the civilized world. We hope he is mistaken, but
we are afraid that he is not wholly wrong. It is idle to
attribute this corruption to the influences of the late civil
war, and still idler or worse than idle, to attribute it, as some
do, to the heavy influx of foreigners; for, though among those
are many old-world criminals, the great body of the foreigners,
when they land here, are far more moral, honest, upright,
conscientious, than the average of native Americans; and though
they soon prove that "evil communications corrupt good manners,"
much of the patriot's hope for the future depends on them,
especially the Catholic portion of them, if, in due season, their
children can be brought under the influence of the church, and
receive a proper Catholic training.

Unhappily, the simple, natural virtues of former times, such as
existed in ancient Greece and Rome, and exist even now in some
pagan and Mohammedan countries, have, to a fearful extent, been
lost with us, and the sects have nothing with which to supply
their place, or to oppose to this terrible satanic invasion. They
have indeed done much to prepare the way for it, and are doing
still more, by their opposition to the church, to render it
successful. But, though the danger is great and pressing, we are
not disposed to think, with Mr. Grant, that we are in what he
calls the "world's crisis." The danger is far less than it was;
because the satanic origin and character of the so-called
spirit-manifestations are widely suspected, and are beginning to
be exposed. Satan is powerless in the open day. He is never
dangerous when seen and known to be satan. He must always
disguise himself as an angel of light, and appear as the defender
of some cause which, in its time and place, is good, but,
mistimed and misplaced, is evil. He has done wonders in our day
as a philanthropist, and met with marvellous success as a
humanitarian, and will, perhaps, meet with more still as the
champion of free love and women's rights. But he has no power
over the elect, and, though he may besiege the virtuous and the
holy, he can captivate only the children of disobedience, who are
already the victims of their own pride, vanity, lust, or
unbelief.

The end of the world may be at hand, and these lying signs and
wonders may be the precursors of antichrist; but we do not think
the end is just yet. Faith has not yet wholly died out, and the
church has seen, perhaps, darker days than the present.
{302}
The power of Christ, or his patience, is not yet exhausted; the
gospel of the kingdom has not yet been preached to all nations;
three fourths of the human race remain as yet unconverted, and we
cannot believe that the church has as yet fulfilled her mission,
and Christianity done its work. Too many of the sentinels have
slept at their posts, and there has been a fearful lack of
vigilance and alertness of which the enemy has taken advantage.
The sleepers in Zion are many; but these satanic knocks and raps,
and these tippings of tables, and this horrid din and racket of
the spirits to indicate their presence, can hardly fail to awaken
them, unless they are really sleeping the sleep of death. The
church is still standing, and if her children will watch and
pray, she can battle with the enemy as successfully as she has
done so many times before.

Many Catholics have had their doubts of the reality of the
alleged spirit-manifestations, and, even conceding them as facts,
have been slow to recognize their satanic origin and character.
But those doubts are now generally removed. The fearful moral and
spiritual ravages of spiritism have dispelled or are fast
dispelling them, and it will go hard but here and now as always
and everywhere, what satan regards as a splendid triumph shall
turn out against him and bring him to shame. Thus far in his war
against the Son of God all his victories have been his defeats.

One thing is certain, that the only power there is to resist this
satanic invasion is the Catholic Church; and there is, unless we
greatly deceive ourselves, a growing interest in the Catholic
question far beyond any that has heretofore been felt. Thinking
and well-disposed men see and feel the impotence of the sects;
that they have no divine life, and no divine support; that they
stand in human folly, rather than even in human wisdom. Eminent
Protestant ministers eloquently proclaim and conclusively show
that Protestantism was a blunder, and has proved a failure; and
there springs up a growing feeling among the more intelligent and
well-disposed of our non-Catholic countrymen, that the judgment
rendered against the church by the Reformers in the sixteenth
century was hasty, and needs revision, perhaps a reversal. This
feeling, if it continues to grow, can augur but ill for the
ultimate success of satan and his followers.

-------

{303}

                Daybreak.


	       Chapter VI.

             Presentiments.


Mr. Granger's family took the full benefit of their holiday at
the seaside. They rose before the lark, and watched the days come
in: radiant, solemn mornings, all light and silence; tender,
mist-veiled dawns, less like day than a dream of day; and angry,
magnificent sunrises, blazing with stormy colors all over the
sky, soon to be quenched in a fine gray fall of rain.

They lay in hammocks slung out under the pine-trees, till nature
adopted them for her own, and little wild creatures came and went
about them unscared.

"Margaret," Mrs. Lewis called, one day, out of her hammock over
to the other, "you remember how the foxes went to St.
Francis--wasn't it St. Francis?--and held out their paws to shake
hands with him, and said, 'How do you do, St. Francis?' and he
gave them his hand, and said, 'How do you do?"'

"I remember nothing of the kind," was the indignant reply. "But I
know that Robinson Cru--"

"O fie!" cries the little lady. "Why won't you own that my legend
is beautiful and sublime, whether true or not? And it will be
true when the kingdom comes for which all good people pray. For
the last hour I have been trying to get acquainted with a
squirrel; but just as I thought that he understood me, and as I
was about to offer my hand to him, the little wretch darted away.
At this moment he is perched in the very top of a pine-tree, and
peering down at me as if I were a hyena. Alas!"

They wandered on the beach at evening, singing, talking, silent;
or if in merry mood, skooning little flat stones over the water,
and counting how many wave-tips they would trip before falling.

"_Mon armant m'aime--un peu--beaucoup--passionnément--pas du
tout!_" laughed Mrs. Lewis, seeing Miss Hamilton counting to
herself. "You must only try that oracle in flower petals, my
dear. To count it in salt water signifies tears."

Sometimes they floated out in the harbor, and felt the fresh
breath of the ocean, while the treacherous waters lapped, and
fawned, and gurgled about the bows of their boat, and overhead
the sky was thick with stars.

All this was not with the ladies mere idle pleasure, but was as
seriously planned as it was heartily enjoyed. They had resolved
that whatever exciting discussions and differences the gentlemen
should have abroad, at home they should find nothing but peace.
Politics were banished; and they sometimes even restrained their
impatience to hear the war-news when they suspected that the
relation was likely to produce any unpleasant entanglement.
Without being religious, they yet had some perception of a
pathway lying changeless and peaceful, far above parties and
nationalities, and they felt that woman's proper place is there.

The gentlemen soon learned to submit to a restraint which they
would never have imposed on themselves. When they stepped out at
the little station near their cottage, their discussions were at
an end.

{304}

"There is our flag of truce," Mr. Lewis would say, pointing to
the thread of smoke that showed, over the trees, Mrs. James's
kitchen-fire just kindled to prepare their dinner. "Understand,
Mr. Southard, I oppose both you and Louis tooth and nail, and I'd
like to fight it out with you now. But our time is up; and there
are three little girls behind the trees there who would break
their hearts if we should go home with cross faces. Let's shake
hands till next time."

The only news of which they could all speak fearlessly and with
pleasure was what concerned Mr. Granger's cousin. Scarcely a week
passed that did not bring some laudation of him. He was one of
those men who, without effort, are always conspicuous wherever
they go. Opportunities that others sought with pain presented
themselves unsought to him; and he had a gallant, dashing, and,
withal, a lordly way that embellished even brilliant exploits.

"Upon my word," his cousin said, "at this rate it is not
impossible that he may be made lieutenant-general."

Mr. Southard was, perhaps, the hardest to keep within bounds,
probably because he felt himself religiously obliged to "cry
aloud and spare not." But even he was subdued after a while. He
seemed indeed too dependent on the ladies to willingly offend
them. All the time he was not in the city he spent in their
company, unbending as much as was possible to him, that his
presence might not be a restraint on their pleasures. He brought
his books to the parlor, and had his special corner there, the
"lion's den," he called it, with a slight touch of reproach in
his voice, when he saw how the others kept away from its
vicinity. He rendered himself agreeable in many ways. He read
aloud to them, he played and sang for them, sometimes he took the
brush from Miss Hamilton's hand, and helped her with a bolder
line than she could achieve.

"It takes a strong hand to give a fine stroke," she said. "Where
I would be delicate, I am only soft." "Let me finish this for
you, since the stippling is done," he said, as she paused to
contemplate a major-general reposing pacifically on her easel. "I
will not touch the face. Say what you will, there is a softness
and richness in your shading which I can never attain. I may have
a fine or bold touch, but it is hard. Shall I deepen this
background a little to throw the figure out? And may I intensify
his shoulder-straps?"

Margaret left her work to him, and, taking possession of his den,
divided her attention between a book, and watching Dora at play
with Aurelia outside.

Since they left the city the child had been set loose from all
city restraints, and turned out to consort with bees and
grasshoppers, harrowing the soul of Mrs. James by the number and
heinousness of her soiled frocks and stockings, but drawing in
full draughts of health. Both Dora and her father were bankers.
But his bank in the city dealt in paper and specie; hers was a
flower-bank. When she wanted him to buy her anything, she brought
him buttercups, which were gold dollars with handles to them, and
he scrupulously kept account and returned her change. No lover
could wear in his buttonhole the rosebud presented by his lady's
hand with a more tender pride than this father cherished for the
bunch of wildflowers given him by his little daughter.

{305}

Mrs. Lewis approached the minister's table, and began turning
over his books. "I don't know anything," she said mournfully,
opening a Greek copy of Homer, and passing her fingers
caressingly over the dear little quaint letters. "Wallace, wasn't
it?--that poor Horace Binney--

             'Doubly dead,
  In that he died so young,'

writes of the 'arrowy certainty of Grecian phrases.' Woe is me! I
cannot get at the point. I can only see the feathering."

Margaret looked up with an exclamation from the book in her hand.
"Listen! Coleridge, _à propos_ of having republished his
earlier poems without correction, writes, 'I was afraid of
disentangling the weed for fear of snapping the flower.'
Snapping! only a poet would have chosen that word. The
flower-stem that you can _snap_ must be of sudden and
luxuriant growth, made up of water and color, with just fibre
enough to hold the two together. As I read that, I thought
instantly of a red tulip bursting up bright and hasty through the
moist, warm mould. That sends me outdoors. I want to see weeds
and flowers growing tangled together."

"Wait a little and let me go with you," Mr. Southard said. "And
meantime let Mrs. Lewis read us one of her poems, as she promised
to do."

Mrs. Lewis had been for years one of those pretty lady writers of
which the country is full, by no means an artist, or dreaming of
any such distinction, but writing acceptably to her friends, and
sometimes pleasing a not too critical public. But she had abjured
the pen from the day when a friendly publisher, meaning to
compliment her, issued a volume of "Extracts" from her writings.

"A volume!" she cried in dismay. "Why not a bottle? There were my
poor little fancies torn from their homes and set up in rows,
like flies and bugs transfixed on pins. I shuddered. I wrote no
more."

"I forgive you for asking me," she said to Mr. Southard. "I dare
say you want to hear my rhyme, and will think it very pretty. And
she read:

         Beating The Bars.

  "0 morning air! O pale, pure fire!
     Wrap and consume my bonds away.
   This stifling mesh of sordid flesh
     Shuts in my spirit from the day.

  "Through sudden chinks the radiance blinks,
     And drives the winged creature wild.
   She hears rejoice each ringing voice,
     She guesses at each happy child.

  "In fleeting glints are shining hints
     Of freer beings, good and glad;
   Her dream can trace each lovely face,
     Each form, in lofty beauty clad.

  "She hears the beat of joyous feet
     That break no flower, fear no thorn;
   And almost feels the breeze that steals
     From out the ever-growing morn.

  "She hears the flow of voices low,
     And strains to catch the half-known tongue.
   She hears the gush of streams that rush
     Their thrilling waters into one.

  "With longing sighs, her baffled eyes
     She sets where burn the unseen stars.
   With frantic heats her wings she beats,
     And breaks them on the stubborn bars.

  "O light!' she cries, 'unseal mine eyes,
     Or blind me in thine ardent glow.
   O life and breath! O life in death!
     O bonds! dissolve, and let me go.

  "'Let drop this crust of cankering rust,
     The only crown my brow hath won;
   Shake off the sears of briny tears,
     And dry my pinions in the sun!'"

"You don't mean it!" exclaimed Margaret.

"My dear," said Mrs. Lewis, "I do not mean it as a rule, but as
an exception. That was written during my equinoctial."

Miss Hamilton waited for an explanation.

"You don't know it yet," the lady continued, "but you will learn
in time that every woman has her line-gale. It usually comes
between thirty and forty, sooner or later, and is more or less
violent. After that, we settle down and let the snows fall on
us."

Ending, she laughed a little; but there was a tightening of the
lines about the mouth that showed at least remembered pain.

{306}

Margaret, going out, stopped to look over Mr. Southard's
shoulder, drawn there by the absent, dreamy expression of his
face. If he was painting backgrounds, she thought, what mountains
of melting blue, what far-away waters, half cloud, half glitter,
must be stealing to life beneath his hand!

He had placed a blank sheet on the easel, and was idly covering
it with fragmentary improvisations. Under the heading of
"synonyms" he had written, "_Cogito quia sum, et sum quia
cogito_," the text illustrated by a drawing of a cat running
round after her own tail.

"Or a mouse going in at the same hole it came out from," thought
Margaret.

He drew steady, straight lines, crossing them off with wonderful
regularity; then some airy grace stole down to the tips of his
firm white fingers, and the ends of the lines leaved and budded
out, audacious tendrils draped the severest angles, and stars and
crescents peeped through the spaces. Half impatiently he returned
to geometrical figures; but pentagons grouped themselves to look
like five-petaled blossoms or star-crystals of frost, and
hexagons gathered themselves into a mosaic pavement whereon a
sandalled foot was set.

"This is the Nile," he said, going over all with bold, flowing
lines; "and here comes Cleopatra's barge, the dusky queen dropped
among her cushions, a line of steady glow showing under each
lowered eyelid, cords of cool pearls trying in vain to press into
quiet her untamable pulses.

"This is a close-shut forest solitude, with a carpet of greenest,
softest moss, whereon I lie like Danae while the heavens shower
gold on me."

Then, with a start, came recollection, and the rush-tip became an
asp to the Egyptian, and the Greek was drowned in ink.

"Come out!" he said abruptly. "The air is close here."

"Will you come, Mrs. Lewis?" asked Miss Hamilton, looking back
from the door.

The lady shook her head in an exhausted manner.

"Aura," said Margaret when they reached the veranda," will you
come down to the beach with us?"

"Thank you, dear," said Aurelia gently, "I do not care to go."

Miss Hamilton's eyes flashed a little impatiently. She did not
like the way in which they withdrew themselves when she was with
Mr. Southard. But after going a few steps, she glanced back at
Aurelia, and the two smiled. At the moment it struck her that
there was something new in Miss Lewis's expression, an unusual
seriousness and dignity under her sweetness.

The day was sultry, but otherwise perfect, the green as fresh as
at spring, the harbor purple and sparkling, and the sky a deep
azure, except where a rim of darkness lay piled around the north
and west, cloud-peaks and cliffs showing as hard and sharp as if
hewn of stone, but illuminated now and then by lightnings that
stirred uneasily within them, changing their dense shadows to
molten gold, or leaping in dazzling crinkled flashes from point
to point. It seemed a gala-day of nature, so wide, so brilliant,
so consciously beautiful was everything.

"'Visibly in his garden walketh God!'" quoted Margaret, looking
abroad with delight.

"The god Pan, you mean," said the minister, whose little sparkle
of gayety seemed to have been suddenly extinguished.

"The Creator pronounced his work good," she said.

"Yes; but we have changed all that," was the reply. "We have put
the heart in the wrong place."

{307}

"Moses and Molière," thought Miss Hamilton, amused at the
juxtaposition; then added aloud, "Christ pointed to the lilies of
the field."

"For a moral and a reproof, yes. He made them not a text, but the
illustration of a text. This delight in inanimate nature is not
harmful if subordinate to the thought of God; otherwise it is a
lure. It leads to materialism, or to sentimental religion that is
worse than none, since it bars the way to a true piety."

Margaret made no reply. In spite of herself, his remarks
depressed her, and cast some faint shadow over the beauty of the
scene.

"The breakers are coming in," Mr. Southard said presently, in a
tone of voice that showed his regretful sense of having been
disagreeable. "We shall have a tempest."

They had reached the shore, and stood looking off over the water,
The liquid emerald wave they watched came rolling toward them,
paused an instant, then rose and flung itself at their feet,
rustling away in foam and sliding, silky water, no longer a
breaker, but a broken.

"Mr. Southard," Margaret said after a minute, "you know that I
would like to be religious, if I knew how; but it doesn't seem
possible. I am like one who, in the dark, wanting to get into a
house, knocks all about the walls without finding a door. I am
trying--in a sort of way--" She hesitated. What would he say if
he knew in what way she was trying?

"Give up all," he said; "forget self; and think only of God."

"What you propose to me is not a path, but a pedestal!" she
exclaimed, turning from him to go back to the house. "And I am
not marble."

He followed her, looking both hurt and annoyed. Outside the door
she stopped, and bending toward a little cluster of violets that
grew there, shook a warning finger in their innocent blue eyes.
"Don't look at me," she said. "You're wicked!"

"Do not give all your kindness to those who think only of your
temporal welfare," said the minister hastily, "Remember those
also who care for your soul."

"Oh! why should I remember those who do me good for God's sake?"
said Miss Hamilton coldly, "Let him reward them; I shall not."

There was no one in the parlor when they went in; but they did
not perceive that at first, it was so dim. The sky had darkened
rapidly, the clouds rolling up as if self-impelled; for there was
scarcely a breath of air stirring. A shadow had swept the sparkle
off the water, and all the western view was shrouded in gloom.
Southward a single point shone out like a torch amid the
surrounding obscurity, a beam of sunlight drop-ping on it through
a cleft cloud, and showing in a golden path visible across the
heavens. Suddenly, like a torch, it was quenched; and all was
darkness.

Mr. Southard stood before an open window, with his hands clasped
be-hind him, and his clear eyes lifted heavenward. Margaret heard
him repeating lowly, "'Canst thou send lightnings, and will they
go, and will they return and say to thee, Here we are?'"

"After all," she said, "God is love, And however circumstances
may hem us in from each other, he looks down on all. Perhaps some
day, lifting us, each after his own way, he will show us not only
himself, but one another, face to face. I think that there are
more mistakes than sins in the world; and God is love."

"God is justice!" said the minister austerely.

{308}

His words were almost lost in a
low rumble of thunder that curdled all about the heavens.
Margaret stood beside him, and looked out at the piled-up
blackness shot through by flying thunderbolts.

"Ossa upon Pelion," she said. "It is the battle of the gods over
again, and Jove is everywhere, 'treading the thunders from the
clouds of air.'"

As she spoke, a flash sprang from the north and a flash from the
west, and caught in their glittering toils the grouped inky
crests of the tempest, that for an instant stood out against the
pale blue of the zenith, a stupendous, writhing Laocoon. Then the
lightnings leaped from that height to the midst of the harbor,
and stung the hissing waves till far and wide they quivered with
a froth of flame. As they fell, the heavens seemed to burst in
one awful report.

There were cries through the house, and the whole family,
servants and all, came rushing into the parlor. Mr. Southard was
leaning against the wall, with both hands over his face. The
shock had been severe, and for a little while he was stunned.

"Are you hurt?" asked Aurelia, going to him at once.

He recovered himself, and looked up. "No. Where is Miss
Hamilton?" Miss Lewis drew back immediately, and showed him
Margaret holding the frightened Dora in her arms and hushing her
cries.

"God be thanked!" he exclaimed. "We have all escaped."

"Are the skies falling?" cried Mrs. Lewis.

It seemed indeed as though they were. That thunder-clap had
loosened the pent rain, and it came pouring down in floods,
veiling them in grayness, the multitudinous plash and patter
mingling with a sound like myriad chariot wheels driving
overhead.

They closed the windows, which immediately became sheeted with
water, the servants went back to their places, Dora took courage,
and ventured to uncover one blue eye, with which she looked
askance at the window. Mrs. Lewis began to take an esthetic view
of the matter, and Miss Hamilton a practical, which she carried
out by setting herself to kindle a fire against the coming of the
absent ones. They were sure to be drenched.

She had wood brought, removed the pine boughs from the fireplace,
and, kneeling on the hearth, began arranging the pile after the
most scientific country fashion, miniature back-log, back-stick,
and fore-stick, then the finished pyramid, sloping smoothly with
the chimney. It was pretty enough to burn, built of birch, amber
and golden-hearted, with bark of silver and cinnamon. Nothing
else in woods so beautiful as those birch colors.

Then it must be lighted with ceremony, being their first fire,
their beltane a little belated. Fresh, drowned roses were
snatched in out of the drip to crown the pyre, and the ladies had
the temerity to despatch the minister, as officiating priest,
with a wax taper, to bring sacred fire from the kitchen grate.
Lucifer matches were not to be thought of.

The lambent flame shone softly out through the chinks, then
reddened and grew broader, tongues of fire lapped the sticks, and
disappeared and reappeared, becoming bolder each time, blistering
brownly the silvery bark, catching at the edges, and rolling it
up and off the sticks. Columns of milk-white smoke rose, propped
by half-sheathed flames, and curled over, mimicking every order
of convolution. Mr. Southard recited:

  "'A gleam--a gleam from Ida's height,
      By the fire-god sent it came,
    From watch to watch it leaped, that light,
      As a rider rode the flame.'"

{309}

The smoke shut thickly down, a moment; then a broad blaze burst
out, wrapped the logs, and began to devour them, roaring like a
lion.

The others gathered about the cheerful fire which was reflected
in their faces; but Margaret glanced out at the storm, then went
up to the long chamber entry from which a window looked down the
townward road, and began walking to and fro there, wringing her
hands, and listening to the wind and the rain lash the windows. A
sudden darkness and terror had settled upon her. It was more than
that atmospheric influence to which many are susceptible, more
than a mere vague impression of evil; it was a thought as clearly
defined as if some one had that moment given it utterance in her
hearing, and it held her like a conviction. Some one whom she
knew was at that instant dying, or dead!

Her hands grew cold; she shook as with an ague fit.

She had been too happy. She might have known that it could not
last. She had known it. In all those happy months, had she not
drunk every sweet moment with eager lips that had felt, and must
again feel, the bitterness of thirst? Had she not constantly said
to herself, It is too bright to last?

"I was not meant for earthly happiness," she thought, wringing
her hands.

The walls shook in the clutch of the blast. Noises came up from
the sea; and wild voices answered them from echoing rocks and
from out the hollow woods. A great wall seemed to have risen
between her and paradise, with a ceaseless swing of lightning
guarding the entrance.

She fell on her knees and prayed, one of those terrible,
voiceless prayers when the heart strains upward, but utters no
petition, because it dares not think what it fears or what it
desires.

Leaning exhausted then against the window frame, whom should she
see but her great drenched hero striding down the road, no form
but his, she knew, though a slouched hat covered his face, and a
long cloak wrapped him from neck to heel.

In a flash, the great wall changed its front, and now shut her
inside paradise. She ran joyfully downstairs to open the door,
and caught the wind and rain in her face, but caught also with
them a smile.

"Where is Mr. Lewis?" she asked, thinking of that gentleman by a
happy inspiration.

Mr. Granger stepped in and shook himself like a half-drowned
Newfoundland dog. "Mr. Lewis stopped to drink General Sinclair's
health. He will come down in the next train."

"General?"

"Yes; Maurice is made a brigadier. He doesn't have to climb the
ladder, you see, the ladder comes down to him. And truly he is a
gallant fellow. He goes in front of his men, and laughs at danger
as he laughs at fortune."

"I've got a fire in the parlor for you," she said.

He looked at her smilingly, pleased at the childish delight in
his coming which she did not try to hide. Why should she? "Have
you? That's pleasant. Now help me off with my cloak. I cannot
unfasten that buckle at the back of the neck. Stand on the stair
with the railing between us, that you may not get wet."

As she stood near him, she caught a sweet breath of English
violets.

"I brought them out for you," he said, giving them to her. "See!
not a stem is broken."

{310}

She ran up-stairs to put the flowers in her chamber--they were
too sacred to be shared with others--and coming down, entered the
parlor just after Mr. Granger. Presently Mr. Lewis appeared, and
they had dinner.

The conversation chanced to turn on presentiments; and since they
were all in very friendly humor, Miss Hamilton told of her
afternoon terror, making it as presentable as possible. "I
suffered a few minutes of mortal fear," she said. "I seemed to
_know_ that some dreadful accident had happened to one of
the family. What is the meaning of those impressions that are
often false, but sometimes true, and that come to us so suddenly,
uninvited and unexpected?"

"They are the conclusion of which a woman is one of the
premises," Mr. Lewis said in his rough way. "Did you ever hear of
a man having presentiments? Of course not. He may have if his
liver is out of order; not otherwise."

"I'm not bilious," pouted Miss Hamilton.

Mrs. Lewis had been listening with interest. She was one of those
persons who believe that there are more things in heaven and
earth than are dreamed of in most philosophies. Her husband
called her superstitious.

"I believe in those presentiments which come to us unexpectedly,"
she said. "We may know that they come from outside by the shock
of their coming. We may not be clear. We may think that they
point to the past or the present, when really they indicate the
future. I think that what we call a true presentiment is a
communication from some outside intelligence."

Margaret started and looked uneasily at the speaker. Mr. Lewis
regarded his wife with affectionate contempt. "There's the woman
who always wishes when she sees two white-faced horses coming
toward her, and when she sees the new moon over her right
shoulder, and who won't wear an opal because it's an unlucky gem,
though it is her favorite. That's the way with women. Their
manner of arriving at conclusions is a caution to common sense.

Mrs. Lewis sugared her strawberries, and seemed to soliloquize.
"'Two wings are better than ten legs,' says the butterfly to the
caterpillar."

Mr. Granger good-naturedly came to the rescue. "It is my
opinion," he said, "that these excessively reasonable people make
as many mistakes as the most imaginative, only their mistakes are
not so obvious, though often far worse. They chill fresh
spontaneous feeling, they dampen enthusiasm, they wound hearts
that they cannot heal. In ordinary matters, I set reason above
all; but when we would measure the walls of the new Jerusalem, we
must have a reed of gold, and it must be in the hand of an
angel."

Mr. Southard had also his word to say in defence of woman against
Mr. Lewis's slighting remarks. But his serious defence was more
irritating than the others' laughing attack. He spoke honorably,
and often truly; but in the tone of one who understands the
subject, root and branch. The three ladies listening felt as if
they were three primers with pretty pictures, and nice little
good lessons in large print, which Mr. Southard had read with
edification to himself in the intervals of more serious study.

"Woman," he said, "woman is--" And paused there, catching an
impatient sparkle in Miss Hamilton's eyes.

{311}

"Oh! I know," she exclaimed with the stammering eagerness of a
child who can spell a big word--"I know what woman is!
'_Hominis confusio_.' I--I read it in a book."

The minister sat silent and confounded.

"I propose the health of General Sinclair," said Mr. Lewis.

After dinner the party gathered about the parlor fire, and as it
fell from flame to coal, told stories of hurricanes, and
tornadoes, and shipwrecks, the fearful recitals intensifying
their sense of comfort and safety.

While they talked, the storm passed away, and there was only the
sound of vines swinging against the panes, and the ceaseless
murmur of the sea. When they opened the window, clouds of perfume
came in. The sky was quite clear, and there was a tinge of orange
yet lingering in the west. In the east was a still brighter
aurora, and the full moon, coming up, feathered with a crest of
gold every crisp, bright wavelet.

They all went out and strolled down to the beach. Every leaf and
twig and blossom, and the long line of the eaves, were hung full
of glittering rain-drops, and the grass shone as if sheathed in
burnished silver.

They sighed and were silent. A scene so lovely and peaceful is
always like a rebuke.


           Chapter VII.

  "This monarch, so great, so powerful,
     must die, must die, must die."
  "Praise be to him who liveth for ever."

During that whole summer there was a quiet but potent influence
at work under Margaret Hamilton's superficial life; ever at work,
yet silently, scarcely recognized by herself. The spark struck
out by Mr. Southard in his anti-Catholic lecture was slowly
kindling in the depths of her being.

There was not a thought of controversy in her mind. As she read,
one doctrine after another appeared, and showed its harmony with
some need of hers; or if not needed, it was not antagonistic,
like the pleasant face of a stranger who may become a friend.
Fortunately, no person and no book had said to her, You
_must_ believe; and so awakened opposition. Or if the
obligation had been insinuated, she had not perceived it. She
felt that it was for her alone to say what she must believe, as
long as she invited truth generously, and was ready to accept it
when it appeared to her with a truthful face. Of course she was
not one to make syllogisms at every step, and, being a woman, was
not likely to think that necessary. She looked up to find one
truth after another standing smiling and confident on the
threshold of her heart, and as smilingly she bade them welcome.
Reason gave up the reins to intuition, and light came without a
cloud. She realized nothing, till, startled by some outside call
that woke a many-voiced stir of hitherto silent guests, she
opened her eyes, and found herself a Catholic.

The first emotion was one of incredulity; then followed delight,
mingled with a fear which was merely the shadow cast by old
bugbears that, looked at fearlessly in that new light, faded and
fled like ghosts at dawning. Then all surprise faded away. She
recognized her proper place. She was at home.

But how to tell Mr. Granger! For she must tell him without delay.
It was not an easy task. If he had suspected, perhaps she could
have spoken; but he never dreamed of the change in her. If the
subject had been introduced, she must have spoken; but for some
reason, the "papists" were allowed to rest unscathed in the
family conversations.
{312}
It was the war; it was General Sinclair, sabre in hand, riding
into battle as if it were a _féte_; it was the weather, a
whole month of persistent and most illogical rain, pouring down
through west winds, through dry moons, through red sunsets,
through every sign that should bring clear skies, Taurus being
clerk of the weather, they concluded; it was when they should go
back to town--" Not till the trees should resume specie payment,"
was Mr. Granger's professional dictum; it was any and everything
but theology. And so the weeks went past, and October came, and
the story was not told. But he must know before they returned to
town, for then she was to be baptized.

Her uneasiness did not escape Mr. Granger, and in some measure it
communicated itself to him. He perceived that she wished to say
something to him, yet was afraid to speak.

"After all," he thought, "why should I wait for her to begin? She
is as timid, sometimes, as much of a baby, as my Dora. I dare say
it is some foolish thing, only fit to laugh at. I must help her."

It was Sunday. Mr. Southard was in town, Mr. and Mrs. Lewis and
Aurelia taking their farewell walk in the pine woods, for the
family were to leave the seashore that week, and Dora was in the
kitchen, hushing to sleep an interesting family of kittens. Miss
Hamilton walked up and down the piazza, and Mr. Granger sat just
inside one of the windows, looking at her. He saw that she
occasionally glanced his way, and hesitated, and that with some
suspense or fear her face had grown very pale.

He leaned on the sill, as she came past, and regarded her
anxiously.

"You are not looking well," he said. "I hope that nothing
troubles you."

She came to him immediately, eagerly; a faint smile just touching
her lips, and fading again.

"I wanted to tell you; but I was afraid," she said, speaking like
one out of breath.

"I am sorry that you are afraid of me. Have I ever given you
reason to be?"

Margaret could not look at him, but leaned against a pillar near
the window, and averted her face.

"I was afraid only because you might think--"

She stopped.

"My dear child, what a coward you are!" he exclaimed, half
laughing. "You are worse than Dora. She had not such an air of
terror when she broke my precious Palissy plate. Must I apply the
thumbscrew?"

She turned toward him suddenly, and with a look stopped his
raillery.

"Would you be much displeased, Mr. Granger, if I should be a
Catholic?" she asked; then held her breath while she awaited his
reply.

His first expression was one of utter astonishment.

"But you are not in earnest!" he said, after a moment. "This is
only a fancy."

"Don't believe that!" said Margaret. "I am so firmly a Catholic
that I would die for the faith. It has been growing in my mind a
long time; and now the work is finished. I could not go back,
even to please you, Mr. Granger. I must follow my convictions."

"Certainly," he said very quietly, looking down. "No one has a
right to interfere with your convictions. Do you intend to become
openly a Catholic, and leave your own church for that?"

"I do not know how to believe one thing and say another," she
replied. "I am to be baptized as soon as I go in town."

{313}

She seemed abrupt, almost defiant; but it was only because she
was weak.

Mr. Granger drew himself up slightly.

"Since your mind is so fully made up, and your arrangements
perfected, there is, of course, no more to be said about the
matter. I am surprised, since I have not been led to expect
anything of the sort; but I have neither the right nor the desire
to control your religious opinions. Fortunately, conscience is
free in this country."

"But you are displeased!" she exclaimed tremulously; for every
word had fallen like ice upon her heart.

"You cannot expect me to be pleased, since I am not a Catholic,"
was the reply.

Margaret sighed heavily under the first pressure of her cross.
"You wish me to go away?"

He looked at her in astonishment. "Certainly not! When I say that
I have no right or desire to interfere in your religion, I mean
that I am not to persecute you or to make any difference with you
on account of it. Nothing is to be changed unless you wish it."

She had expected him to ask some explanation; but not a word more
did he say. He seemed to think that the subject was disposed of.

His silence wrung her heart like the veriest indifference; but he
was not indifferent. He thought, "She has done all this without
confiding in me, and tells me only when she must. It is not for
me to question her. What I am to know she must communicate
voluntarily."

She waited a moment, then turned slowly away, went in at the
door, and up-stairs to her chamber.

When they met again, Mr. Granger tried to be quite as usual. He
was even more scrupulously respectful than formerly. But she felt
the chill of all that courtesy that had once been kindness. The
next day she went in town, and was baptized. The sooner the
better, she thought. But, if she had expected any delight or
conscious change to follow the reception of the sacrament, she
was disappointed. There was only that calm which follows the
consciousness of being in the right way. The baptism was strictly
private; no one present but the two necessary witnesses; and
after it was over, she took the cars back to the country.

"Everything is peaceful," she thought, walking through the silent
woods, now burning with autumn colors. "Everything is sweet," she
added, as, coming in sight of the house, she saw little Dora
running joyfully out to meet her.

"When you come back, I'm glad all over," said the child.

That evening Mr. Southard came home alone, and with a very grave
face. "I have bad news for you," was his first greeting on
entering the parlor.

Mrs. Lewis started up with a cry. Miss Hamilton sank back in her
chair.

"General Sinclair is killed."

"Thank God!" exclaimed both ladies.

They thought that some accident had happened to Mr. Granger or
Uncle Charles," explained Aurelia, seeing the minister's
astonishment.

"Some people never know how to tell bad news!" cried Mrs. Lewis,
her face still crimson with that first terrified leap of the
heart. "Can't you see, Mr. Southard, that you ought to have begun
by saying that our family were all well? Look at that girl! She
is like a snow image. Oh! well, excuse me; but you did give me
such a start. Now tell us the whole, please. I am very sorry."

{314}

Poor Mr. Southard took his scolding with the greatest humility,
but was so disconcerted by it that he could hardly finish the
recital.

Mr. Granger had received a telegram from Washington, and had gone
on immediately to bring the remains of his cousin home for
burial. He wished them to go into town, and have the house open
for the funeral. General Sinclair's wife was ill in Montreal, and
could not be present. Mr. Granger had telegraphed her before
starting.

They went to town the next day, and hastened to put the house in
order; and on the second day Mr. Granger arrived.

It was impossible to have a private funeral. Mr. Sinclair had a
host of friends, his reputation was a brilliant one, and he had
died in battle. Military companies offered their escort, and the
public desired to honor the dead by some demonstration. Finally,
Mr. Southard opened his church, and consented to preach the
sermon.

One would have thought that some public benefactor had died. The
church was crowded, and crowds lined the streets through which
the procession passed. Many a great and good man has died, yet
received no such ovation.

A military funeral is the sublime of mourning. We may not know
whose memory is thus honored, whose silence thus lamented; but
those wailing strains of music touch our heartstrings as the wind
sweeps the windharp, and tears start at the obsequies of him
whose name we never heard, whose face we never looked upon.
Perhaps it is that requiem music mourns not that one man is dead,
but that all men must die.

Mr. Southard had felt a temporary embarrassment as to the manner
in which he should treat his subject. He could not hold the dead
up as a model, for Mr. Sinclair had been an unbeliever and a man
of the world. There was but one way, and that one was congenial
to the speaker and welcome to the hearers. The man must be, as
much as was possible, ignored in the cause.

From the moment when the minister rose in the pulpit, the spirit
in which he would speak was plain to be seen. His mouth was
stern, there was a steel-like flash in his eyes, and his voice
was clear and ringing when he announced his text:

"_And he said to Zebee and Salmana: What manner of men were
they whom you slew in Thabor? They answered: They were like thee,
and one of them as the son of a king. He answered them: They were
my brethren, the sons of my mother. As the Lord liveth, if you
had saved them, I would not kill you. And he said to Jether his
eldest son: Arise, and slay them_."

There was a pause of utter silence; then the minister extended
his hands toward the open, flag-draped, flower-crowned coffin in
front of the pulpit, and exclaimed, "One of them as the son of a
king!"

Instantly every eye was turned on that white and silent face, and
the princely form extended there, superbly beautiful as a marble
god. It seemed regicide to kill such a man. After that look,
scarcely one present revolted at the tone of the sermon, which
echoed throughout the vengeful call, "Arise, and slay them!"

As the family sat that evening at home, trying to throw off the
gloomy impressions of the day, and to talk quite as usual, the
conversation, by some chance, turned on theology, and settled
upon Catholicism. Mr. Granger, who had been sitting apart and
silent, roused himself at that, and tried to introduce some other
topic, but without success. Miss Hamilton was mute, feeling that
her time had come. If only her friend were on her side, she would
not have cared so much; but he was far from her. The coldness
that had arisen between them at first had increased rather than
diminished. Perhaps it was partly her own fault; but it hurt her
none the less.

{315}

"The papists are certainly gaining ground in this country," Mr.
Southard said. "We have hard work before us. They know how to
appeal to the frivolous tastes of the times, as of old they
appealed to the superstitious. Their music pleases opera-goers,
and their ceremonies amuse the curious. Worse than that, their
sophistries deceive the romantic and the credulous."

"Oh! live and let live," interposed Mr. Granger hastily. "There
are a good many roads to heaven."

"The Son of God said that there was but one," replied the
minister.

"If there is but one," Mr. Granger said, rising, "he is a bold
man who will say that he is right, and all the others wrong."

"Are you a Catholic, Mr. Granger?" demanded Mr. Southard with
some heat.

"No," was the reply; "but some who are dear to me are Catholic."

Margaret's heart gave a bound. She breathed an aspiration. Her
time had come. She was sitting alone opposite them all, and they
all looked at her as she leaned forward with a slight gesture
that checked further speech.

"I am a Catholic, Mr. Southard," she said. "I was baptized this
week."

The minister started up with an exclamation, the others stared in
astonishment; but Mr. Granger took a step and placed himself at
Margaret's side.

O generous heart! She did not look at him, but she began to
tremble, as the snow-wreath trembles in the sun before it quite
melts away.

"You cannot mean it!" Mr. Southard found voice to say.

O joy! She wasn't afraid of him now.

"I am quite in earnest," she replied.

He leaned against the table near him, too much excited to sit,
too much overcome to stand unsupported.

"You mean that you are pleased with their ceremonies, that some
of their doctrines are plausible, not that you accept them all,
and pay allegiance to the pope of Rome. It cannot be!"

"I honor the pope as the head of the church, and I can listen to
no teacher of religion whom he does not approve," was the reply.

"My God!" muttered the minister. He stood one moment looking at
her as if he saw a spectre, then turned away with drooping head,
and went toward the door, staggering so that he had to put his
hand out for support. To that sincere but mistaken man it was as
if he had seen the pit open, and one he loved drawn into it.

The others sat silent and embarrassed, till Aurelia, bursting
into tears, started up and left the room.

Margaret glanced at Mrs. Lewis, and found that she had quite
recovered from her surprise.

"The programme seems to be flourish of trumpet, and _exeunt
omnes_," the lady said. "But I mean to stand my ground. I
don't find you in the least frightful. You look to me precisely
as you did an hour ago, only brighter perhaps. My only fear at
this instant is lest we may have to tie you up to keep you out of
a convent."

"I have no thought of a convent," said Margaret.

{316}

"Oh! well, I don't see but we can get along with everything else.
There's fish on Fridays, and the necessity of holding one's
tongue occasionally. I think we can manage. Mr. Lewis, can you
shut your mouth sufficiently to give an opinion?"

Thus called upon, Mr. Lewis found voice. "What in the world did
you want to go and turn Catholic for?" he demanded angrily.
"Couldn't you like 'em well enough at a distance, as I do? That's
just a woman's romantic, headlong way of doing things up to the
handle. You've upset your own dish completely. Nobody will marry
you now."

Miss Hamilton smiled. "That is a view of the matter which I never
thought to take," she said.

"But you must think of that," Mr. Lewis persisted, perfectly in
earnest.

"No, thank you; I won't," she replied, rising. "I thank you
all"--with downcast eyes and a little tremor in her voice--"I
thank you that you are not too angry with me for what I could not
help. I could not have borne--" There words failed her.

She glanced at Mr. Granger as she went out, and caught one of
those heartfelt smiles which lighted his face when he was
thoroughly friendly and pleased.

There was little rest for her that night. Hour after hour she
heard Mr. Southard's step pacing to and fro in his chamber
beneath, not ceasing till near morning. But after she went to
bed, Aurelia came softly in, and, bending, put her arms around
Margaret, and kissed her.

"I am sorry if I made you feel bad by going away so," she said in
a voice stifled by long weeping. "But you know I was so taken by
surprise. Of course we are all the same friends as ever.
Good-night, dear! Go to sleep, and don't worry about anything.
Mr. Granger and aunt and uncle told me to say good-night to you
for them."

"How good everybody is--God and everybody!" thought Margaret.

In the morning all appeared as usual, except that there was no
Mr. Southard at the table. Luncheon-time came, and Mrs. James
reported the minister to have locked his door and declined
refreshment. When the dinner-bell rang, still Mr. Southard had
not come down.

"If he doesn't come to dinner," Miss Hamilton thought, thoroughly
vexed, "I will send him a note which will give him an appetite.
This is sheer nonsense."

But as they entered the dining-room they heard his step on the
stairs, and he followed them in.

Hearing him greet the others quite in his usual manner, Margaret
glanced at him, and found him waiting to bow to her. He looked as
if he had had a long illness.

"What! you desert your seat too?" he said, seeing her go toward
the other end of the table.

"I thought you might be afraid to sit by me," she replied
pettishly. Then, as he dropped his glance and colored faintly,
she repented, and went back to her seat by him.

When they rose, he spoke to her aside. "May I see you in the
library now, or at your convenience? I would gladly speak with
you tonight."

"Now, if you please," she answered, thinking it best to have the
interview over at once, since it was inevitable.

It would be worse than useless to repeat the minister's
arguments. With more of patience and humility than she had
expected, he asked for and listened to the story of her
conversion. But his calmness deserted him more and more as he
perceived how firmly grounded was her conviction, and how hard
would be the task of reclaiming her.

{317}

Polemical discussions were always irritating, but not always
convincing, she insisted. She could not trust herself to engage
in them, even if she were capable. She did not want to be told
that such a man had been wicked, that such an abuse had existed.
When treason had found a place among the apostles, it might well
taint some of their successors. It mattered not; her faith was
not based on any individual. Let Mr. Southard take the doctrines
of the church, as she had learned them, from the church itself,
and then prove them false if he could. Let him take the books
that had satisfied her, and answer their arguments, theologian to
theologian. With her the contest would be unequal; but she would
gladly listen to his refutation, she assured him.

"What books have you read?" he asked, resting his head on his
hand, disconcerted to find that, instead of being opposed to an
uninstructed young woman, he was to have arrayed against him the
flower of Catholic theologians.

She named them, an imposing list, at the repetition of which a
slow red crept up into the minister's cheeks. Apparently the
young woman was not so uninstructed as he had thought.

"Mr. Southard," she concluded, "I have no desire but to know the
truth. If you can convince me that I am wrong, I will renounce my
errors as promptly as I adopted them. If you are thoroughly
convinced that you are in the right way, then you ought to be
fearless. But if it is too much trouble for you to study the
subject, if I am not worth it, then let the matter drop."

"I will read the books, and go over their arguments with you,"
the minister said, looking at her keenly as if he suspected some
hidden motive in her proposal.

"I am honest!" she said, hurt by his expression. "What have I to
gain, if not heaven? What have I not to lose? I feel surely that
our happy household will never again be the same that it has
been."

"I must believe you sincere," he replied. "But I cannot imagine
what should have set you, of all persons, on this track."

Miss Hamilton smiled as she rose. "It was you, sir. You should
beware of the flattery of abuse."

The next morning after breakfast the minister found on his study
table a pile of controversial works that the housekeeper had been
instructed to leave there for him. Beside them lay a crucifix. He
touched it, and it seemed to burn his fingers. He pushed it away,
and it burned his heart.

"After all, it is the image of my crucified Redeemer," he said;
and took it in his hand again. Looking at it a moment, his eyes
filled with tears.

               To Be Continued.

-------

{318}

                Good Old Saxon.

	    By An English Catholic.


During the last five years an admirable society, formed in
London, and called the Early English Text Society, has been
reproducing at a cheap rate a large number of curious and
valuable works written in the thirteenth, fourteenth, fifteenth,
and sixteenth centuries. Many of these existed in manuscript
only, while others were out of print, and very difficult of
attainment. They range over a variety of different subjects, and
being beautifully printed, amply supplied with notes and
glossaries, and each edited by an accomplished Anglo-Saxon
scholar, they afford clergymen, antiquarians, and men of letters
in general an excellent opportunity of becoming familiar with the
earlier forms of the English language, and the best authors
during a literary period hitherto regarded as obscure.

These publications synchronize with, and have partly grown out
of, a movement which, though retrograde, has been really an
improvement and an advance--a movement, namely, from Latinized to
Saxon English. We may perhaps date its commencement from the time
when Dr. Johnson was approaching his sixtieth year. He had, for a
long time, been lending the weight of his great name to the
practice of using very long words, and those chiefly of Latin
origin. In doing this he had not merely followed a crowd of
classical English writers, but had put himself at their head. The
genius of the language was being lost, and when it seemed to be
gaining strength, it was in reality growing weaker. Its original
tendency had been toward words of one syllable, but under
Shaftesbury, Bolingbroke, and a multitude of essayists and
pamphleteers of the eighteenth century, it tended strongly toward
the use of words of many syllables. Thus sound was frequently
substituted for sense, and sentences, though they ran more
smoothly, had in them far less fibre. An air of pedantry was
thrown over expressions, when such a word as "tremulousness" was
substituted for "quivering," and "exsiccation" for "drying."
Mannerism was certainly the mildest epithet that could be applied
to such changes, when they became frequent and systematic. An
instance of the habit in question is often quoted from Johnson's
Dictionary, where, in defining "net" and "network," he calls the
first, "anything made with _interstitial vacuities_," and
the second, "anything _reticulated_ or _decussated_, at
equal distances, with _interstices_ between the
_intersections_."

Yet Johnson himself had, in the grammar prefixed to his
Dictionary, pointed out clearly how very monosyllabic English was
originally, how "our ancestors were studious to form borrowed
words, however long, into monosyllables;" how they cut off
terminations, cropped the first syllable, rejected vowels in the
middle, and weaker consonants, retaining the stronger, which seem
"the bones of words." Thus, from "excrucio" they made "screw;"
from "exscorio," "scour;" from "excortico," "scratch;" from
"hospital," "spittle;" and the like.
{319}
By such processes, performed not according to rule, but by the
unconscious working of national instincts, our forefathers
produced a wonderful agreement between the sound of their words
and the thing signified. _Squeak, crush, brawl, whirl, bustle,
twine,_ are but a few among a multitude of instances which
will occur to any one who gives attention to the subject. Wallis,
indeed, a writer often quoted in the grammar referred to,
establishes the fact of a great agreement subsisting between even
the letters, in the native words of our language, and the thing
signified; and his analysis of the meaning conveyed by sn, str,
st, thr, wr, sw, cl, sp, and other combinations is highly
ingenious and, on the whole, satisfactory. He comes to the
conclusion that one of our monosyllable words "emphatically
expresses what in other languages can scarce be explained but by
compounds, or decompounds, or sometimes a tedious
circumlocution."

But although Dr. Johnson, like Wallis, appreciated highly the
Saxon origin and character of English, though he fully recognized
the strength which it derives from its native sources as opposed
to southern innovations, his own practice was eminently faulty,
and sure, in the hands of his imitators, to degenerate into
pedantry and stilts. It was well, therefore, that when his career
was drawing to a close, an obscure but highly gifted boy in
Bristol ransacked the muniment room of St. Mary Redcliffe's
Church, and found, or pretended to have found, in its old chests,
the poems of Rowley, who was said to have written in the time of
Edward III. The poems were not without merit in themselves, but,
when Chatterton had, amid the pangs of hunger, put an end to his
short and weary existence, they attracted attention in
consequence of the antiquated form in which they appeared. They
were like the fossil remains of extinct animals, and spoke of a
literary period little known at that time even to the best
English scholars. They breathed the language and the spirit of
Chaucer; and from the moment of their appearance may be traced
the reaction in favor of Saxon phraseology which marks the
literature of the present day. The boy-author saw by intuition
what Dr. Wallis had reduced to rules. Perhaps he had never
analyzed very closely his own reasons, nor traced attentively the
process of nature in the formation of words, so as to produce in
them an agreement between the sound and the thing signified; but
his youthful ear was charmed with the native energy of what Byron
called our "northern guttural," and he loved to imitate, in such
lines as these, the rugged sweetness of the early English poets:

  "The rodie welkin sheeneth to the eyne;
   In dasied mantles is the mountain dight,
   The neshe young cowslip bendeth with the dew."

In these lines, all the words are of the pure Saxon type; and the
same may be said of almost every stanza in Chaucer's Tales.

  "The flowrs of many divers hue
   Upon their stalkis gonin for to spread,
   And for to splay out their leavis ill brede,
   Again the sun, gold-burned in his sphere,
   That down to them y-cast his beamis clear.'

And again, as we read in "The Clerke's Tale:"

  "And whanne sche com hom sche wolde brynge
     Wortis and other herbis tymes ofte,
   The which sche shred and seth for her lyvyng
     And made her bed ful hard, and nothing softe."

This, as regards language, is the mould in which the Tales are
cast. The same Saxon stamp imprinted on the verse of Spenser,
though the _Fairie Queen_ came two centuries after the
_Canterbury Tales_. One stanza shall suffice as a specimen:

{320}

  "Then came the jolly summer, being dight
     In a thin silken cassock coloured greene,
   That was unlyned all, to be more light;
     And on his head a girland well beseene
   He wore, from which as he had chauffed been
     The sweat did drop; and in his hand he bore
   A bow and shaftes; as he in forrest greene
     Had hunted late the libbard or the bore
   And now would bathe his limbs with labor heated sore."

The habits and tastes of Ben Jonson and of Milton were largely
influenced by their classical studies. The best authors of
ancient Greece and Rome filled their memories, and it was only
natural that their writings should betray at every turn the
sources from which they had been fed. Yet a multitude of passages
might be cited from these poets in which the genuine ring of the
early English rhymers only is heard. Thus Ben Jonson, in a
favorite piece of advice to a reckless youth, says:

  "Nor would I you should melt away yourself
   In flashing bravery; lest, while you affect
   To make a blaze of gentry to the world,
   A little puff of scorn extinguish it,
   And you be left like an unsavoury snuff
   Whose property is only to offend."

The last line has more than one word of Latin origin; but in
Milton's _Mask of Comus_ we find long passages entirely free
from the foreign element. Thus, Sabrina sings:

  "By the rushy-fringed bank
   Where grows the willow and the osier dank,
       My sliding chariot stays,
   Thick set with agat, and the azure sheen
   Of turkis blue and em'rald green,
       That in the channel strays;
     Whilst from off the waters fleet
     Thus I set my printless feet
     O'er the cowslip's velvet head
     That bends not as I tread."

Now it must not be supposed that in calling attention to the
Saxon character of English as opposed to, or distinct from, its
Latin and Norman aspects, we are advocating any exclusive system.
We rejoice in our language being a compound; and as some of the
most exquisite perfumes are produced by distilling a variety of
different flowers and leaves, so languages formed by the mixture
of several races, and influenced by numerous changes and chances
in the history of the people who speak them, are often, in their
way, as vigorous and beautiful as any of more simple origin. This
is especially the case with that tongue which, being our own, is
dearer to us than all besides. But because it consists, and must
ever consist, of various elements, there is no reason why we
should be indifferent to the relative proportions in which these
elements are mixed together; nor is it by any means superfluous
to inquire whether the tendency of a compound language may not,
at any particular period, be toward corruption and decay, and, at
another time, toward health, consistency, majesty, melody, and
strength.

We have assumed that Saxon is the basis of English, and that of
late years there has been among English writers a tendency to
reascend the stream to its source, to freshen and invigorate
their diction by the use of native, as distinct from foreign
words. We have mentioned Chatterton as being, perhaps
unconsciously, a leader in this movement; and we would add that
Burns also fostered the reviving taste for pure English; for,
though he wrote in the Scottish dialect, that dialect had, and
has still, a thousand points of contact with our language in the
days of its youth. Though its peculiarities were of Gaelic rather
than Saxon origin, yet they resembled old English in this, that
they were marked by short words and many consonants. Hence Robert
Burns's verse revolts instinctively from the many liquid
syllables of the South, and is wild and ragged as the crags and
glens which were his favorite haunts. So far as it influenced our
literature, it recalled it from the smoother and less vigorous
course of Latinized or Johnsonian English to the sharper,
simpler, and clearer notes of less artificial times.

{321}

  "Your critic-folk may cock their nose
   And say, How can _you_ e'er propose,
   _You_ who ken hardly verse frae prose,
       To mak a sang?
   But, by your leaves, my learned foes,
       Ye're may be wrang."

The touch and racy dialect of the _Border Minstrelsy_, which
Walter Scott edited, Mr. Evans's _Collection of Old
Ballads_, and Percy's _Reliques of Ancient English
Poetry_, guided public taste into a direction opposed to the
tame mediocrity of the imitators of Dryden and Pope. The ear and
the mind alike were charmed by the exceeding simplicity of the
style of these old ballads, and their almost exclusive use of
monosyllables.

Here are a few notes from one of those Jacobite songs which
resounded so freely among the Highlands when Prince Charles
Edward came to recover the crown of his fathers. Walter Scott
compares such ballads to the "grotesque carving on a Gothic
niche:"

  "It's nae the battle's deadly stoure
   Nor friends pruived fause that'll gar me cower,
   But the reckless hand o' povertie,
   Oh! that alane can daunton me!

  "High was I born to kingly gear,
   But a cuif came in my cap to wear,
   But wi' my braid sword I'll let him see
   He's nae the man will daunton me."

The Lake school of poetry, being founded in a deep love of nature
and a close scrutiny of her works, had a concurrent influence in
restoring the liberal use of the older forms of speech. Writers
like Charles Lamb, whose minds were richly stored with the
treasures of Elizabethan lore, were sometimes accused of
affectation in employing archaisms, but "the old words of the
poet," as the author of "Summer Time in the Country" observes,
"like the foreign accent of a sweet voice, give a charm to the
tone, without in any large degree obscuring the sense." Indeed,
if the most popular passages in Wordsworth, and in his great
master Shakespeare, be examined, they will be found to answer on
the whole to that ideal of English phraseology which is here
formed--one, namely, in which the Saxon element largely
predominates. Thus, almost at random, we quote from _The
Midsummer Night's Dream:_

  "What hempen home-spuns have we swaggering here,
   So near the cradle of the fairy queen?"

And from Wordsworth's "Idle Shepherd Boys:"

  "Beneath a rock, upon the grass,
     Two boys are sitting in the sun;
   Boys that have had no work to do,
     Or work that now is done.
   On pipes of sycamore they play
     The fragments of a Christmas hymn;
   Or with that plant which in our dale
   We call stag-horn or fox's tail,
     Their rusty hats they trim:
   And thus, as happy as the day,
   Those shepherds wear the time away."

Shakespeare's description of Queen Mab, in _Romeo and
Juliet_, may also be pointed out as a signal example of pure
Saxon English throughout; but it is too long and too familiar to
our readers to be quoted here.

There are not wanting men of talent and research, who have
remarked the change which has come over the national literature
in its rebound toward Saxon diction, and who have recommended it
very distinctly. Dean Swift, though in point of time he preceded
the movement, held as a principle that no Saxon word should be
allowed to fall into disuse. Dean Hoare has, in our own time,
expressed his decided conviction that those speakers and writers
impart most pleasure whose style is most Saxon in its character;
and this remark applies, as he believes, especially to poetry. It
is in accordance with the spirit of the age that we recoil from
that "fine writing" which is generally mere declamation.
{322}
In proportion as we become practical, the racy style--pointed,
suggestive, and curt--rises in value. By the exercise of thought
and cultivation of science we become exact, and through plenty of
business we become brief-spoken. Vague talking and writing is now
at a discount, and persons express themselves with more substance
and strength because they are trained in the love of truth,
historic and scientific, and have contracted a hatred of shams of
every kind. Directness of statement is what is now most valued in
a writer, and such men as Dr. Newman among Catholics, and Carlyle
and Emerson among non-Catholics, have contributed in an immense
degree to promote reverence for this quality. Circumlocution and
over-expansion are faults which no one will now tolerate, and
this jealousy for the clear and ready conveyance of ideas has a
great deal to do with recurrence to the pregnant monosyllables,
the picture-words, the gnarled and knotted strength of Saxon
English.

It is, however, to Tennyson, more than to any other modern
writer, that the public owes the more frequent use of short and
sinewy words already known to most readers, and the enrichment of
the language by the revival of many words which had become
obsolete. Enoch Arden, though a poem consisting of two thousand
lines, contains scarcely a word that is not of Saxon origin. It
is, as far as language is concerned, simplicity almost in excess.
Thus, to take but one example, it is not till we reach the last
word of the following passage that we are reminded of the partly
Latin origin of our tongue:

      "For in truth
  Enoch's white horse, and Enoch's ocean-spoil
  In ocean-smelling osier, and his face,
  Rough-reddened with a thousand winter-gales,
  Not only to the market-cross were known,
  But in the leafy lanes behind the down,
  Far as the portal-warding lion-whelp,
  And peacock-yewtree of the lonely hall,
  Whose Friday fare was Enoch's ministering."

In this passage all the words are in common use, but in other
parts of the same volume, and, indeed, in all which the laureate
has published, we perceive a strong tendency to antique and
grotesque forms of speech, derived from long and devoted
attachment to the old writers. If they were introduced by design,
simply because they are archaisms, the artifice would be
apparent, and the pedantry complete. But when they form a genuine
part of the author's inner life of thought and memory, the case
is different, and what would have been formal and stiff becomes
natural and easy. They comport well with the idea one forms of a
great thinker, and indicate a thorough mastery over the mother
tongue. They might, no doubt, easily degenerate into affectation,
but when employed with judgment and skill, they are like fossils
in a well-arranged cabinet, or old china in a well-furnished
room. Resembling, as they do, the tough, tortuous olive-tree,
they are valuable signs of a people's mental vigor; for as surely
as the "soft bastard Latin" of the Apennines indicates a
population less martial than the Romans of old--as surely as the
soft and sibilant Romaic tells of a race fallen from the higher
walks of Grecian philosophy, history, science, and song--so
surely would Latinized English be a sign that the people writing
and speaking it, were falling away from the marked character of
their forefathers, and contrasting with them as strongly as the
silken senators whom Chatham denounced contrasted with the iron
barons of the days of King John.

-------
{323}

            Waiting.

  Flame, rosy tapers, flame!
        Though flushing day
  Is mounting into heaven, it cannot shame
  The weakest rush-light burning in his name
        Who soon will say,
     "Peace to this house!" Consoling word,
     Which patient ones have heard,
        Then meekly sighed,
  "Now let thy servant, Lord, depart in peace!"
  And, granted swift release,
        Next moment died.

	Flame, rosy tapers, flame!
	No garish day can shame
     Your ruddy wax a-light in Jesus' name!

  Close, giddy honeysuckles, clambering free,
  Close your moist petals to the wandering bee.
  That with your cloistered dews you may adore
  My Lord, when he shall enter at the door.
        O blossoming sweet-brier!
  Now flushing like a seraph with desire
        To do him homage, send abroad
  Your aromatic breath, and thus entice,
        With innocent device,
  His quickening steps unto my poor abode.
  Calm lilies for his tabernacle sealed,
     O spicy hyacinths! now yield
     Your odors to the waiting air
        His welcome to prepare;
	Nor fear that by my haste
        Your perfumes you will waste;
	For each expectant sigh
     Is dearer, to the Holy One so nigh,
     Than all your honeyed nectaries exhale.
        Young rose and lilac pale,
	And every flow'ret fair,
	Incense the blissful air,
	   And bid him, hail!
{324}
	      Flame, rosy tapers, flame!
	      No garish day can shame
     Your ruddy wax a-light in Jesus' name!
        Sing, lark and linnet, sing
	The graces of this King,
	Who, in such meek array,
	Will visit me to-day:
  Young swallows, twittering at my cottage eaves,
  Shy wrens, close-nested in the woodbine leaves,
  Blithe robins, chirping on the open gate,
  Upon his coming wait:
  Glad oriole, swinging with the linden bough,
  I do entreat you, now
     With gushing throat
     Repeat your most ecstatic note.
        Afar I hear,
        With instinct quick and clear,
  His step who bears, enshrined upon his breast,
  The God who soon within my own will rest.
        Angelic choirs
	Are touching their exultant lyres:
  Sing, lark and linnet, sing,
  And with your artless jubilations bring
  Their joy to earth; and you, melodious thrush,
  While my glad soul keeps hush,
        Attune your song
        My silent rapture to prolong.

              Flame, rosy tapers, flame!
	      No garish day can shame
     Your ruddy wax a-light in Jesus' name!

-------
{325}

    From The Rivista Universale, Of Genoa.

           The Supernatural.

	   By Cesar Cantu.


Petulant tyranny of science! It will not allow us to say that two
and two are three; that there can be more than the sum of two
right angles in a triangle; or that the radii of a circle are not
equal. What arrogance thus to confine my liberty; to deny me
leave to assert that there is an exact relation between the
diameter and circumference of a circle; that the duplication of
the cube is possible, the trisection of an angle, and perpetual
motion! Why should not error have the same rights as truth?
Reason is mistress of the world; unlimited mistress of herself.
She can prove that yes is identical with no; that being and
nothing are all one. Why tire ourselves with the science of
ultimate reasons? We must regard the effects without ascending to
the causes; we accept only what can be felt and seen. What is
substance? What is cause? What are ideas? Let them pass; we hold
only to phenomenon and effect.

All would not dare to express these assertions with such
boldness, and yet they are necessary inferences from the current
sophisms and phrases of a science which stains its tyranny by
petulance and bald negations. _Experience! Experience!_ it
cries daily, and proceeds to invent theories on the formation of
the universe which will never meet the approval of experience; it
repudiates every truth _a priori_, and yet establishes, _a
priori_, that faith is contradictory to reason. In the name of
free-will it demands the destruction of free-will; as if man were
more free while seeking than after having found the truth; as if
true liberty did not consist in willing what is right.

And nowadays a multiform war is waged against ancient belief by a
contracted and intolerant science, and a system of retrogressive
and egotistical politics. Arguments and buffoonery, decrees and
violences, alternate, not only against the priests, but against
Christ. Some disfigure dogmas, and then throw them to the fishes,
or abandon them to the anger of a mob dressed in black waistcoats
or in red caps. Some resuscitate ancient errors under modern
phraseology, or excite the demon of curiosity. Some, faithful to
the system of defamation and intimidation, libel as clericals or
obscurantists those Christians who loved liberty when it was not
a mere speculation, if they are unwilling to believe that the
Italy of the future must deny the Italy of the past, to become
strong. One party in the name of authority attacks its chief
source. Some drag into the lists a conventional nationality and
an exclusive patriotism, against the universality of faith and
charity, and hurt the partial reasons of a state against
ecumenical reason. Some fight in the garb of doctors, striving to
apply the methods of observation to what is super-sensible,
confounding the proximate with the first cause, and thus arriving
at scientific scepticism, positivism, which repudiates ideas, or
at a criticism which considers generations as succeeding each
other without a connecting law--by mere evolution--without
seeking what absolute truth corresponds to the successive rise of
nations, or clearing up the future by the past--that which is
going to happen with what is permanent.
{326}
And thus they whirl in a pantheism which either accepts no God
but the human mind, or makes everything God except God himself;
leaving him the splendor of his idea, the sovereignty of his
name, but depriving him of the reality of his being and the
consciousness of his life.

There are others who, with frivolous argumentation, produce
excellent pillows for doubt, and refuse to examine, contenting
themselves with repeating the affirmations of the most accredited
organs of the press. Let us pass over those who flatter the
animal instincts of nature by writings and images which Sodom
would condemn, and proclaim the divine reign of the flesh,
saying, with Heine, "The desire of all our institutions is the
rehabilitation of matter. Let us seek good in matter; let us
found a democracy of terrestrial gods, equal in happiness and
holiness; let us have nectar and ambrosia; let us desire garments
of purple, delights of perfumes and dances, comedies and
children."

Hence comes the deplorable degradation of minds plunged not only
in ignorance but in base adulations to slaves and to the slaves
of slaves, to the rabble hailed by the people, to a debasement
called progress, to a freedom which consists in robbing others of
liberty.


                   II.

In such a state of affairs, what ought a priest or Christian to
do who reserves to himself the right of not calling evil things
good? Grow low-spirited, reproach the century, grow timorous of
science, groan like Jeremias over the woe of Jerusalem, and await
the rock which is to crush the clay-footed colossus? It looks
like compelling Providence, when we refuse to co-operate with it
in the conflict between good and evil, unless on conditions which
suit our little egotism, or please our frivolous vanity. The
timid compromise their character with strange conventions between
truth and error, by shameful oscillation between liberty and
despotism, resigning themselves to tyranny as a hypocrite may act
toward an atheist.

Christ came to carry the sword, and the time has come when he who
has one should draw and brandish it. Certainly, God will save his
church. He alone will have the glory, but will man have the merit
of it? Where silence is, there is death; and, outside of what
directly touches revealed truth, discussion is useful, even when
held with those who err; it teaches us, at least, how we are not
to act or think, if nothing else.

Some say, "It is enough to preach morality. What have rigorous
truths to do with good sentiments? the aspirations of the heart
with the deductions of cold reason?"

Superficial questions! As if one should say, "What has the soul
to do with the soul?" Do not ethics depend on dogma? do not our
actions follow from metaphysical conditions? Every doctrine
becomes an element of life or a principle of death for the soul.
A sophist may, indeed, boast of a new code of ethics, or a new
law; as if truth could be contingent and relative as well as
universal, eternal, necessary, and, as such, not produced by man,
who is mortal and limited. International associations, conspiring
to assassinate Christian civilization, will soon respond with
consequent acts to such inconsequences of literature.

{327}

When the system of attack is changed, we must change the system
of defence. Preaching can no longer be confined to mere prones,
or exhortations to the good and inculcating the _fides
carbonaria_; [Footnote 66] but we must gird on the sword of
science and eloquence, and attack resolutely those who assail us
resolutely. Truth can be saved only by victory; and in this case,
as in war, _the best defence is an attack_.

    [Footnote 66: The faith of the coal-heaver who believes
    without science.]

If errors fortify themselves in the newspapers, and come on in
serried ranks, protected by gazettes, decrees, arts, and
sciences, we must meet them with the same means, humble them with
the truths rejected or distorted by the sophists, turn their own
weapons against them; for error, which is a stumbling-block for
the incautious, may become a ladder for the wise to ascend
higher. Nowadays, when all the arguments of unbelief are allied
in an invisible church which has fraternities, missionaries,
sacrifices, and even martyrs, to assault the visible church in
the name of progress, enlightenment, morality, reason, and the
future, we must draw out all the reasons of belief in opposition.
The manifestation of truth, even though it may not destroy error,
weakens its power. It is not enough to show that our adversaries
are wrong; we must be right ourselves. Let us not allow men to
think that there are truths incompatible with faith, or outside
of its dogmas; but that, notwithstanding exaggerations,
absurdities, erroneous and culpable notions, those truths obtain
from faith all their reality, vitality, and durability; and that
he who looks well will see that every incontestable and positive
progress comes from the organization of Christian society.

In this labor, can reason ask the aid of revelation? And why not?
The rationalists might complain if we attempted to overwhelm the
question with the weight of revealed authority; but when
revelation is united to reason, the power of the latter is
doubled. Mysteries are above reason, not contrary to it. Faith is
only the most sublime effort of reason, which is persuaded to
believe by arguments, convinced of its impotence without faith,
as well as of its greatness with faith. Faith is a grace, because
it is not sensible certainty. It springs from the desire of a
pure heart and of a right mind that the harmonious structure of
revelation should be true. Reason by itself cannot obtain the
knowledge of a mystery, any more than it can comprehend a mystery
when revelation makes it known. Reason, however, understands that
a mystery is above it, but not opposed to it; and recognizes the
necessity of the supernatural to explain even the mysteries of
nature. In like manner, though we cannot look at the sun, yet by
its light we see all things.

Some, seeing our adversaries use the sciences and politics
against religion, work with the arts, speak with ability, begin
to vituperate civilization, attack its acts and writings, deplore
the times, deny the stupendous progress of the age--the fruit of
so much study, fatigue, and genius.

This is not only an evil; it is a danger. Instead of repudiating
natural truths, we must seek to reconcile them with the
super-sensible, show ourselves just toward what is new, use it to
rejuvenate the decrepit, and apply it to the branches which have
lost vitality. The time will never come when all objections will
be conquered. They will always arise with new forms and new
phases.
{328}
Great thinkers give the word of command for new revolts against
truth; it is therefore necessary for great theologians to combat
them. Every Catholic is not fit to enter the list as a champion,
but every Catholic ought to know why faith is necessary in
general, and what he ought to believe in particular. The least
that can be expected of him is not to be less ignorant than the
curious, the learned, and the railers who, on every side, pick up
arguments for not believing. And how few know their religion, not
only among the common people, but even among the educated
classes! The fault lies in the fact that, while we Catholics are
so superior to our adversaries, we do not know how to use our
advantage, because we know not in what this superiority consists.
Otherwise, every educated person would find by himself as many
new, ingenious, and brilliant proofs to defend the religion of
his ancestors as others invent to destroy it--original, personal
proofs, as light, perhaps, as the objections, but sufficient for
the discussion of circles, to answer presumptuous contempt, false
ideas, and false principles, which are published in seductive
garb, with specious propositions, audacious negations, and
intrepid affirmations, [Footnote 67] and which penetrate into
politics, science, art, repugnant not only to logic, but even to
the instincts of common sense.

    [Footnote 67: See a golden work of the Princess Wittgenstein
    Iwanowska, _Simplicité des Colombes, Prudence des
    Serpents_, where she refutes the most common objections,
    and exhorts especially ladies to prudence and simplicity in
    controversy and conduct.]

But, moreover, who does not feel the deficiency in scientific and
really practical education in that science which satisfies the
reason, the heart, and faith.

The religious element should form a great part in education, and
it would suffice to change the tone of controversy, from being
sour, contemptuous, diffident, discourteous, provoking, and
partial, the result of the usual impoliteness of journalists, to
a courageous yet prudent, conscientious as well as learned,
indulgent yet immovable, method; abandoning a phraseology which
did not formerly shock men's feelings, those sarcasms which
neither heal nor console, and remembering that our adversaries
are probably men of high intelligence, in error precisely on this
account; perhaps persons of right mind, unimpeachable morals, and
even of delicate sensibility.

This is the arena of _conférences_. Fraysinnous began the
work of uniting religion with science in the pulpit. Those of
Wiseman did better at Rome. Then arose the famous names of
Lacordaire, Ravignan, and now of Fathers Felix and Hyacinthe,
[Footnote 68] and in Italy, Fathers Maggio, Fabri, Rossi,
Giordano, and others. Among these must be named Alimonda, provost
of the cathedral of Genoa, who gave a course of lectures, all
depending on one proposition, and has just published them in four
volumes, with the title _Man under the Law of the
Supernatural_. Genoa, 1868.

    [Footnote 68: At this time Father Hyacinthe is treating of
    "The Church under her most general aspect," in Notre Dame, at
    Paris. He treats of the providence of God.]

But four volumes cost more than a box of cigars! How much time it
takes to read them! some will exclaim who have, perhaps, read
_Les Miserables_ of Hugo, or _La Stella d'Italia;_ have
a copy of Thiers; subscribe for four or five magazines, and who
require a hundred or a hundred and fifty pages to be printed on a
question of finance or railroads, but find that number too great
where the discussion is about man's being, or his power of
working, on the essence of God, the immortality of the soul, the
necessity of virtue, and the necessity of religion to create it,
the divinity of Christianity, or belief in its dogmas.

{329}

But those who do not merely aspire to cloud the human intellect,
and repress sublime desires under the weight of self-interest,
passion, and the tyranny of prejudice, and who exclaim, with
Linnaeus, _"Oh! quam contemta res est homo nisi super humana se
erexerit,"_ [Footnote 69] know that to follow great ideas
becomes a nobler habit, as trivialities become common; and that
essential truths, which are never out of place or time, are based
on the same systematic method which seemed to deny them entirely.

    [Footnote 69: "Oh! how contemptible a thing is man if he
    cannot arise above what is human!"]


                  III.

Scientific atheism asserts that "common sense is the test of
belief in the supernatural," and that the greatness of every
religious conception referable to this standard is
counterbalanced by the greatness of scientific conceptions on
nature and the universe. Whoever, then, does not belong to the
party of those who presume to differ with the atheist, can easily
perceive how unacceptable a treatise on the supernatural must be;
since Alimonda began by demonstrating that it is true, and
credible; and that it imports us not only in the next life but
even in this to believe it. To desire to invent a mechanical
theory of the universe, a material origin of human intelligence
and liberty, originates the anarchical conception of giving the
explanation of the cosmological whole by means of every special
science. Büchner and Vogt modified the Cartesian ideas by
teaching "that there is no force without matter, no matter
without force; that matter thinks as well as moves; and that all
things are but dynamic transformations of matter." Hence comes
intelligent electricity, cogitating phosphorus; and Moleschott
was invited to teach in our universities that "thought is a
motion of cerebral matter, and conscience a material property."
Rognero taught that "conscience dwells in the circulatory
system." These doctrines have been preached in every
revolutionary tavern with all that personal exaggeration which we
always find in those who retail second-hand dogmas.

Well! granted these hypotheses, we still ask, What is this force?
What is this primary motion? Where is the mover? Would an
activity anterior to existence have ever created itself imperfect
and subject to evil? Can the relation of necessary succession be
confounded with the relation of causality? Does the metaphysical
conception of cause remain indistinct from the conditions of
existence? If the order of ideas be distinguished from the order
of facts, everything leads us to a first cause, to the most real
of realities, to the will of a supreme artificer which determined
inert matter to motion rather than to rest.

If, then, this motion endures with fixed laws; if, in so great a
diversity of infinite bodies, I recognize a system according to
which no one interferes with the other, but all agree in a
supreme harmony of mode; if, for instance, the destruction of one
of the celestial bodies would discompose the marvellous structure
of the universe; if from the alteration of the orbit of a planet
the man of science can conclude the existence of another,
thousands of miles distant, it is not the holy fathers but
Voltaire who will exclaim, "If the clock exists, there must
necessarily be a clock-maker." It is impossible to kill a moral
being, a universal sentiment, by arms, or books, or declamations.

{330}

The Deity does not offer himself to sensation, observation, or
experience; hence the sensists and perceptionists see in him but
a hypothesis, and reject all theology and all metaphysics. They
abuse the method of observation by applying it to what is not
observable. No object of experiment can be God; nor can any
perception reach him in this world, since he can only manifest
himself to us ideally; that is to say, by the reflection of
thought on itself, under the pure form of an idea; and an idea
necessarily supposes an existence. Reason must come to God
through the medium of the idea of God: whence an illustrious
writer defending religious philosophy adopted the appropriate
title of "IDEA OF GOD."

Nowadays, when the series of generations are brought to laugh and
dance at the funeral of God and the evaporation of Christ, it is
not superfluous to accumulate psychological and social proofs on
the existence of a first necessary Cause, on its reality, and on
its divine life reverberating in the great labor of creation; on
those laws of phenomena which others call the ideas of nature,
and we call the Creator. The word must be personified, and
substantiated to express something real.

Among these laws I have always found that those regarding the
origin of language had great influence on me and are of great
help against the atheists. The more we study, the more we are
convinced that the languages have a common source. How did man
ever discover that ideas could be represented with sounds, or
real thought by the medium of words, and then invent symbolical,
phonetic, or alphabetic signs to represent both ideas and sounds?
Or is the word only the means of expressing our thoughts, or the
essential form of them, the indispensable condition necessary to
our having them? Can sensation draw anything out of a word but a
material sound? How is it that all the human races--Iranic,
Semitic, Gallic, or Black--speak, and only men speak? How is it
that although there is a common element in all languages, yet
such diversity exists among certain groups? The more we study
this indispensable complement of creation, this condition of our
intellectual development, the more we are led to confess that
there are mysteries in the human word as well as in the divine
word; and all this reveals the name of God.

When we have proved the reality, we must investigate the essence
of God. And here we meet the mystery of unity and trinity, which,
considered in itself, explains being; considered outside of
itself, explains beings. Because, if we repudiate a supernatural
God, we must substitute another in his place--a being of reason
and abstraction, or a material god, or a god of pleasure. But
these insane hypotheses must be made to explain the existence of
the universe. They are either the eternity of matter or
emanatism. Life put into matter we know not how; born, we know
not how, we have spontaneous productions, or transformations of
species, as Lamarck and Darwin maintain; but the learned show
that these theories are impossible both as to soul and body. And
then no one of these naturalists explains the end of man, nor his
most precious gift--liberty.

{331}

The God of the Bible alone contains the true explanation of man
and the universe. He who, spontaneously putting his omnipotence
into activity without material elements, drew the world out of
nothing; and this because he is good, and wills the good and the
beautiful.


                  IV.

The most prodigious part of creation is man, destined for
eternity; nor could there be in him a tendency without a scope,
an end without a means, nor a merit without a recompense. The
world is for his use, but he must not forget that eternity is his
destiny. For the purpose of proving the material origin of the
human intellect philosophers reject all who would give to life a
distinct principle, isolated from organism, supposing that life,
at least in its rudimental form, could spring from the bosom of
organic liquids. Virchow praised the little cell, the only one of
the anatomic elements which Milne-Edwards called organical, and
which is a nucleus of various forms, surrounded by a protoplasm
of organic matter without figure. From the cell are formed the
embryos, which gradually become perfect and form animals, until
the ape changes into man.

Finally, on interrogating life in its unity, in its harmonies, in
its cause and end, in its full and substantial reality, we find
that it does not contain in itself a causal unity which is
sufficient for it; and the great modern physiologist Bernard
says: "The problem of physiology does not consist in pointing out
the physico-chemical laws which living beings have in common with
inorganic bodies, but in discovering the vital laws which
characterize them." By studying mental diseases, and perceiving
that atrophy of a certain part of the brain will cause the loss
of certain faculties, and that the injection of oxygenated blood
will reawaken them, and with similar experiments, it has been
attempted to prove the materiality of cogitation, and to show
that the soul is a chimera. These are irrational materialistic
interpretations of physiological facts, for the cause of the fact
is confounded with the conditions of the phenomenon.

This same Virchow, who seemed to have discovered such a powerful
argument against spiritualism in his theory of the cell, cannot
explain with physics and optics alone the phenomena of vision;
becomes confounded before the mystery of life, and declares:
"Nothing is like life, but life itself. Nature is twofold.
Organic nature is entirely distinct from inorganic. Although
formed by the same substance, from atoms of the same nature,
organic matter offers us a continued series of phenomena which
differ in their nature from the inorganic world. Not because the
latter represents dead nature--for nothing dies but what has
lived; even inorganic nature possesses its activity, its
eternally active labor--but this activity is not life except in a
figurative sense." [Footnote 70]

    [Footnote 70: "The Atom and the Individual," a discourse
    pronounced at Berlin in 1866.]

We do not think it superfluous to oppose these reflections, added
to those of Alimonda, to the negations of the materialists, which
have weight only because they have been often repeated; and we
conclude with Alimonda that man is an inexplicable mystery if we
do not accept the other mystery of original sin. Hence the
conflict between reason and the passions; the inclination to evil
and bloodthirstiness; the necessity of wars and prisons.
{332}
If we admit the intrinsic goodness of man, there is no guilt and
there can be no chastisement; society can institute no tribunals,
but only hospitals to cure diseases. This has been said in our
age; and common sense rejected it. The primitive fall and
successive activity show how man progresses indefinitely,
according to nature, not according to socialistic utopias. This
explains the inequality of the faculties and of labor, and hence
of goods, of property, which otherwise would be a theft.

The whole of ancient society attests this degradation; but a
Redeemer was promised; he was confusedly expected by all nations;
he was clearly predicted by the prophets of Judea, in order to
console mankind, that they might believe in him to come, hope in
him, and love him by anticipation.

These promises, and the figures which personified them, are
deposited in the Bible; that divine history which clears up the
origin of humanity and the changes of civilization, and whose
witnesses, though apparently contradictory, only make the thesis
and the antithesis of a great synthesis, interpreted by an
infallible authority. The unity of the human species asserted in
that book has been proved by the sciences, even by paleontology,
which some pretended to arm against the biblical affirmations;
and while the frivolity of the last century thought it had
mockingly dissipated truth, we have scientific progress proving
the Bible to be wonderfully in accord with the least expected
discoveries.

The continual intervention of Providence in the Bible is
repugnant to human pride, which would be the centre and creator
of all events; yet this providence it is which satisfies, at the
same time, the wants of the human heart, gives a legal
constitution to society, a sanction to human acts, without which
we should only have cutthroats and the gallows.


                  V.

Thus far we nave presented man in relation to God; let us
consider man in relation to Jesus Christ, a theme by far more
important, as we can say with the psalmist: "_Convenerunt in
unum adversus Dominum et adversus Christum ejus._" [Footnote
71] In this most corrupt world reparation was expected from
humanity, but who could fulfil it but the incarnate Word? Greater
than all the great ones of the earth, he established his
providential kingdom, making it the social centre of men and
centuries.

    [Footnote 71: "They assembled together against the Lord and
    his Christ."]

Our first parents aspired to become gods, and their pride was
transmitted to their posterity; but behold how God really unites
himself to man!

Men felt a secret want of expiation, expressed by their
sacrifices and mortifications; and Christ satisfied their desire
by uniting in himself the two natures, and by fecundating with
holy merits the sufferings of individuals and of nations.

Yet men wish to make a myth of him! And after the encyclopaedists
have derided him, now they hypocritically try to crown him with
human greatness and beauty, to rob him of his divinity! But how
can you explain his influence on the most cultivated nations,
lasting so many centuries, and through an incessant war from
Simon Magus to Renan? Is not his immeasurable influence over the
human race divine? With the light of his doctrine he created the
life of intelligence and of conscience. His is no hidden and
recondite word, but common and popular; not methodized into a
philosophical system, equipped with proofs; not even robed in
eloquence.
{333}
His scope is not to invent, but to _reveal_--that is, lift
the veil which covered primitive truths, and excite to good. He
is virtue personified, the model of men, with grace through which
charity triumphs over egotism--_grace_, the most profound
and most beautiful word in the dictionary of religion. But here
human pride rebels, because Christ taught mysteries.

What, then, are mysteries but our ignorance, and the
insufficiency of our reason? Thus the vulgar believe that the sun
goes around the earth because the senses show it; thus a silly
man would deny the existence of the imponderable fluids because
he does not see or touch them, although he feels their effects.
Three temples rise in the world: of nature, of reason, and of
religion; and in all there are mysteries. There are mysteries in
space, atoms, divisibility, forces, life, thought, the cell,
sensation, idea, limits: in everything under the form which
passes away there is a mystery which remains. If a miracle is
humanly conceivable, it ought to be divinely possible.

If you exclude the idea of the supernatural, nothing is left but
nature, with the character of necessity which reason denies it;
with a series of monstrous and gratuitous affirmations which
constitute pantheism.

But some will say, "Yes, there is a God distinct from nature; he
is self-conscious and free, but he is immutable: while the
supernatural represents him as changeable and arbitrary."

Thus reason those who, led by anthropomorphic illusions, subject
the action of God to succession. The acts of man, who is
ephemeral and localized, are necessarily successive; and because
the results of divine activity are manifested to our eyes in time
and space, they seem new and wonderful. But God is not limited by
time or space; his act is one, eternal, immanent like his will;
everything which proceeds from that act is the act itself, one,
eternal, and immanent, and thus the differences between the
natural and supernatural disappear.

To defend the idea of the supernatural is not, therefore, to
attack science or smother intelligence; but to defend the idea of
God, who is the hinge of all science. This, indeed, banishes the
supernatural from its domain; but if every reality is not
reducible to nature, it is impossible not to admit a higher
principle of the laws which nature reveals, and of which nature
is not the necessary principle. Christianity pronounces nothing
on the science of nature, except that the supernatural is above
natural laws; that there is a God, as St. Augustine says,
"_pater luminum et evigilationis nostrae_." [Footnote 72] Is
this a mystery? But is not everything which exists an
incomprehensible manifestation of the supernatural? Is not the
free-will of man an incomprehensible mystery?

    [Footnote 72: "The Father of lights and of our awaking."]

But revealed mysteries, much more than dry theorems which
restrain reason, are fruitful in meditation, humility, gratitude,
and aspiration after a life of bliss: they are light to the
intellect, motives for virtue; all have a comprehensible side;
they have their wherefore; and this is sufficient for the
happiness of individuals, and works efficaciously on the whole of
society.

{334}

Miracles, which are extraordinary to man, are natural to God, and
he uses them to manifest Christ the Redeemer. But the diminishers
of great things wish to make Christ a mountebank, or a magician
working by natural means like the mesmerizers, in whom they
believe rather than in Christ. They deny Christ and offer incense
to Hegel, who said that "_the universe_ is a simple
negation." Every religious, moral, or political doctrine must
stand the test of actualization: the idea must be realized; the
thought must become life; and the result is the criterion. But
the greatest miracle of Jesus Christ was the establishment of the
new kingdom of grace on the ruins of the kingdom of the world; to
substitute the eternal edifice of the church for corrupt
institutions; instead of proud science, to put the holy word of
the apostolate; charity, generous even to martyrdom, in the place
of brute force. Martyrdom! this is another word which shocks the
free-thinkers who retail cheap heroes, and deafen us with hymns
to the martyrs of fatherland, ennobling with this title assassins
on the scaffold. Christ is a martyr for humanity; he is a God of
order, wisdom, and charity.

But here they stop us again, and pretend that he aimed at an
impossible perfection, and was a utopist; and as such, they
reject him, although they are admirers of such dreamers as More
or Giordano Bruno, Fourier or Saint-Simon.

But is it true that Christ's doctrine cannot be realized? There
are precepts and counsels in it; and you, by confounding them,
condemn Christianity, as if it commanded all to observe what is
counselled only to a few exceptional existences called by God. To
observe the counsels special virtue is required, and those monks
who deserved so well even of society practised them. Rather than
deride and destroy them, they diffused the evangelical counsels
which they practised in their own lives--obedience, abstinence,
purity; those virtues which would give that _facilitas
imperii_--that self-control--which is so hard to keep; that
virtue which is the order of love. Those monks peopled the
Thebaid, lived in the poverty of St. Francis, in the austerities
of St. Bruno, awaited death in caverns, and ate only herbs;
others fled the world to pray for it, but the church never gave
them pharisaical faces; life, soul, talents, imagination
characterized them; the happiness of their existence was
increased by the blessing of the church; feasts, music, and
sacred rites abounded; social, domestic, and scientific life were
nourished by Christian virtue and education; patriotism had its
hymns if fortunate; audits, litanies, if unsuccessful; art and
poetry became incorporated with worship; admiration for natural
beauties was aroused; activity and prudence stimulated and
eulogized, progress approved, and civilization encouraged.

Yet the rationalists would give the glory of this civil society
of which we boast to man alone, while it is in fact the work of
the supernatural gospel. In this we find light, virtue, harmony;
that is, power, subjection, and agreement. The gospel establishes
a respected and vigilant authority in face of a policy which
traffics in opinions. Kings are bound by the same morality as the
least subjects. Rulers swear to observe the law of God; that is,
never to become tyrants. Power is exercised after the example set
by God; and the head of the state is the first-born among
brothers. Subjects are children who obey not _propter timorem
sed propter conscientiam_--not from fear but for conscience'
sake; an obedience to God rather than to men. Christianity
asserted the true doctrine of equal rights with inequality of
rank when it proclaimed that we are all brothers; it broke the
chains of the slave; abolished hereditary enmity between nations,
and all superiority save that of merit.

{335}

To deny that these advantages are derived from Christianity would
now be stupidity; but they say that while it formerly worked
wonders, there is no longer any necessity for religion, the
priest, or Christ: morality has become acclimated; necessary
truths are acquired; and so man can progress with laws,
tradition, and social organization.

Those who speak in this way do not comprehend the connection
between metaphysical and practical truth; do not realize that the
most common maxims which we drink in with our mother's milk would
become gradually obscured by separation from their source; as the
necessary sanction would be wanting to them.

Between the merely honest man and the Christian, there will
always be the difference which exists between the bird that can
only hop and the full-fledged bird which flies. Let us suppose,
even, that the learned of the future will govern themselves
better than the philosophers of antiquity; still it is only
religion that can say to the multitude, "Hope always and never
obtain." If there is no heaven, if gold and pleasure are the only
aspirations, why not enjoy them? Let a revolutionist arise and
promise them, he will obtain a hearing much more readily than the
philosopher who can promise only a doubtful eternity. But then
what will become of society? If you preach resignation to the
poor without giving them hope, will not hope arise without
resignation?

It was the gospel which humanly unfettered the child, woman, and
the poor. By it alone were exposed children and orphans gathered
together; it founded hospitals and pious retreats for every
disease of the body and mind. Vincent of Paul, Girolamo Miani,
Calasanctius, and a host of others never ceased in the church;
and even the world blesses their name, blesses their work, that
of the holy infancy, and that for the education of Chinese
children, and for the redemption of captives among the Moors.
Entire religious congregations have been founded to save children
from death, from penury, and from ignorance; so that at the
destruction of these religious orders, we ought to say, as Christ
to the mothers of Jerusalem, "Weep not over me, but over your
children." We should weep the more when we see their intellects
and souls entrusted to state officials who fashion them to suit
their masters.

And woman? From what base degradation and turpitude has she been
raised by Christianity. But the state law wills that she should
be thus addressed: "Thou hast been brought up to purity; to avoid
every impure act and look; but henceforth I, the mayor, command
thee to give thyself up to the man whom I, the mayor, designate
as thy husband." On the other hand, the socialists wish to take
her out of the domestic sanctuary to take part in business, in
government, in war; she must become a woman of letters, a
politician and a heroine. Ah! the heroism of woman consists in
fulfilling her domestic duties, in the apostleship of doing good;
let her have the heroism of faith and virtue, and she will save
the world, as she helped so much to do in the person of Mary over
eighteen centuries ago.

"Blessed are the poor, for theirs is the kingdom of God," said
Christ; and his chief followers took care of the poor, instructed
them, supplied their wants with alms; made them noble with
blessings; and, since it is necessary to suffer, the poor were
taught to bear their ills with the hope of immortal recompense.
{336}
But the strong-minded of this age fiercely scream about the
rights of the poor; and yet rob spontaneous and virtuous charity
of the means of supplying the wants of the poor. The necessity of
official aid is created, and thus pride and rancor against the
rich are excited, while suffering remains without consolation.


                  VI.

All these points have their objections and suitable answer well
developed in our orator's work. Alimonda examines man in relation
to the church and shows how human reason, while it strives to
rebel against her, is obliged to bless her, even by the mouth of
her most determined enemies, as happened to the prophet Balaam.
This church was not established by the power of man or by
progressive development; she was born beautiful and perfect, the
same in the upper room at Jerusalem as in the Council of Trent;
she underwent every species of hostility, violent and puerile, of
kings and people, of rogues and editors, and yet always remained
whole and alive.

While human institutions regulate man, the church aspires to the
government of souls. Although she aimed at so much, she was
listened to; she defined what good meant; restricted authority;
gave the law of work; and was believed. Even the ancient churches
by their very nature were spiritual societies; but they exercised
no influence on consciences, little on men's conduct, less even
than the schools of philosophy. Later heresies and schisms could
not spread or establish themselves, except by force and war, or
by allowing every one to be the judge of his own conscience and
reason; that is, heresy did not pretend to direct souls. Our
church has a perfect and unchangeable order for the government of
conscience, an order which does not vary according to opinion.
The latter will say with Thierry that the conquered are always
right; with Cousin and Thiers, that it is the conqueror who is is
always right. Which is one to believe? It will be said that the
voice of the people is the voice of God, and that common sense
ought to be the rule of our actions. Well, suppose it is; how can
we interrogate it? Where is its decision? Where its organ? They
will tell us to-day it is "universal suffrage." We shall not
dwell on such nonsense: we merely inquire, must I ask its advice
in reference to my private actions? I need for these safe, well
expressed, and efficacious principles.

The church answers every question; and her answers are always the
most generous, the most human, and the most kind to the weak. She
has a mixed government--monarchical, aristocratic, and
democratic; her aristocrats are poor fishermen. By this she is
the type of modern governments which have the representative
system. Rationalism wants to substitute revolution for this;
takes away from the people the good conditions peculiar to them,
acquired by them, legitimate and independent of governments; and
makes atheism the lever with which to subvert politics. The
apostles of rationalism adore liberty, provided they are her
priests and sacrificators; create a new author of
civilization--the rabble; oblige kings to divide their authority
with the mob; the mob upsets its creatures; kings run away; good
men hide; the owners of property, menaced by the dogma of
plebeian avidity, oppose the bayonet to the knife of the rabble
until these are overcome.

{337}

Precisely because the temporal mission of the church is great as
the mistress and legislator of nations, precisely because she is
authority, the impotent violently, and the powerful foolishly,
attack her at a time when men want rights without duties, the
husband as well as the citizen, the laborer as well as the
legislator.

The church alone has saints; she is universal, perpetual,
irreformable: characters which manifest her divine origin and
divine actuation.

This divinity of the church is found in Catholicism, not in
Protestantism. Catholicity alone has positive unity of faith,
love, civilization; that is, light, sacrifice, virtue, which
Protestantism lacks. All history and statistics, not
systematically false or officially disfigured, which looks
further than merely a few years, show that civilization does not
progress so well with Protestantism. The Catholic Church had
conquered the world and formed modern civilization before the
unity of faith and charity was broken; and she would have done
more had there been no rupture; and had not the religious wars
impeded her power, menaced Europe with a new barbarism, subjected
it again to the scourge of armies and conquests, which prevent us
even yet from considering our age superior to the most deplorable
of past centuries.


                  VII.

The Catholic Church established her primacy in Rome by three
miracles, by conquering Rome when she was mistress of the whole
world; by using Rome, her language, civilization, and
legislation, to defend Christianity; and by perpetuating the
primacy in Rome. Everything that exists has a reason for
existence; resurrection is a proof of divinity. Christian Rome,
though often driven to agony, has always revived. Exiled kings
die in banishment, abandoned and despised; this is a daily
spectacle to our age; the popes become more glorious with
persecution; a pope in exile at Avignon or in a prison at Savona
is as powerful as in the Quirinal palace. If the most powerful
emperor, the most iron will of our century, like the acrobat who
kicks away the ladder after using it to ascend, robbed the pope
who assisted him to rise, insulted and imprisoned him, all
Europe--Catholic, Protestant, and schismatic--took arms to
restore the pontiff. Thrones crumble, dynasties disappear; but
the old man always returns to his seat, from Avignon or Salerno,
from Fontainebleau or from Gaeta.

Modern servility may grow indignant to see Henry V. at the feet
of Gregory VII.; but it could not see Pius VI. kiss the hand of
emperors, as Voltaire did with Catharine or with Frederic of
Prussia; in vain will it hope to see Pius IX. at the feet of
diplomatists or demagogues; but he will say with St. Augustine,
_Leo victus est saeviendo; Agnus vicit patiendo_. [Footnote
73]

    [Footnote 73: The lion was conquered by fury; the lamb
    triumphed by suffering.]

The church lives immortal, neither in nor above but with the
state. Her relation with the state may be either of protection,
limitation, or separation. Protected as in the beginning and as
she was often under the ancient kings, the church would not be
degraded. She had her autonomy in her laws, ordinances, and
hierarchy; she was, not the slave or the flatterer of the power
under which she lived.

She does not seek limitation or restrictions, but supports them
without changing her nature. By degrees, as kings prevailed in
modern society, and abridged the power of the people, of the
lords and corporations, they became jealous of the authority of
the church, restricted her action and obstructed her freedom.
Powerful in armies, money, and slaves, kings imposed on the
church; she became resigned, sacrificed some minor points in
order to guard the chief ones in tact; but notwithstanding all
the chains of concordats, she remained sovereign in her freedom.

{338}

Separation from the state is like the separation between soul and
body; hence the church is opposed to a state that is unchristian.

The church, destined to illuminate the world with her divine
light, and not to govern it politically, is by nature
conservative. She was so even when the Roman emperors oppressed
her; when they went away from Rome, she respected them at
Constantinople, until she found it necessary for her defence and
for the cause of national freedom to withdraw herself and Italy
from imperial control. When she absolved nations from their oaths
of allegiance, it was in the name of morality, and not of a
political or social idea; to preserve for God what belongs to
him, and not to deny to Cesar what belongs to him. [Footnote 74]

    [Footnote 74: By the recent work, _Religious and Civil
    History of the Popes_, of Wm. Audisio, published at Rome
    in 1868, many precious facts have been recalled to my mind.
    One is that Gregory XVI., while Portugal was divided between
    Don Pedro and Don Miguel, tried to settle the dispute by
    recalling the ecclesiastical tradition, to render civil
    obedience to him who governs in fact: _Qui actu ibidem
    summa rerum potiatur_. In this he wished to settle the
    dispute between the contending parties; for the church seeks
    _qua Christi sunt, qua, ad spiritualem aeternamque
    populorum felicitatem facilius conducant_, ("those things
    which are of Christ, which conduce to the spiritual and
    eternal happiness of peoples.") The other in which Pius VII.,
    in the consistory of July 28th, 1817, authorized the oath of
    allegiance to be taken to the constitution and laws, because
    this oath did not oblige in reference to laws which kings
    might make in spiritual matters; laws which are null of
    themselves, for kings have no right to make them. This
    decision regarding France was repeated October 2d, 1818, in
    regard to Bavaria.]

Thus although we may find no constitution which abolishes
slavery, no one will deny that it ceased through the influence of
Christianity, which modified customs and habits, and these
influenced the laws. Thus the time will come when all that is
good in modern society will be assured to it; and then the
influence of Christianity will be made manifest in purifying and
consecrating all that came from its teachings, or from needs
which it caused to be felt; so that the so-called liberals will
see that it is not necessary to attack Christianity in order to
defend the acquisitions of their age, nor will the faithful
attack the age as an irreconcilable enemy. Does not everything
happen by the will or permission of God? Are not all political
changes and social transformations providential facts? If the
Christian cannot praise them, he becomes resigned to them; he
does not increase the evil by anger; he trusts in God, who can
change the stones into children of Abraham; and we, separating
ourselves from those whose patriotism consists in denouncing
others as enemies of their country, say to the men of good-will
of our day:

  "O socii (neque enim ignari sumus ante malorum)
   O passi graviora, dabit Deus hic quoque finem." [Footnote 75]
                       _AEneid_, lib. I.

    [Footnote 75: "Companions! we have borne evils before this;
    ye who have suffered worse, remember that God will put an end
    even to these woes."]

How can you who have learned the watchwords of "Progress," and
"Go-ahead," expect hasty "progress" at Rome, so slow in her
motions?

Napoleon boasted that he had done in three hours what men
formerly took three months to execute. Yes, he ran from
Alexandria to Vienna, to Madrid, to Moscow, and--to St. Helena;
while Rome remained at her post. Those who do not look
superficially admit that she showed splendidly her wisdom in
certain circumstances by not closing the way to future wisdom. In
the modern exuberance of fungous intelligence, new systems easily
sprout up, die in a few years; and the heroes of to-day become
the objects of hatred to-morrow.
{339}
Rome, eternal guardian of truth, cannot make and unmake in haste,
take up and lay down, like human societies; but she proceeds
slowly and patiently, yet she advances.

Certainly the church will find a new field in which she can
co-operate with the state to preserve for humanity, no longer the
antique forms or the mere letter given by Catholics alone, but
the Christian spirit; a new method of protecting Catholic truth
in countries open to every people, and every worship; deprived of
the help of force and decrees, she will have no other support but
truth; and since this is greater and more secure in Catholicism,
it will always succeed in propagating itself. Will not this be
the object of the approaching Council? The General Council will
not have to destroy what is irremovable, or what derives
necessarily from eternal truth; but it will help us worldlings to
separate, in principle, the substance from the form, the essence
from the application.

Certainly the hate which inspires men in these times against true
liberty, makes governments justify and praise every attack
against the church, and deprive her of every right, even when
they pretend to protect her.

Do these governments want to form national churches? This would
be to go back in civilization, which progresses toward union; to
deny catholicitv or the universality of the race; to give up
souls as well as bodies to the power of kings, as before
Christianity; to give the direction of consciences and the
judgment of morals to the civil power, which should rule only
bodies.

Some would tolerate Catholicity provided there be liberty of
conscience and of worship; let there be no temporal power in the
church; no religious corporations; and let the secular clergy be
raised to the height, as they say, of the age.

What is meant by liberty of conscience has been sufficiently
explained by the pamphleteers, and the popes have given solemn
decisions on the subject. Conceive a society in which it would be
unlawful to expel those who violate its laws or disturb its
order! The church simply expels from the communion of prayers and
sacrifice those who are obstinate in violating her dogmas. How!
You insult our community; refuse to communicate in our rites; you
will not accept the pardon which the church always offers you;
and yet you pretend to force her to comfort your last moments
with sacraments which you repel and deride even then; to force
her to bless your corpse, and bury it in the holy ground where
repose those with whom you refused to associate during life!

As to temporal goods or the right to possess them, and as for
religious corporations--that is, the liberty of community life,
of prayer, benevolence, of wearing a peculiar dress, and of
worshipping according to your conscience--what could Alimonda say
which had not been said by all the independent men of our
century?

As to those who assert that the clergy are not educated up to the
standard of modern civilization, we need only appeal to those who
have any knowledge to see if the ecclesiastics do not rank high
in every part of the encyclopedia; nor do we hesitate to say that
the most educated man in every village is ordinarily the priest;
the priest who is compelled to make a regular course of study, to
pass repeated examinations, and assist at conferences.

{340}
                  VII.

It is very strange that at a time when the love of show has
become a mania; when kings, ministers, journalists, and myriads
of ephemeral heroes are honored with canticles, poems, and
ovations; when some button-holes have more decorations than our
altars; when there is hardly a name to which pompous titles are
not appended, it should be deemed necessary for the benefit of
religion to abolish external worship in our churches. Is not our
century especially vain of its investigations in matter? Is not
the aspiration of the age after physical comfort? Why, then, try
to restrict religion to the spiritual, to prevent the erection of
temples which would please the senses of that double being--man?

When Constantinople, austerely interpreting the evangelical
ordinances, attempted to destroy reverence for holy images, the
church fought for the right to cultivate the fine arts; and
sustained martyrdom and exile to maintain the privilege of
guarding the fine arts in her sanctuaries. When the reform of the
sixteenth century called the Catholic Church Babylon, because she
asked Michael Angelo and Raphael to immortalize the grandeurs of
Christianity, she resisted again--knowing how to distinguish the
exceptional life of the voluntary anchorite from the social life
of the merely honest man; exacting virtues from all her children,
but virtues suitable to their state, to the mystic life of Mary
and to the external life of Martha, to the viceroy Joseph and to
the shoemaker Crispin.

The same church defends, to-day, love and art from the modern
iconoclasts and spurious Puritans.

Discoursing about worship, our author begins by that of Mary,
showing it to be a religious principle in accord with reason; a
public fact, approved by history; a most tender affection,
sanctioned by the heart. It is not long since the chief of the
English ritualists, Doctor Pusey, made the most honorable
admissions in reference to the Catholic dogmas and ceremonies,
excepting, however, the reverence which Catholics have for the
Mother of God. Archbishop Manning's [Footnote 76] reply is one of
the most beautiful and rational apologies for this worship for
which Italy is so remarkable. For all republics were consecrated
to her; she was the chosen patroness of our chief cities; her
likeness was impressed on our coins and seals; our first poets
sang her praises, and their echoes have not yet died; our
painters could find no higher or sweeter model; our architects
competed in erecting grand temples to her honor; our musicians to
compose canticles to her praise; great expeditions were
undertaken in her name; colonies were consecrated to her, where
now Italian power, but not Italian influence, has ceased. And it
is Mary who will save our Italy from humiliations, and from that
degradation which seems to be the only aspiration of her
intolerant sons. [Footnote 77]

    [Footnote 76: Probably a mistake for Dr. Newman.]

    [Footnote 77: I may be permitted to refer the reader to the
    fifty-fourth chapter of my _Heretics of Italy_, in which
    the respect due to saints and to Mary is discussed.]

The intolerant repeat that laws, decrees, and social organization
are sufficient to regulate civil society.

They are sufficient; but they require science to prepare them and
virtue to apply them; both to be invoked from on high. The safety
of one's country, the fulfilment of its aspirations, the triumph
of justice, must come from heaven. Formerly the Italians marched
to battle under the standard of the saints or of the cross; the
heroes of Legnano, of Fornovo, and of Curzolari prostrated
themselves in prayer before fighting; and the Italians of those
times conquered and gave thanks to God for having given to them a
beautiful, great, and prosperous country. But now we have popular
tumults and the ravings of newspapers.

{341}

Our strong-minded heroes consider it degrading to bow before the
Author of all things. Yet, passing over all the wise men of
antiquity, the most free nation in Europe opens its parliaments
with prayer, and obeys the orders of the queen to fast in time of
disaster, or feast in time of great success. The President of the
United States, no matter what may be his creed, orders a day of
thanksgiving to God, and he is obeyed. When the telegraph from
America was able to carry a message to Europe on August 17th,
1858, the first words which leaped along the wire were, "Europe
and America are united. Glory to God in the highest; peace on
earth; to men, good-will." "What grander spectacle can there be
than to see a whole people united in the duties imposed by its
religion in celebrating great anniversaries? What heroic
outbursts, how many noble sacrifices, were expressed in the
monologues of holy days! What high thoughts and magnificent
conceptions arose in the souls of philosophers and poets! How
many generous resolutions were taken! When the observance of the
Sunday was neglected, the last spark of poetic fire was
extinguished in the souls of our poets. It has been truly said,
without religion there is no poetry. We must add, without
external worship and feast days there is no religion. In the
country, where the people are more susceptible of the religious
sentiment, the Sunday still keeps a part of its social influence.
The sight of a rustic population united as one family by the
voice of its pastor, and prostrated in silence and recollection
before the invisible majesty of God, is touching and sublime; is
a charm which goes to the heart."

Who speaks in this way? Proud hon. [sic] And Napoleon says, "Do
you want something sublime? Recite your _Pater noster_."

The most sublime prayer is the mass--the culminating point of
worship; the perennial expiation of perennial faults. From the
mass Alimonda passes to confession; then to communion; and thence
to the responsibility of present life. He exhorts all to
_understand_ and _believe_. This is the creed of the
Christian: _Credere et intelligere_.


                 VIII.

We have thus far followed the illustrious Alimonda, repeating or
developing his arguments. Let us now examine his manner of
treating the questions which he discusses.

The classic Greek orators had wonderful simplicity of style, in
which the familiarity of their expressions ennobled their
sentiments and gave force to their reasoning. The Eastern fathers
followed in their footsteps. The Latins ornamented eloquence so
as to make it a special art, assigning it a measured cadence, a
peculiar intonation of voice, a system of position and gesture.
Hence, the Latin fathers studied speech even to affectation,
sought after rhetorical figures, yet always more attentive to the
practical than to the abstract. The French formed themselves
rather according to the Greek models; and the noble simplicity of
Bossuet, Massilon, and Fénélon renders them still models for one
who would discourse before a polished people.

The Italians, if you except some of the very earliest preachers,
preferred to ornament their speeches and indulge in artificial
figures. In the ages of bad taste, the worst display of metaphors
disgraced the pulpit; whence the custom passed to the bar and
parliament, where there have been and still are so many examples
of unnatural oratory.
{342}
Hence, in so great an abundance of literature, we have no good
preachers except Legneri. In modern times, the style of the
pretentious Turchi has been changed to that of the academic
Barbieri; but that style of preaching "whose father is the
Gospel, and whose mother is the Bible," is rarely heard in our
pulpits. Our very best eloquence, that of the pastorals and
homilies of our bishops, is spoiled by too frequent citations,
and is often devoid of that sentiment which comes from the heart
and goes to it. We do not want to borrow the French style. It is
a mistake to steal the language of another nation, either in
writing or preaching. Peoples have different dispositions. It
would not do to address the Carib in the same way as the
Parisian, or the contemporaries of Godfrey as the subjects of
Napoleon.

Our author, beside being familiar with the first propagators and
defenders of Christianity, is highly educated in the classics,
and has always ready phrases, hemistichs, and allusions which
display his erudition. His method is prudent, his divisions
logical, and the train of ideas well followed up; his language
correct, and the clearness and marvellous beauty of his style
show him to be a finished orator.

He draws an abundance of materials from the most diverse and
recondite sources. He adduces the most recent discoveries of
science regarding the essence of the sun, nebula, aerolites, and
on the nature of matter. Without mentioning the biblical and
legendary portions of his work, there are in it traces of every
part of both ancient and modern history: Camoens and Napoleon,
Abelard and Renan, Isnard and Jouffroy, Donoso Cortes and
Cagliostro, Marie Antoinette and Madame de Swetchine, Ireland and
Poland, the discourses of Napoleon III. and of Cavour. The author
brings us through the byways of London to the prison of Thomas
More, to the solitude of St. Helena, and to the lands where the
missionaries are laboring. He quotes even the heroes of romance:
"Renzo" and the "Unknown," Renato, Werter, St. Preux, the Elvira
of George Sand, Wiseman's Fabiola, and Victor Hugo's Valjean.
With the spoils of the Egyptians Alimonda builds a tabernacle to
the living God. Who will censure him, since our Holy Father, in a
brief of September 20th, 1867, approves his labor?

The nineteenth century can be saved only by means suitable to the
nineteenth century; and Simon Stylites or Torquemada, the
Crusaders or the Flagellants, would be as much out of place
to-day as catapults or the theory of uncreated light. We must
fight with modern weapons.

  "Clypeos, Danaumque insignia nobis aptemus." [Footnote 78]

    [Footnote 78: "We must use the weapons and dress of the
    Greeks." _AEneid_, lib. ii.]

We must study Catholicity in all its bearings, and reconcile
divine and human traditions with modern exigencies; authority
established on an immovable pedestal, with liberty which is
always developing.

Courage! Let us arouse ourselves from lethargy, and not suffer a
condition of affairs for which we are responsible. Let us
remember, with Bacon, that prosperity was the boon of the Old
Testament; adversity, of the New; persuaded, with Donoso Cortes,
that "it is our duty, as Catholics, to struggle, and that we
should thank God who has chosen us to fight for his church," let
us display that energetic will which is so rare among good
people. With charity and faith, by association and perseverance,
we can conquer hatred and unbelief, the divisions of sects, and
the onslaughts of error on the strongholds of Catholic truth.

-------

{343}

         Two Months In Spain During
           The Late Revolution.


         Seville, Fonda De Paris.

              September 23, 1869.

The train leaves Cordova at six A.M., and we are delighted to be
again on our journey. The route proves of little interest between
Cordova and Seville; the Guadalquivir is first on one side of us
and then on the other; the hills and mountains bound each side of
the plain, where are olive groves, and peaceful flocks, and
ploughmen, as if no revolution were occurring around them. At
Almovar, (situated on a high hill,) we see the ruins of a Moorish
castle where that half-Moor, Peter the Cruel, confined his
sister-in-law, Doña Juana de Lara. Carmona is another town which
has the same celebrity. Here he imprisoned many of his female
favorites when tired of them. We grow very hungry in spite of
these tragic histories, and our young gentleman buys a great
melon _de Castile_, which, proving very delicious, we make a
good breakfast _à l'espagnol;_ but are not sorry to see the
towers of the Giralda, and soon after we enter Seville--the most
charming of all Spanish towns; the city of Don Juan and Figaro;
the gayest, the most celebrated for its beautiful women, its
graceful men, its bull-fights, its gypsies, its tertulias, its
fandangos, its cachuchas, its Murillos, its cathedral, (said to
rival St. Peter's,) and its Alcazar, which is almost as wonderful
as the Alhambra.

After dinner, we hasten to the cathedral through busy, crowded
streets, by handsome shops; passing occasionally a pretty
Sevillian whose black dress, bare arms and neck seen through the
black lace mantilla, with the dainty pink rose peeping from
beneath it, harmonize exactly with one's idea of the Spanish
woman. And presently, upon a terrace ascended by several steps,
we see before us this wonderful pile of buildings: the Giralda
(Moorish tower) on one side; the Sagrario (the parish church) on
the other; the chapter house, and offices facing the cathedral;
and in the centre of all these the court of oranges! The
cathedral is entered from this court by nine doors. We scarcely
know how to describe this magnificent gothic building, which has
affected us more than any we have ever seen. Coming upon us so
immediately after the mosque of Cordova, (each of these a perfect
specimen of its kind,) one sees in each the reflection of the
different faiths they represent. The graceful, elegant mosque
seems to appeal more to the senses, to speak of a faith which
promises material joys, while the grand and majestic gothic
cathedral carries one's heart to the heaven in which these lofty
arches seem to be lost. In despair of being able to do justice to
so high a theme, I must borrow from O'Shea's guide-book the
following description of this building:

  "The general style of the edifice is gothic of the best period
  of Spain, and though many of its parts belong to different
  styles, these form but accessory parts, and the main body
  remains strictly gothic. Indeed all the fine arts, and each in
  turn, at their acme of strength, have combined to produce their
  finest inspiration here.
{344}
  The Moorish Giralda, the Gothic cathedral, the Greco-Roman
  exterior, produce variety, and repose the eye. Inside, its
  numerous paintings are by some of the greatest painters that
  ever breathed; the stained glass, amongst the finest known; the
  sculpture, beautiful; the jewellers' and silversmiths' work
  unrivalled in composition, execution, and value. The cathedral
  of Leon charms us by the chaste elegance of its airy structure,
  the purity of its harmonious lines; the fairy-worked cimborio
  of that at Burgos, its filagree spires, and pomp of
  ornamentation are certainly more striking; and at Toledo, we
  feel already humbled and crushed beneath the majesty and wealth
  displayed everywhere. But when we enter the cathedral of
  Seville, there is a sublimity in these sombre masses and
  clusters of spires whose proportions and details are somewhat
  lost and concealed in the mysterious shadows which pervade the
  whole, a grandeur which quickens the sense, and makes the heart
  throb within us, and we stand as lost among these lofty naves
  and countless gilt altars, shining dimly in the dark around us,
  the lights playing across them as the rays of the glorious
  Spanish sun stream through the painted windows. Vast
  proportions, unity of design, severity and sobriety of
  ornament, and that simplicity unalloyed by monotony which
  stamps all the works of real genius, render this one of the
  noblest piles ever raised to God by man, and preferred by many
  even to St. Peter's at Rome."

It is said that the canons and chapter resolved to make this
church the wonder of the world; and with this view, sent for the
most celebrated architects and artists of the world to adorn it,
denying themselves almost the necessaries of life to accomplish
the great work.

The pillars are one hundred and fifty feet high; the church, four
hundred feet long, two hundred and ninety-one wide, with
ninety-five windows and thirty-seven chapels; and nearly each one
of these contains some pictures of Murillo, Cespedes, Campana,
Roelas, or some Spanish painter of celebrity. We go from chapel
to chapel, gazing upon these, lingering before the altar "Del
Angel de la Guarda," where is Murillo's exquisite picture of the
guardian angel with the young child by the hand (so often
reproduced,) and lost in awe before his grand picture of St.
Anthony of Padua, to whom the infant Jesus descends, amidst
angels and flowers and sunbeams, into the arms ecstatically
extended toward him. In a little chapel we come upon a lovely
Virgin and Child, by Alonso Caño, called N. S. de Belem,
(Bethlehem.)

But the sun declined, and we ascended the Giralda to see his last
beams shine upon so much beauty. What a strange and charming
scene! The forest of white houses painted with delicate blue and
green; the flat roofs decorated with gardens; the four hundred
and seventy-seven narrow streets, some hardly admitting two
people abreast, through which toiled the patient mules bearing
burdens of stones, mortar for building, wood, and vegetables; the
one hundred ornamented squares and promenades; the orange
gardens; the plaza de Toros; the cathedral just beneath us, with
its hundreds of turrets; the Torre del Oro, (Tower of Gold,) so
named from its yellow hue; the Lonja, (Exchange,) with its pink
color; the grey Alcazar; the palace San Telmo by the
Guadalquivir, which winds through the city and over the plain;
and convents, and churches, and palaces; and, beyond all, the
verdant plains and the blue mountains! As the sun sank, the
convent bells rang the "Ave Maria."

  "Blessed be the hour!
   The time, the chime, the spot."

Certainly we all "felt that moment in its fullest power"!

{345}

                  Thursday, 24.
Our first visit to-day is to San Telmo--the royal palace given by
Queen Isabella to her sister, the Duchess de Montpensier--on the
banks of the Guadalquivir, with enchanting gardens, palms and
citrons, and orange-trees; and within, all oriental in its style
and decorations. Here are some lovely pictures--one of Murillo's
most beautiful Virgins, several splendid Zurbarans, a Sebastian
del Piombo, Holy Family, etc.

Next we visit the great tobacco manufactory, where 4000 women are
employed making cigars. As all these were talking at once, we
were glad soon to escape. And then the Alcazar, the wonderful
Moorish palace, than which not even the Alhambra can be more
beautiful--as it seems to us. We wander in delicious gardens
--like those described in the _Arabian Nights_--and then
enter the enchanted palace! Passing several courts, we find the
great door of entrance sculptured and painted in arabesque. Here
is a long hall, with exquisitely carved and painted roof, from
which we pass into a square marble court, or patio, with double
rows of marble columns and a fountain in the centre. From the
four sides of this patio you enter by immense doors, carved and
inlaid, into the apartments beyond. First, the Hall of the
Ambassadors, which communicates with others through elegant
arches profusely ornamented, supported by marble pillars of every
color with gilded capitals. The walls and dome are ornamented
with sentences from the Koran, in gilt letters upon grounds of
blue and crimson. Every chamber has different decorations, all
equally elegant.

Below, opening from the garden, we are shown some subterranean
cells said to have been the prisons of Christian captives, and
above these the luxurious baths of Maria de Padilla--the famous
mistress of Peter the Cruel. It was the custom for the king and
courtiers to sit by and see her bathe, and for the latter to
pretend to sip the water of the bath. Seeing one of these fail in
this gallant duty one day, the king asked why he omitted it.
"Because, sire," (said the witty courtier,) "I am afraid to like
the sauce so well that I shall covet the bird." Peter the Cruel
lived much in this palace, and did much to embellish it through
the Moorish artists whom he employed. Many of the Spanish kings
lived there, and Charles V. was married in one of the upper
rooms. These we did not see, and learned afterward that they were
inhabited by "Fernan Caballero," one of the most popular writers
of Spain--whose delightful books we learned later to admire.
Fernan Caballero is the _nom de plume_ of this lady, who has
had many misfortunes, and who by permission of the queen lives in
the Alcazar, devoting her life to deeds of benevolence amongst
the poor, whose traits and trials she records in many delightful
works. It is a pity that out of France these books should be
unknown. One of our party determines to take some of them to
America, that they may be translated and bring to the knowledge
of our people these charming scenes of Spanish home life so
inimitably described.[Footnote 79]

    [Footnote 79: One of "Fernan Caballero's" (Mrs. Fabre) books,
    _The Alvareda Family_, has already been translated here
    and published in _The Catholic World_ three years ago;
    and two others, _The Sea Gull_, and _The Castle and
    Cottage in Spain_, have appeared in an English dress in
    London, and _Lucia Garcia_ is already translated and
    will soon appear in this magazine.--ED. CATH. W.]

In the evening we go to a ball, to see the Andalusian dances in
their proper costume. Boleros, and cachuchas, and seguidillas,
and manchegas! Such graceful movements, such little feet in such
dainty satin shoes!

{346}

Generally to the accompaniment of the guitar, with most peculiar
and monotonous music, singing at the same time, clapping the
hands, stamping the feet, and the dancer always with castanets.
All the dances were peculiar, solos, often in couples, or three
at a time, some of these coquettish--one, especially, danced by a
man and a woman, he in hat and cloak, she with fan and mantilla.
How she wielded this little "weapon"!--now hiding her face, now
peeping from behind it, which he also did with his _manta_.
By and by he takes off his hat and humbly lays it at her feet.
She dances over it scornfully; without ever losing the step, he
recovers it. She flies; he pursues, opening his manta
entreatingly; she relents; again he throws down the hat; she
stoops and gives it to him, and eventually they dance away with
the manta covering both.

                     Friday, 25.

We go again to the wonderful cathedral; examined many pictures
which yesterday escaped us. In the chapter house is one of
Murillo's "Conceptions," and eight charming heads (ovals) painted
by him, in the same room. In the chapel of the kings lies the
body of St. Ferdinand, and of Murillo; who asked to be buried at
the foot of a picture (The Descent from the Cross) of which he
was particularly fond, which is above the main altar.

Near the great entrance of the cathedral a stone in the pavement
marks the spot where lies Fernando, the son of Christopher
Columbus, with the motto upon it, "A Castilla y á Leon, mundo
nuevo dió Colon." From his tomb we go to the great Columbine
Library given by him to his country, containing some interesting
MSS. of his father--one, a book of quotations containing extracts
from the psalms and prophets, proving the existence of the new
world. There are a series of portraits round the room, of
Columbus, his son, St. Ferdinand, Cardinal Mendoza, and Cardinal
Wiseman, (who was a native of Seville.) There is also preserved
here the great two-edged sword of Ferdinand Gonsalves.

Some of our party go to visit the archbishop, in the hope to get
permission to see the treasures of the church, which are very
valuable; but the presence of the revolution obliges him to deny
us this as well as the _entrée_ to the convent of St.
Theresa, which is said to be exactly the same as when she founded
it. It was here she underwent such great trouble and persecution,
and where (finding she had but two or three coppers with which to
begin a great foundation) she said to her nuns, "Never mind, two
cents and Theresa are nothing; but two cents and God are
everything."

And this interesting convent we could not see.[Footnote 80]
Indeed, the time of our visit to Spain was inopportune for seeing
the inside of religious houses. A former revolution having
deprived them of their property, they have now the fear of being
turned out of their convents.

    [Footnote 80: For a full description of this convent see Lady
    Herbert's _Impressions of Spain_, just from the press of
    the Catholic Publication Society. This work also contains
    illustrations of cathedrals, churches, gardens, palaces, and
    other places described in these letters.--ED. CATH. W.]

While we wait in the church for the return of our friends, we
enter into conversation with two of the little boys of the choir,
whose beauty attracts us, begging them to describe the style in
which they dance before the Blessed Sacrament on Corpus Christi,
which is said to be a ceremony most solemn, grave, and
impressive. These children evinced great curiosity about us, and
when told that one of the party was "a convert," (had been a
Protestant,) could not be made to comprehend what it meant; for
they confound all Protestants with unbelievers.
{347}
"And did not know about our dear Lord!" said one little fellow
with a look of sorrowful compassion, reminding one of the scene
in one of Fernan Caballero's tales (_The Alvareda Family_)
where the hero comes home from his travels and describes a
country covered with snow so that people are sometimes buried
under it.

We go to see the house in which Murillo lived and the spot where
he was first buried--passing the house in which Cardinal Wiseman
was born, upon which is a large tablet with a beautiful and
appropriate inscription. In Murillo's house is an extensive
gallery with many of his loveliest pictures, and some of the
pictures of monks for which Zurbaran is so famous.

Here we see the Infant St. John with the Lamb, and the Infant
Saviour, so often repeated by Murillo, apart and together an
exquisite Ecce Homo; several Madonnas, and Saints.

On our way we are shown the shop where dwelt the original Figaro,
and also the house of Don Juan!

The Casa de Pilatos, one of the residences of the Duke of Medina
Coeli, next claims us--a curious old palace, built in the
sixteenth century in imitation of Pilate's House in Jerusalem,
which was visited at that time by the founder. The patio is fine,
with a beautiful fountain, and double row of columns, (one above
another,) with statues at the four corners. The marble staircase
and halls--lined with azulejos, (colored porcelain tiles,)
universally used in this country--are particularly handsome.

Next we go to the "Caridad," one of the most celebrated hospitals
in the world, founded by a young nobleman of Seville in the
seventeenth century, upon ground which belonged to a brotherhood
whose duty it was to give consolation to those about to die on
the scaffold. This young man (Don Miguel de Mañara) was
distinguished for his profligacy, but also for his bravery,
generosity, and his patronage of art. One of our friends told us
some most interesting anecdotes connected with his conversion.

Returning from some orgies, one night, he saw a female figure
upon a low balcony beckon him. Thinking to have an adventure, he
sprang into the open window and found a dead body with a with
lights about it alone in the room. Another time, returning at
midnight through the streets, he saw a church lighted, and,
wondering what could be going on at such an hour, entered. Before
the altar was a bier upon which was extended a body covered with
the mantle of the knights of the order to which he belonged, the
priests about it singing the office for the dead. Asking whose
funeral it was, he was answered, "That of Don Miguel Mañara," and
going to the corpse and uncovering it, saw his own face. The
morning found him stretched upon the pavement, the vision gone.
But the impression remained, in which he recognized a call from
God to a better life, which he soon after entered, giving his
whole fortune to found this institution for the sick, the aged,
and "incurables;" and here he lived and died an example of
humility, piety, and penitence. Murillo and other eminent artists
were also members of this confraternity, and a letter of the
former is here shown in which he asks permission to join the
brotherhood. To the friendship of Don Miguel for Murillo the
hospital is indebted for some of the finest pictures in the
world. In the church are two of his grandest and largest
pictures, "Moses striking the Rock," called here the "Sed,"
(thirst,) and the "Miracle of the Loaves and Fishes," a
Visitation, an Infant Saviour, and a St. John.
{348}
There are also several most remarkable pictures by Valdes Leal;
one, "The Triumph of Time," in which the skeleton Death stands
triumphantly above crowns and sceptres and "all there is of
glory." Opposite to this is "The Dead Prelate," a picture made at
the suggestion of Mañara. From the top of the picture a
_pierced hand_ holds the scales, in one side of which a
kingly crown, and jewels, and sceptre, weigh against the mystic
"I. H. S." and a book, the Word of God. Below lies a dead
prelate, in mitre and crosier, half eaten by the worms; on the
other side, Don Miguel Mañara, wrapped in his knightly mantle,
upon which also the worms run riot. On one of the scales is
written "nor more;" upon the other, "nor less."

Murillo told the painter that he could never pass this picture
without involuntarily "holding his nose." Under the pavement,
near the door, lies the body of the founder; "the ashes of the
worst man that ever lived," so he styles himself in his epitaph;
and he requested that he might lie where the feet of every passer
should walk over him. The sisters conduct us over the clean and
airy wards. On the wall of the patio are these words, from the
pen of Mañara himself, "This house will last as long as God shall
be feared in it, and Jesus Christ be served in the persons of his
poor. Whoever enters here must leave at the door both avarice and
pride." And over his own cell is inscribed, "What is it we mean
when we speak of death? It is being free from the body of sin,
and from the yoke of our passions. Therefore, to live is a bitter
death, and to die is a sweet life."

Another of the charming histories told us by the same lady was of
St. Maria Coronel, whose body is preserved in the convent of St.
Inez, which we could not be permitted to see. Peter the Cruel,
because enamored of her great beauty, condemned her husband to
death, but offered to save him if she would yield to his wishes.
The husband was actually executed, and Maria fled to this
convent, where the king pursued her. One night he entered her
cell; and, seeing no other way to escape him, she seized the
burning lamp, and emptied its boiling contents over her face. The
poor lady lived the life of a saint, and died in this convent.
Her body is as fresh as if she had died yesterday, and the marks
of the oil upon her face as clearly visible as upon the day when
the heroic deed was committed.

In the evening we walk in the crowded streets, and find splendid
shops filled with lovely women, who go at this hour to walk or
shop, never stirring out in the day. As late as eleven, when we
came in, the streets and shops were yet filled with ladies.


                 Saturday, 26.

We spend the morning in the gallery, which is considered the
finest in Spain, after that of Madrid. This is especially rich in
Murillos, and has several Zurbarans, the Spanish Caravaggio so
famous for his pictures of monks. Here is "The Apotheosis of St.
Thomas Aquinas," considered his masterpiece; and of Murillo there
are about twenty-four of his greatest pictures: the "St. Thomas
of Villanuova giving Alms," which was the painter's own favorite;
the "St. Anthony of Padua kneeling before the Infant Saviour,"
who stands upon his book--the most perfect type of a child God;
and the ecstasy, the fervor, the humility, in the pale,
attenuated face of the monk brings the tears to one's eyes, you
so feel with him.
{349}
Next this is a picture preferred to the other by most persons,
"St. Felix of Cantalicia," with the infant Saviour in his arms,
the blessed Mother leaning forward to receive him. The beauty of
the Virgin Mother and the grace of her attitude is said by
critics to be beyond all praise. Then comes a beautiful
"Annunciation," a "St. Joseph with the child Jesus," "Saints
Rufina and Justina," (the patrons of Seville,) "Saints Leandro
and Buonaventura," several "Conceptions," and the exquisite
"Virgin de la Sevilleta," (Virgin of the Napkin,) said to have
been painted on a dinner napkin, and given as a present to the
cook of the convent where Murillo worked. The "St. John Baptist
in the Desert" should also be mentioned, as well as many others.

This evening we bid farewell to beautiful Seville, with all its
delights, and set out for Cadiz.

Certainly it is the Spaniards, not the French, who are "the
politest people in the world." The conductor opens the railway
carriage with "Good evening, ladies. May I trouble you for your
tickets?" concluding with "A happy night to you." In passing a
street, the other day, a gentleman with whom we had crossed the
mountains, and whose name we do not even know, rushes from his
house to say, "Ladies, is anything wanting? Here is your house."
Such is the pretty exaggerated Spanish phrase. Leaving Seville,
we pass orange-groves and fields divided by aloe and cactus
hedges, but the country is flat and uninteresting; and, except
Lebrija, which has a tower, the rival of the Giralda, and Jerez,
we see no towns of any size or interest till we near Cadiz.
"Jerez de la Frontera" (the frontier town) has always been of
importance; one of the earliest Phoenician colonies. Close to
this took place the battle of the Guadelete, which opened Spain
to the Moors. St. Ferdinand recovered it in 1251; but it was
retaken, and again recovered by his son, Alonzo the Learned, in
1264, who granted to it many important privileges, peopling it
with forty of his hidalgos--the source of the present Jerez
nobility. It has an Alcazar of great interest--its Alameda--some
fine old churches, and near it are the ruins of a fine old
Carthusian convent upon the Guadelete, which the Moors called the
River of Delight. Jerez is now celebrated for its wines; the
sherry so prized in England and America, which occupies palaces
rather than wine-cellars. These are called "bodegas," and
sometimes hold ten thousand casks. As we near Cadiz we see Puerta
San Maria, at the mouth of the Guadelete--a pretty town, looking
upon the sea, with a suspension bridge looking most picturesque
in the moonlight; then Puerto Real, San Fernando, Cadiz.


     Cadiz, Fonda De Paris.
                 Sunday, 27.

The guide takes us first to hear high mass in the new
cathedral--a handsome building, entirely of white marble, within
and without. Some good pictures, (copies of Murillo,) fine music,
and the most devout of congregations. The loveliest of women, in
modest black dresses, mantillas, and fans, sat or knelt upon the
matting, which is spread upon the space between the high altar
and the choir. No seats are provided. A few bring little black
camp-stools. The bishop (who gave the benediction) is a most
dignified and elegant-looking person; and the guide tells us he
is much beloved and respected. Already the new order of things
pulls down churches and banishes the Jesuits, as the first proof
of that "liberty of worship" which is one of the most popular of
the war cries.
{350}
Such bandit-looking fellows as we saw yesterday! Catalan
soldiers, in red cap, short pantaloons with red stripe,
half-gaiters, and a red blanket on the left shoulder, a leathern
belt, with pistols and a great rifle.

The revolution spreads everywhere, "peacefully," as they say. We
see a handbill posted, in which the queen is spoken of as
"_Doña_ Isabella of Bourbon," to whom they wish "no harm."

Some Spanish ladies who had once lived in America, and are
friends of ours, came to visit us. They are intensely loyal, as
are all the women of Spain whom we encounter. From these we learn
that, as in all revolutions, the dregs of the people come to the
top, and are most conspicuous. It is only they make it who have
nothing to lose, and all to gain. These "juntas," who now rule in
each city under the provisional government, are composed of
people of low birth and bad morals. Here they are taken from the
low trades-people, who are noted drunkards and unbelievers. Into
such hands are committed the destinies of this lovely city. Their
first work has been to try and kill the Jesuits, who, with a
hundred little boys under their care, had to defend themselves
from these men and the rabble they encourage. And but for the
officers of the fleet, who, with pistols in hand, thrust
themselves between them, they must have been murdered. These
officers took them on board the ships for safety, and some are
yet secreted in the town, waiting an opportunity to escape.
To-day our guide takes us to several curious old churches which
were formerly convents, with pretty cloisters and marble courts.
These, he says, are doomed by the junta to be torn down to build
houses and theatres, thus destroying these beautiful old
monuments of a past time in their blind fury against religion.

In the evening we change our hotel to the "Fonda de Cadiz," on
the gay "plaza San Antonio." After dinner walk by the seashore on
the walls. As we pass the streets, we enter several churches,
where the people are hearing sermons, or saying prayers with the
priests. Such picturesque groups!

To-night we see from our windows a procession carrying the
Blessed Sacrament to the sick, from the parish church opposite. A
carriage is always sent, and a long procession, bearing lights,
precedes and follows. One of the ladies present tells us that
last carnival, in the midst of the gayeties on this square, men
and women, in every variety of ridiculous costume, were dancing
to merry music, when suddenly the bell was heard preceding the
Blessed Sacrament, which was being carried to a sick officer,
living upon the square. In an instant every knee was bent of the
motley throng, and the band struck up the Royal March in the most
effective manner, and accompanied the procession to the house;
returning, the fun recommenced. This lady says there was never
anything witnessed more affecting. "And," added she, "this is the
faith these revolutionists would take from us. Already they talk
of introducing every religion, and they will build a mosque and a
synagogue!"


                       Monday, 28.
The morning is given to shopping, to see the lovely mantillas of
every shape and style; fans of wonderful workmanship and
exquisite painting on kid or silk; the beautiful figures in every
variety of Spanish costumes, made in Malaga, of a particular kind
of clay for which Spain is famous; the pretty mattings of Cadiz,
etc.
{351}
In the evening we walk with our friends upon the "Alameda," a
charming promenade by the seaside, where stately palm-trees wave
above marble seats and columns. Entering the church of Mount
Carmel we find it filled with people saying prayers and the
rosary. To-night we are kept awake by the mob, who are marching
with drums and ringing the church bells in honor of a victory
over the queen's troops near Cordova.



                       Tuesday, 29.
At eight o'clock we set out upon an excursion to Jerez, to visit
the bodegas and taste the fine wines. Passing the salt-meadows we
see the white pyramids of salt glistening in the sunlight, which
had so puzzled us when we last saw them by moonlight. The bay of
Cadiz is on one side, the broad ocean on the other, in the
distance the mountains of the Sierra del Pinal. A friend joins us
at Puerta Real, and takes us to one of the largest bodegas in
Jerez, where are 10,000 casks of wine--each cask valued at $500!
The proprietor (a gentleman of English or Irish descent) is most
kind, shows us this extraordinary place, and gives us to taste of
the finest wines--brown sherry and pale sherry, fifty years of
age. But the most delicious of all are the sweet wines--which are
also sherries--and are called "Pedro Ximenes" from the name of
the person who first introduced this grape. These wines are rich
and oily, (perfect "nectar,") and are made from the grape when
almost as dry as raisins--twelve days from off the vine. In the
midst of these oceans of fine wines, Mr. Graves (the proprietor)
tells us he rarely tastes them, only occasionally taking a glass
of the sweet wine.

Jerez is said to be the richest town in Spain, the richest of its
size in the world. Beautiful plazas planted with palms, and fine
old palaces. We visited an ornamental garden belonging to one of
these wine princes, where were lakes, and streams, and grottoes,
and bridges, and groves, and flowers of every variety, birds and
fowls, and model cattle, etc. And then we saw San Miguel, one of
the finest churches we have seen, (gothic interior,) of the
fifteenth century, (1432,) elegantly ornamented. There is also a
cathedral and another most interesting church, (St. Dionisius,)
built by Alonzo the Learned in the thirteenth century, said to be
a particularly fine specimen of the gothic moresque of that
period. After a fine breakfast of the delicious Spanish ham,
chocolate, cakes, and sherry, we return to Cadiz. Passing "Puerta
San Maria," we see the Jesuit college, from which they have just
been ejected, the broken trees, the trampled gardens telling
their own story of violence. One of the gentlemen in the train
tells us there were two hundred and fifty boys cared for here,
and that the Jesuits fed five hundred poor each day with soup
from the leavings of the table. The great building looked a
picture of desolation.

To-night we have another ringing of bells and marching to the
sound of the odious revolutionary hymn. One of the gentlemen of
our party goes out to hear the speeches in the square. Some of
the speakers propose to offer the crown to the father of the King
of Portugal, (of the Catholic branch of that lucky _Coburg_
family who, possessing nothing, gain everything by marriage,)
others are for the Duke of Montpensier. Some cry "Vive Napoleon."
In fact, they are in great embarrassment--have caught the
elephant and do not know what to do with him, like another nation
we know of.

{352}
                  Wednesday, 30.

To-day we hear that all Catalonia has "pronounced," and even
Madrid, and that the rejoicings of last night were for the
victory of "Alcolea," just won, over the queen's troops, in
which, however, the liberals have lost three thousand men. These
troops were commanded by Serrano, (Duke de Torres,) who owes
everything to the queen's favor; and on the queen's side by the
Marquis de Novaliches, "faithful found amongst the faithless." We
hear of one of her officers (the young Count de Cheste) who has
shut himself with his men in the fortress of Montjuich, at
Barcelona, resolving to die rather than submit. One must admire
such devotion, in whatever cause it is shown. "Loyalty! the most
pure and beautiful feeling of the human breast. It is a love
which exists without requiring the usual nourishment of return; a
feeling void of every shade of egotism; that desires and requires
nothing but the happiness of loving, that causes one joyfully to
sacrifice life and property for the exalted object whose voice,
perhaps, never reached his ear. This feeling, in its highest
purity, is the very triumph of human capacity." Such is the true
definition of "Loyalty," which, like "Liberty," is often profaned
and constantly misunderstood. With our pretty Spanish friends we
go to see a church called the "Cave," a church only for
gentlemen, where they may go privately to their confession and
devotions. The confessionals are unlike those used for women, for
the men go in front and kneel face to face with the priest. It is
a beautiful chapel, wonderfully rich in marbles and fine
vestments and bassi-relievi, and below it is a gloomy chapel from
whence the church derives its name. Over the altar is represented
the crucifixion. It is dimly lighted through a dome, and the
figures (large as life) seem to live. Here the men go for
meditation, and for the Good Friday and other solemn festivals.
At one end of the chapel is a carved chair, raised on a platform,
upon which the priest sits to give his instructions, while a lamp
is so arranged that the light falls only upon the speaker's face,
leaving the rest of the chapel in darkness. The young priest who
showed us the church had the face of an angel, so fair and young
and holy; or, rather, such a face as is represented in a picture
of St. Aloysius Gonzaga, the patron of youth.

As we wander from shop to shop one of our pretty friends meets
one of the beaux of Cadiz, whose "loyalty" she suspects and whom
she berates most violently for deserting his queen in her need,
and helping to embarrass his country. The pretty way with which
she shakes her fan at him, and gesticulates with her hands, the
expressive eyes and play of feature, is altogether charming and
_Andalusian_.

Late this evening, we hear particulars of the late battle.
Novaliches fought against fearful odds--three thousand men to
sixteen thousand. He was severely if not mortally wounded, and
was carried off by his men to Portugal, the only way of retreat
open to them. This defeat, we suppose, will put an end to the
war.

Thursday, Oct. 1.

This is the feast of the Guardian Angel of Spain, so we hear mass
where the devotion of the forty hours begins. As in Italy, two by
two, kneeling and holding lights, the men of the congregation
keep watch before the Blessed Sacrament during these forty hours,
while hundreds of adorers continually coming and going attest the
devotion of this pious people.
{353}
The Church of the Guardian Angel is near that belonging to the
military hospital; and on the opposite side of the square is an
asylum for widows, founded many years ago by a converted Moor--a
most interesting institution. Widows of all ranks and conditions
find shelter here when their necessities require it. Each one has
her own chamber and sitting-room, and each one her little cooking
apparatus separate. The court with its open corridors on every
story, its pretty flowers, its fine promenade on the roof, makes
it a very inviting abode; and, with the usual Spanish courtesy,
the old widow who showed us about (the widow of an officer, who
had been there these forty years) placed it at our "disposition."
These poor women go out to walk, and to church when they wish,
though there is also a chapel in the house.

We go next to see the "Albergo dei Poveri," a magnificent
charity, founded and endowed by one man in memory of his mother,
and dedicated to St. Helena. Here five hundred children of both
sexes are taught weaving, sewing, washing, shoemaking, etc., and
there is also an asylum for five hundred old men and old women.
The school-rooms and dormitories are large and airy; the marble
courts, where the children play, and the sewing-room, where a
hundred girls sat at work, looked out upon the sea, and were
deliciously cool and comfortable. The school-rooms were decorated
with pictures of Bible history, and seemed to have all the modern
inventions which make easy the way to learning. The sister told
us how much they had been disturbed by this revolutionary
movement. Her little orphan boys (who had been taught music with
the view to enter the army as musicians) had been carried off at
night to play the revolutionary hymn, kept out marching over the
town till two o'clock in the morning, and then sent home
foot-sore and with aching heads.

The most interesting thing of all was to see the old men at
dinner--that helpless thing, an old man. Placed by the nice
table, a man with snow-white apron served the soup, a sister gave
round the meat, and then came a pudding. The bread was as white
as is all the bread of Spain, (even the poorest people have bread
of this very white flour,) and there seemed about a hundred of
these men over sixty years of age. The rain drives us home, but
by and by we go out again to buy some of the boots and shoes of
Cadiz, which are the prettiest in the world and cover the
prettiest of feet.


  Feast Of The Guardian Angels.

Friday, Oct. 2.

We go to the lovely church of the Rosary for high mass. The
decorations are very tasteful and beautiful, and hundreds of men
and women, in their grave black garments, assist most devoutly;
the men have benches on each side, the women sit or kneel upon a
bit of matting before the altar.

From this we go to the "Capuchinos," where we see three of
Murillo's finest pictures, the "Marriage of St. Catherine," over
the altar, which he left unfinished and which is surrounded, in
five compartments, by five pictures of Zurbaran, almost equal to
the centre piece. There is here another "Conception," and that
picture of pictures, "St. Francis receiving the Stigmata," which
is certainly the most extraordinary of all the works of this
great master. The face of the saint seems to come entirely out of
its dark surroundings, and so do the wonderful hands. These all
look like the living flesh, and move us as if they were so.

{354}

This Capuchin convent, which Murillo loved to adorn, and in
painting for which he lost his life, is now a hospital for
lunatics--the monks all gone; the present Bishop of Cadiz was one
[of] them. And to show the devotion of the common people to
Murillo, they will not allow the bishop to move this picture of
St. Francis to an opposite altar, where it would be in a better
light and preserved from the smoke of the altar candles. "No; the
place for which Murillo painted it must be the best place, and
there it shall stay." In a chapel near by is a lovely picture of
"Our Lady of the Rosary," which must be a copy of the one in the
gallery of Madrid so celebrated. In this chapel and everywhere
here we see statues or pictures of the "Martyrs of Cadiz,"
(Servando and Germano,) two young Roman soldiers who, becoming
converts, died for the faith on a spot near the present city
gates. It is said that on the occasion of the terrible earthquake
which occurred here November 1st, 1755, when the sea rose and
threatened to devour the city, two young men in strange garments
appeared on the spot of their martyrdom and were seen by hundreds
of the inhabitants to stay the waves, speaking to the people and
bidding them pray to God. On another side of the city the
Dominican priests bore the favorite statue of "Our Lady of the
Rosary," with many prayers, to the waters' brink, and "the waves
receded and there was a great calm."

On the third side, where Cadiz is most exposed to the sea, is a
little church in which the priest was saying mass on the eventful
morning. 'The people ran to him saying, "Behold! the sea is at
the very door." He made haste to consume the consecrated Host,
then seizing the crucifix and the banner of "Our Lady of Mercy,"
went out upon the door-step where the waves already licked his
feet: "My Mother, let them not come further"--and they did not!

What is so remarkable in the accounts of this earthquake is, that
there had been no storm to precede it, but on a soft sunshiny day
came this terrible convulsion of the elements. We went to see
this church, where is yet shown the crucifix and the banner which
played so important a part on this occasion; and see the point to
which the water rose, and an inscription on the wall of a house
recording the event exactly as here related. Next we visit the
church of San Lorenzo, and afterward that of the Scalzi,
(barefoot friars,) where to-day was said the "last mass;" the
"junta" having decreed that it be torn down to build a theatre.
The work of destruction had already commenced. How the strong old
walls resisted! A dozen carpenters were taking down the gilded
altars and curiously carved "retablos," which, belonging to the
days when Spain had her argosies from the new world laden with
gold, were made to resist "all time." Four men with iron crowbars
were striving to dislodge an angel suspended over an altar, which
positively refused to come down; while below him, on the floor,
stood saints and martyrs covered with dust and _débris_,
hastily dislodged from the pedestals on which they had rested for
centuries--a rueful group! No wonder the women wept, and eyed
resentfully the malicious-looking revolutionists employed to
order the work; while armed soldiers, with the hateful red ribbon
on the arm, (the revolutionary mark,) kept off the populace, who
strove to get in at the doors, by the market, to bid farewell to
these ancient altars.
{355}
It had been the church of the market people, the cradle of some
of popular saints, the scene of the "first communion," the
"nuptial mass," the baptism of their children, the funeral mass
for their dead. Great is the clamor outside! Old people kiss the
walls, and the young gather bits of the broken altars, while
sorrowful-looking priests are permitted to carry away the
mutilated statues and gildings.

The convent of the Good Shepherd, opening into the church, is
also to be torn down, and its unhappy inmates driven elsewhere to
seek shelter. They are putting into the _same convent_
these, with Carmelites, Ursulines, and others; crowding together
those who teach with those who save the Magdalens in strange and
painful confusion. Such are some of the fruits of revolution! And
this is the "liberty" which England and America seek for the
Spaniard!

To-night we hear that the Marquis de Novaliches has died of
lockjaw, his face having been dreadfully wounded by a ball. The
Conte de la Cheste, who held Monjuich at Barcelona, has gone to
join the queen, abandoning his "forlorn hope" at her request.


              Saturday, October 3.

To-day we hear the high mass in the cathedral, and go to see the
jewels in the sacristia. They have a remarkable "custodia," (the
gift of an ancestor of the Calderon de la Barca,) set in pearls
and emeralds of immense value; a superbly chased crucifix, the
gift of Alonzo the Learned; a small but exquisitely worked
tabernacle of gold with beautiful amethysts forming a cross,
given by the same king. After the mass we go to buy some of the
famous Cadiz gloves, and then drive on the ramparts to see the
fine sea view. In the evening, to the church of the Carmel. As it
is the eve of the feast of "Our Lady of the Rosary," the church
of the Rosary is illuminated, and most of the houses throughout
the city.


                Sunday, Oct. 4.

In the church of the Rosary is a beautiful ceremony. The music is
lovely; the wind instruments, in certain parts of the mass, most
effective, and the whole one of the most solemn services at which
we have assisted.

The sermon is delivered with such grace and unction that we could
but realize the truth of that saying of Charles V., that Spanish
is the language in which to speak to God! So grand, so sonorous!
And there is something in the grave dignity of the Spanish priest
which makes him seem the perfection of ecclesiastical character.
We are all struck with the decorum of the people in the churches,
the quiet and devotion; none of the running in and out and the
familiarity with holy things which in Italy makes one see that
the people regard the church as their father's house, in which
they take liberties. Here, it is alone the house of God, as is
seen in the reverential manner and careful costume. All wear
black, and not even is a lace mantilla usual, but the Spanish
mantilla of modest silk. The men are alike reverential, and
nowhere have we seen so many men in church, particularly at
night.

To-day we hear the good news that the government of the city is
taken from the hands of the junta and given into the care of the
former military governor of Cadiz, in conjunction with the
admiral of the fleet. This is received with great favor by the
people of moderate opinion of both sides, as putting a stop to
extreme measures. They have countermanded the destruction of the
two old churches, the Franciscan and the Scalzi; of the
last-named they tell a most extraordinary story to-day.
{356}
Yesterday the destroyers had knocked down a portion of the thick
old wall. This morning it was found rebuilt as if by invisible
hands, with the same heavy masonry, as strong as before, and even
the white plaster upon the outside dry and barely to be
distinguished from the rest of the building. Everybody runs to
look at it. The people cry "a miracle," and say that the Blessed
Virgin, whose feast it is to-day, had _a hand in it_.


               Monday, Oct. 5.
We go for the last time to the shops, and to hear our last mass
in San Antonio; for to-morrow we leave beautiful Cadiz and the
dear friends who have made our stay so delightful. The political
horizon to-day is a little clearer. In consequence of some
outrages upon priests and churches one man has been banished to
Ceuta, and large placards are upon the streets threatening with
like punishment every one who insults a priest or injures a
church. The banished man had harangued the mob, assuring them
that a Dominican father in the convent of that order had some
instruments of torture, formerly used in the Inquisition, and
that he applied them to his penitents. The unthinking mob, guided
by him, rushed to search the convent, broke the church windows,
and not finding what was promised them, turned their fury upon
the man who had deceived them.

In the war of 1835, when Saragossa began the work of burning the
monasteries and murdering the monks, Cadiz gave her monks five
hours to get away, and armed guards saved the monasteries. To be
sure, the populace burned the libraries and furniture; but as
Cadiz was then more moderate than her sister cities, she will not
now be less kind than then. How impossible to believe, in looking
out upon a city so smiling and so lovely, that evil passions
should lurk in it anywhere!

          To Be Continued.

----------

  The Approaching Council Of The Vatican.

The preparations for the approaching council continue to be made
on a grand scale, and with the greatest diligence. From the
_Chronicle of Matters relating to the future Council_, which
is regularly published at the office of the _Civilta
Cattolicà_, in Rome, we copy the list of the different
commissions and their members which are preparing the matters to
be discussed and decided upon by the bishops assembled in
ecumenical council.

The supreme directive congregation is composed of the most
eminent cardinals, Patrizi, de Reisach, Barnabo, Panebianco,
Bizarri, Bilio, Caterini, and Capalti. To these are joined, as
secretary, Mgr. Giannelli; and as consulters, Mgr. Tizzani, Mgr.
Angelini, vicegerent of Rome, Mgr. Talbot, (an Englishman,) Don
Melchior Galeotti, of the seminary of Palermo, F. Sanguineti, S.
J., professor of canon law in the Roman College, Professor Feije,
of the University of Louvain, and Professor Hefele, of Tübingen.
{357}
The commission of ceremonies is composed of prelates who have the
general supervision of the grand functions which take place in
the principal churches of Rome. The politico-ecclesiastical
commission is composed of;

  Cardinal de Reisach, president,
  Mgrs. Marini,
  del Parco a Theatine,
  Bartolini,
  Jacobini,
  Ferrari,
  Nussi,
  Gizzi,  (a judge in one of the high courts,)
  Guardi, (vicar-general of the religious
          congregation of ministers of the sick,)
  Canon Kovaes, of Kolocza in Bohemia,
  Canon Molitor of Spire in Germany,
  the Abbé Chesnel, vicar-general of Quimper,
  Canon Moufang of Mayence,
  the Abbé Gibert, vicar-general of Moulins, and
  Mgr. Trinchieri, secretary.

The commission for eastern affairs is composed of

  Cardinal Barnabo, president,
  Don John Simeoni, of the Propaganda,
  F. Bollig, S. J., professor of Sanscrit and Oriental
    languages in the Roman university
    and Roman college,
  F. Vercellone, (Barnabite religious; since deceased,)
  F. Theiner, of the Oratory,
  the Most Rev. Leonard Valerga, prefect of Carmelite
     missions in Syria,
  the Right Rev. Joseph David, a Syrian bishop,
  Canon Roncetti, professor in the Roman seminary,
  Don Joseph Piazza,
  Don Francis Rosi,
  F. Haneberg, abbot of St. Boniface and professor
    of theology in the university of Munich,
  F. Martinoff,
  S. J., Mgr. Howard, (an Englishman,) and
  Mgr. Cretoni, secretary.

The commission on the religious orders and congregations is
composed of

  Cardinal Bizarri, president,
  Mgrs. Marini,
  Svegliati, and
  Lucidi,
  F. Capelli, (Barnabite,)
  F. Bianchi,(Dominican,)
  F. Cipressa, (Minorite Franciscan,)
  F. Cretoni, (Augustinian,)
  F. Costa, (Jesuit,)
  Mgr. Guisasola, arch-priest of the
     cathedral of Seville, and
  Don Francis Stoppani, secretary.

The commission of dogmatic theology is composed of

  Cardinal Bilio, president,
  Mgr. Cardoni, president of the ecclesiastical academy,
  F. Spada, (Dominican,) master of the
     sacred palace and professor of
     dogma in the Roman university,
  F. de Ferrari, (Dominican,)
  F., Perrone, S.J.,
  Mgr. Schwetz, professor of theology in the
     university of Vienna,
  F. Mura, ex-general of the Servites, rector
     of the Roman university,
  F. Adrogna, definitor-general of the
     conventual Franciscans,
  Mgr. Jacquenet, curé of St. Jacques at Rheims,
  the Abbé Gay, vicar-general of Poitiers,
  F. Martinelli, (Augustinian,) professor of Scripture in the Roman
     university,
  Don Joseph Pecci, professor of philosophy in the same,
  F. Franzlin, S. J., professor
     of theology in the Roman college,
  F. Schrader, S.J., professor in the
     university of Vienna,
  Professor Petacci, of the Roman seminary,
  Professor Hettinger, of Wurtzburg,
  Professor Alzog, of Friburg,
  the Rev. Dr. Corcoran, of Charleston, S. C.,
  Canon Labrador, professor of philosophy and theology at Cadiz, and
  Canon Santori, rector of the pontifical lyceum in the Roman
     seminary, secretary.

The commission of ecclesiastical discipline is composed of

  Cardinal Caterini, president,
  Mgrs. Giannelli,
  Angelini,
  Svegliati,
  Simeoni,
  Nina,
  Nobili,
  Lucidi,
  de Angelis, professor of canon law in the Roman
     university,
  F. Tarquini, S.J.,
  Canon Jacobini,
  Professor Hergenroether, of Wurtzburg,
  Professor Feije of Louvain,
  the Abbé Sauvé, of Laval,
  Canon Giese, of Munster,
  Professor Heuser, of Cologne,
  Professor de Torres, of Seville, and
  Mgr. Louis Jacobini, secretary.

Several other distinguished men have been added to these
commissioners since this list was published. Dr. Newman was
invited to assist, but declined on account of his infirm health.
Dr. Döllinger was also invited.

{358}

The sessions of the council will be held in one of the large
chapels of St. Peter's Church, which is capable of containing
several thousand persons. The principal architects of Rome are
already engaged in preparing the proper accommodations, under the
immediate supervision of the Holy Father himself. The altar of
the council is at one end of the chapel, the throne of the
sovereign pontiff at the opposite end. On the right and left of
the throne are placed the seats of the cardinals, patriarchs, and
ambassadors of sovereigns. The seats of the prelates are ranged
in two semicircles, each tier being elevated above the one before
it; the tribune of the orators is placed in the middle of the
open space between, and there are also tribunes prepared for
those who will be admitted as spectators of the public sessions.

A large and beautiful piece of black marble, which was found
among the treasures of the Emperor Nero, at the recent
exhumation, is to be made into an obelisk commemorative of the
council, which will be erected near the spot where St. Peter was
crucified. The base of the column is to be made of a number of
small blocks of white marble, equal to the number of prelates
assisting at the council, each one placing his own block, with
his name and title engraved upon it.

The bishops alone are entitled to a seat in the council by divine
right. Cardinals, abbots, and generals of religious orders are
entitled to a seat also, by ecclesiastical law or privilege. The
question of the right of bishops _in partibus infidelium_ to
a seat is now under discussion, and we have not learned whether
it has yet been decided or not.

This circumstance has given the Roman correspondent of the _New
York Herald_a chance of furnishing a specimen of the
ridiculous and reckless falsification of matters relating to the
Catholic Church, by which the ordinary readers of newspapers are
perpetually befooled and mystified. The doubt respecting the
right of these bishops is represented as having been raised in
order to keep out those who are not sufficiently subservient to
the holy see, and the conclusion drawn--with the usual flippant
impertinence of this class of writers--that Rome will admit none
who are not prepared to carry out fully her own policy. The truth
is, however, that these bishops _in partibus_--who are
prelates holding merely titular sees which are in fact extinct or
in the possession of schismatics, many of them having been
decorated with the episcopal character by the pope only for the
sake of honor--are precisely the men who have the least power of
opposing the holy see and the greatest interest in procuring its
favor. Some of them are vicars-apostolic governing missionary
districts, others are coadjutors of diocesan bishops, others are
prelates who have resigned their sees, and the remainder are
prelates filling certain high offices in the Roman court. It is
evident enough that if there were any reason to apprehend
opposition to the pontifical authority from any portion of the
hierarchy, it would be rather from the primates and metropolitans
of old and powerful sees, who have been nominated by sovereigns,
and who would have all their support and authority to sustain
them. There is no reason, however, to apprehend that any
collision will take place between the holy see and the hierarchy,
who have never in the whole history of the church been more
completely united than they are at present.

{359}

The bishops take no theologians with them, and, besides the
prelates themselves, only the theologians of the holy see and the
representatives of the sovereigns will participate in the
deliberations of the council.

In regard to the matters which will be proposed for the
adjudication of this supreme tribunal, we find many conjectures,
more or less plausible, both in Catholic and secular periodicals.
We prefer to wait until the acts of the council are made known in
an authentic manner, before speaking on this subject. We remark
merely that there is not the slightest foundation for the rumors
which are reported in certain newspapers respecting proposed
changes in the established discipline of the church, regarding
matters which have long ago been definitely settled.

The impression made upon the whole civilized world by the
convocation of an ecumenical council is deep, universal, and
continually increasing as the time for its assembling draws near.
The infidel and red-republican party in Europe manifest a fear
and dread which is certainly remarkable, and very encouraging to
all friends of religion and order. The politicians of the old
_régime_ of state supremacy over the church also manifest a
terrible and perfectly well-founded alarm, lest the church should
assert and regain her perfect liberty and independence, and
condemn, without any hope of appeal, those maxims and opinions by
which they have hitherto held a certain number of sincere
Catholics in alliance with themselves.

The reception given by the emperor of Russia and the patriarch of
Constantinople to the pope's invitation is too well known to need
any fresh notice. Of course, the great body of the oriental
prelates follow the dictation of these two potentates--a striking
commentary upon the value and sincerity of the protest which they
make against the tyranny of the Roman patriarch. There are not
wanting, however, certain instances showing the impression which
the pope's invitation has made upon the more sincere and
conscientious members of these separated communions. The bishop
of Trebizond, a man of venerable age, received the encyclical
letter with marks of great respect, raising it to his forehead
and pressing it to his bosom, exclaiming at the same time with
emotion, "O Rome! O Rome! O St. Peter! O St. Peter!" He would
not, however, declare any decisive intention either to attend the
council or to absent himself. The bishop of Adrianople returned
the letter, saying, "I wish first to reflect. I wish to decide
for myself." Letters from the east testify that many of the Greek
schismatics openly blame the patriarch and the bishops who have
refused to attend the council, saying, that by this refusal they
have shown that they are afraid to enter into discussion with the
Latin bishops. It is believed that the Armenian bishops who were
summoned by their patriarch, residing at Constantinople, to
advise with him respecting the pope's invitation, were in favor
of accepting it, from the fact that he afterward sent the
encyclical to the patriarch of Esmiasin with the report of the
doings of the synod. A strong unionist party has been formed
among the Armenians, and one of their prelates, Mgr. Narses, has
published a long letter advocating union with the Roman Church.
The Ottoman government favors union as a means of weakening the
influence of Russia, and has separated the Bulgarians, who number
four millions, from the jurisdiction of the patriarch of
Constantinople. It has also refused to recognize a prelate sent
by the patriarch of Esmiasin to act as his nuncio at
Constantinople for the purpose of counteracting the efforts of
the unionist party, and has given a semi-official warning to one
of the most violent _Russophilist_ journals. [Footnote 81]

    [Footnote 81: Later news informs us that the Armenian
    patriarch of Constantinople has been forced to resign by the
    clamors raised against him, that the Greek patriarch had
    called an "ecumenical" council, and that the Coptic patriarch
    of Alexandria received the encyclical with great respect and
    many expressions of courtesy toward the prelate who was the
    bearer of it.]

{360}

It is an interesting fact that the king of Birmah, when made
acquainted with the desire of the Holy Father that sovereigns
should place no obstacle in the way of the attendance of the
bishops in their dominions at the council, exclaimed: "What! can
there be any princes who would oppose such a just and holy
desire? For my part, I not only promise to interpose no obstacle,
but I engage to pay the travelling expenses of the bishops of my
kingdom both going and returning." He has also announced the
intention of sending by each of the bishops a jewelled cross as a
present to the pope.

The Jansenist bishops of Holland, who are five or six in number,
each one having two or three priests and about a thousand people
under his jurisdiction, find themselves compelled, by their own
professed principles, to submit themselves to the judgment of the
council. They have appealed, ever since the condemnation of
Jansenius, from the pope to an ecumenical council. Now they find
an ecumenical council on the eve of assembling, before which they
have full liberty to appear, and plead their case. They
acknowledge the infallibility of the tribunal, and therefore can
have no choice but to submit to its decision, which they openly
profess their readiness to do, so that without doubt they will
all be reconciled to the church.

Among Protestants we find everywhere a great excitement
respecting the council, a full recognition of the immense
importance of the crisis which it must inevitably bring upon
Protestantism; in general, a disposition to rouse up for the
defence of their losing cause, and oppose an obstinate renewal of
their old protest to the admonition of their chief pastor to
return to their allegiance, but occasionally a manifestation of a
different sentiment--a disposition to listen, to hope for good
results, and to welcome the thought of a possible reconciliation.

On the tenth day of last November, M. Guizot uttered the
following words at a reunion of ecclesiastics and laymen, at
Notre Dame de Dozulè, in Normandy:

  "You priests have faith; it is faith which directs you; and
  even when you seem to act imprudently, success always justifies
  you in the end. ... It is thus that the Catholic Church
  sustains itself, happily for France and the world. ... The
  clergy dies not, the papacy does not fall. ... Pius IX. has
  exhibited an admirable wisdom in convoking this grand assembly,
  from which, perhaps, will issue the salvation of the world; for
  our societies are very sick; but, for great evils there are
  great remedies. [Footnote 82]

    [Footnote 82: _Rev. du Monde Catholique_, for January
    25th, p. 299.]

The German publicist, Wolfgang Menzel, in the number of his
_Literary Leaves_ for last October, thus writes:

  "We are far from wishing to blame a reunion of all good
  Christians, even though the same authority in Protestants who
  are truly Christian is not sufficiently recognized. Every
  tentative of reunion, however restricted it may be, must be
  hailed with joy."

{361}

Reinhold Baumstark, in a pamphlet upon the pontifical letter,
says:

  "It is the Catholic Church which has directed and accomplished
  the education of humanity during the whole middle age. Since
  the Reformation, it has sustained without succumbing three
  centuries of violent struggles, and, if the eternal truth of
  God lives in it, we shall see the realization of the word of
  its founder, that _"there shall be one fold and one
  shepherd."_

In quite a different spirit writes Prof. Schenkel, of Heidelberg:

  "It is impossible to deny that the Protestant church of Germany
  is at present running a very great danger. The different
  confessions are becoming daily more opposed to each other.
  Theological parties engage in mortal combats; the liberal party
  is combated by the servile party. The bond of peace is with
  deliberate purpose torn and broken and a large portion of the
  German people, witnesses of these disputes, fall into
  discouragement, distrust, and indifference. The ancient and
  malign enemy laughs at our folly, that, after having bitten one
  another, we shall finish by eating one another up. ... Let us
  say it, to our shame, we have no remedy to oppose to this evil.
  Interiorly divided, absorbed in party disputes, deprived of
  autonomy, the sport of political calculations, and
  politico-ecclesiastical experiments which are perpetually
  changing, torn by theological hatred, abandoned by the
  populations, thrust aside by all classes of citizens, our
  church resembles only too much a shipwrecked vessel which lets
  in water on every side. How can we face the violent tempest
  which is brewing, when we lack unity of direction, when we lack
  a head, are destitute of any solid interior or exterior
  organization, when we are consuming our forces in the continual
  wars of one confession against another?"

We are sorry, Professor Schenkel, that we really cannot tell you
how you can do it. Perhaps Dr. Bellows, the American and Foreign
Christian Union, or the _New York Observer_ might suggest
something a little consoling or encouraging to the unfortunate
gentleman.

The official replies made by various Protestant bodies in Europe
are, as we might expect, a reiteration of their old protests
against the Roman Church, and a declaration of their contentment
with their present state. The most courteous and well-reasoned of
these papers which we have seen is that of the Unitarian pastors
who sit in the seat of Calvin at Geneva. It makes the issue
between rationalism, liberalism, and humanitarian progress, on
one side, and the supernatural revelation of doctrine and law, on
the other, very distinctly--imputing, in the usual style,
servility, formalism, tyranny, and obscurantism to the Catholic
Church, and claiming for Protestantism the merit of protecting
and promoting true liberty, intelligence, and happiness. There is
more of the same kind in the number of the _Liberal
Christian_ (February 6th) in which we have read this address.
As statements of the position and opinions of the parties issuing
them, these documents may pass. We are to expect that those who
are challenged in the way they have been will reply in just such
a manner. These are only the preliminaries of an earnest
controversy which must be carried on for a long time before any
result can be looked for.

Dr. Hedge, of Harvard University, has rendered himself supremely
ridiculous by denying that St. Peter was bishop of Rome, or even
visited Rome at any time; from which he concludes that the pope
has no right to issue encyclicals as his successor. [Footnote 83]

    [Footnote 83: See article on this point in the present
    number.]

{362}

The _Liberal Christian_, with a kind of audacious valor,
backs him up, and declares that "the whole claim of the bishop of
Rome is an absurdity." Suppose it to be so to the superior and
enlightened minds of this editor and his compeers; the assertion
of it carries no weight, and can have no effect upon any other
person's mind. Another Unitarian, the Rev. Samuel Johnson, of
Massachusetts, says: "If I believed in his (Christ's) authority
even as Matthew presents it, not to say Paul or John, I should
regard the principles of the papacy as in substance right,
whatsoever I might think of the conduct of its representatives."
[Footnote 84] Considering the very great importance of the
subject, the great learning and number of those who differ from
our enlightened friends, and the curious circumstance that almost
every person thinks that no opinion or sect but his own can
uphold itself against the claims of Rome, would it not be in
better taste to have patience a little longer, and speak with a
little more moderation?

    [Footnote 84: _Radical_, January, 1869, p. 9.]

The _Christian Quarterly_, which is a ferocious young
Campbellite periodical published at Cincinnati, thus addresses
the Protestant community:

  "Are you able to feel the sting in the following words of
  'Pius, sovereign pontiff, ninth of the name, to all Protestants
  and non-Catholics?' In speaking of the multitudinous sects of
  the Protestant world, and of the restlessness, instability, and
  uncertainty that everywhere characterizes Protestantism, he
  says," etc. "The very fact that the Pope of Rome should, in the
  last half of the nineteenth century, have occasion to pen such
  a paragraph, ought to call the blush of shame to every
  Protestant cheek! Protestantism has been experimenting for
  three hundred years, and the pope of Rome has summed up the
  result! Let Protestantism try the force of its logic upon this
  papal dilemma!" [Footnote 85]

    [Footnote 85: _C. Q._ Jan. 1869, pp. 52-3.]

We take the following item of news from the _London Tablet_:

  "English Protestants And The Council.

  "There are signs around us that a movement is beginning. The
  _Diplomatic Review_, a peculiar and certainly a remarkable
  journal, published the first Wednesday of every month, in
  London, contains a Protestant address to the pope, and notifies
  to its readers in town and country that it will lie for
  signature at its office till the end of the month. The purport
  of the address is to implore the pope to proclaim again, by his
  own authority or by that of the council, the observance of the
  laws of natural justice by Christian and civilized nations in
  their relations with the heathen and the uncivilized. In an
  article written in French this same journal says: 'We pronounce
  the words of the pope like texts, we draw our deduction from
  his maxims, and we see in the accomplishment of his work the
  only hope for the preservation of European society.' ... 'The
  strength of the pope is the law:' our duty is to announce
  explicitly this truth, Christianity must be preached anew.' In
  addition to this remarkable declaration, we have the public
  expression of the Rev. E. W. Urquhart, at a meeting of the
  'English Church Union,' presided over by the Hon. and Rev. C.
  L. Courtenay, in South-Devonshire. He said that the separation
  of church and state is not far distant, and suggested that the
  Anglican party should seek reunion with the Church of Rome, and
  that representatives should be sent to the council, to
  stipulate the conditions of their submission to the see of
  Rome. This language may sound startling in the mouth of an
  Anglican clergyman; but we expect the courage of Mr. Urquhart's
  utterance will unloose many a tongue. Of course, the only
  stipulation that can be made is that of unqualified submission
  to the holy see. To a human and fallible authority you may
  bring conditions; to one that is divine and infallible, you can
  bring only faith and docility."

{363}

The comments of the secular press upon the council, in many
cases, would seem as if their authors were aiming to carry
burlesque to its most farcical extreme. Their spirit is that of
the mocking ridicule of Voltairian infidelity without its show of
argument, together with the grossest materialism and the
systematic disavowal of any principle higher than self-interest
or political expediency. It is sufficiently absurd when such
writers attempt to express, under the protection of their
anonymous cloak, any opinions whatever in religious matters. Much
more, when they offer their ludicrous advice to the prelates and
theologians of the Catholic Church, and pretend to understand the
true nature of Christianity and its mission upon earth better
than the church herself. In itself the matter is only laughable,
and of course the really intelligent and well-informed would only
receive with a smile of derision the notion that any serious
meaning or value could be ascribed to such lucubrations. But it
becomes serious and lamentable when we reflect how small this
class really is. The proofs are continually forced upon us of the
fact, that a large proportion of those who are intelligent enough
to make money, to keep the run of politics and the exchange, to
dress well, and to make a show, really read nothing but the daily
papers, look to them for their ideas of religion as well as every
other topic, and are actually possessed by the grossest
ignorance, and the most dense and stolid prejudice, in regard to
everything relating to the Catholic Church and to all Catholic
nations. Any convert to the Catholic Church, who mixes with
ordinary men of business or with general society, will testify to
the fact that they are frequently accosted with expressions of
surprise that persons intelligent and reputable, such as they
are, can possibly be Catholics, and with the assertion, as of a
truism, that only the ignorant, the degraded, and the vicious,
which with Americans is generally a synonym for poor people or
foreigners, believe in the doctrines of the Catholic Church.
Those who read the sectarian newspapers suffer themselves to be
swept along by the lying current which runs through them, like
the filthy stream of a sewer. We happen to have just read a
description from a London paper of a visit to the sewers of that
city which presents an apt and forcible illustration of what we
are saying: "Under Farrington street west," says the writer, "the
Fleet Ditch was running in two swift, black streams; almost below
the footway upon each side, some three feet six inches deep, and
with so strong a current that we were assured it would be
impossible to save the life of any one who stepped or slipped
into them. These foul streams recalled the ancient Styx and made
one hold back with something like a shudder."

The following extract from the _Boston Traveller_ has just
fallen into our hands in good time to serve as an instance in
point:

  "The New Light Of The Catholic Church.

  "Mr. Editor: Sabbath evening, April 4th, Father I. T. Hecker,
  editor of the _Catholic World_, delivered a lecture in the
  Music Hall on 'The Religious Condition of the Country.' As it
  has been reported by the press, it would seem to be little more
  than a tissue of misrepresentations of New England in
  particular, and of Protestantism in general. It would be a
  sufficient reply to the exaggeration and conceit of the
  reverend padre to say, that if Protestantism had done nothing
  more than to enable him to rail for an hour and a half at the
  most cherished and sacred feelings of our people, its mission
  would not be in vain. And herein is its eminent superiority to
  that cast-iron system which holds the reviler of our faith. Can
  Catholicism do what Protestantism did on Sunday week? Will
  Rome, or any other Catholic city, permit a Protestant minister,
  placarded and advertised days in advance, in a public hall, to
  burlesque and hold up to contempt the Catholic faith? This
  lecturer knows that Rome is mean enough to forbid the exercise
  of Protestant worship to travellers, or visitors from
  Protestant lands sojourning temporarily within her walls.
{364}
  And yet _he_ comes to the largest hall in the capital of
  New England and has the impudence to undertake to tell our
  people that they are adrift on two tides, one of which is to
  Rome and the other to infidelity. And if his statements are
  reliable, infidelity makes altogether the better stand. But we
  insist that he is either wilfully false or wilfully ignorant,
  or he would not have said that 'not one in ten of the people of
  New England accepts as fundamental, the truths which his
  forefathers held.'

  "Father Hecker knows, if he knows anything, that the
  evangelical churches of New England hold for substance the same
  doctrines that their fathers held; and he knows, too, that
  there is not a doctrine held or advocated in any Protestant
  Church in Christendom which does not have its advocates in the
  bosom of the Catholic Church. He must be aware that biblical
  criticism has made sound progress within two hundred and fifty
  years; and we can hardly believe that even he would be narrow
  enough to deny that certain doctrines may be re-stated and
  re-explained without plunging into infidelity, least of all
  pushing for Rome.

  "But as he has chosen to attack New England in particular, it
  is no more than fair, perhaps, that New England should have the
  privilege of being compared with the most favored Catholic
  countries. He certainly will not object to France, which has
  always been overwhelmingly Catholic, not one in ten of her
  population being Protestant. And yet scarcely fifty years have
  passed since the whole nation voted God out of existence, and
  deified reason in the person of a harlot. The Romish priests,
  he knows, were among the foremost in this carnival of
  infidelity and blood. Nor need he be told that the men of
  France, to-day, are infidels. Italy, too, the seat of this
  boasting church, is overshadowed, as Father Hecker knows, by a
  sneering, malignant infidelity. And Spain--blessed, so
  recently, with the most Catholic queen to whom the Pope sent
  the golden rose, which enjoyed for generations the blessings of
  the Inquisition, and for many years committed the entire
  education of her people into the hands of the Jesuits--what
  shall we say of her? The best thing we can say of her is, that
  she drove from her borders that nasty woman, and sent the
  Jesuits after her. And this is the fruit of Catholicism, and
  not of Protestantism.

  "In only a single country where the Catholic Church has been
  supreme has the result been the Catholic faith--that country is
  Ireland. And if Father Hecker is willing to compare the Irish,
  who are the best fruits of the Catholic Church, with the people
  of New England, who are the best fruits of Protestantism, we
  are entirely content. But it is not a little singular that
  these best children of the Catholic Church should have
  immigrated to this country by the million, and are still
  coming, to improve their condition? And we think that Father
  Hecker himself will not deny that these favorite sons of Rome
  have wonderfully improved in intelligence, morals, and thrift
  in this infidel New England.

  "But what would this reviling priest have? Would he make of New
  England another Ireland or Spain, another infidel France or
  Italy? What would he have us do? Blot out our public schools,
  take the Bible from the hands of our people, subject their
  consciences to the priests, establish the inquisition, raise up
  a generation of Christians like those of his church who hung
  the negroes to the lamp-posts in New York, and roll back this
  land into the old night of the middle ages, when Rome sat like
  a nightmare upon all the peoples of Christendom? Does this
  priest suppose that our people will swallow such stuff as was
  offered them at the Music Hall? The common school has not
  diffused general intelligence here for two hundred and fifty
  years, that our people should need to go to a Catholic
  schoolmaster to learn their own history, or the history of that
  church which has made an Ireland and a Spain.
                                   "PURITAN."

We do not expect that such a dense darkness of ignorance and
prejudice as that which exists in the Protestant world will be
immediately dispelled by the light which will radiate from the
city of God through the council of bishops assembled about their
august chief, the vicar of Jesus Christ. We have reason to expect
a great number of conversions, among those who are already
partially enlightened, as its immediate result, and the more
zealous and successful prosecution of the work of bringing back
all nations to the fold of truth and grace as its effect during a
long period to come.
{365}
But, no doubt, the greater number of those who are thoroughly
committed to the anti-Catholic cause will persevere to the last
in their hostility, and retain for a long time a multitude of
followers under their influence. It is useless to argue with such
men in the hope of convincing or converting them. They will be
forced, however, to meet the Catholic question fairly and
squarely, and no longer be able to hide themselves behind vague
platitudes and unmeaning generalities. They will be obliged,
also, to give account of their own systems, whatever they may be,
which they put forward as substitutes for the Catholic religion,
and thus undergo the crucial tests of logic, history, and
critical science. For ourselves, we cannot doubt for a moment
that, as the ultimate result, everything like orthodox or
positive Protestantism will be ground into dust between the two
opposing forces of Catholicity and infidelity, leaving the great
contest to be waged between these two. In regard to this last
great issue we venture to make no prognostics. There are reasons
both for fear and for hope; but the only course for us to pursue
is to aim for as much good as possible, leaving the rest with
God. That a crisis approaches in the conflict between the
universal divine order and universal lawlessness, between the
church and the world, that is, the wicked world or concrete mass
of all false and wicked principles, the _mundus positus in
malignos_, of which the apostle speaks; and that this crisis
will be hastened and materially affected by the council, cannot
be doubted. We desire to impress, therefore, upon all the really
sincere and upright lovers of truth and Christianity, the
importance of their paying careful attention to the doings of
this council and of looking to correct sources for their
information.

All Catholics must look forward to the council with sentiments of
the most profound veneration and ardent expectation of the
incalculable good which it will produce in the bosom of the
church. An ecumenical council is the representative Catholic
Church, the entire episcopate with its head and supreme bishop,
the highest tribunal on earth, with plenary authority to define
doctrines and enact laws, with the spiritual presence of Jesus
Christ in the midst of it, and the plenitude of the Holy Spirit
to enlighten and assist its deliberations and judgments;
infallible in all its decrees respecting faith and morals,
sovereign in all its enactments, with full power to bind all
minds and consciences to an implicit and unreserved obedience in
the name of God. The church is always infallible, and is
perpetually teaching the faith and the rule of morals; the holy
see is always invested with authority to decide controversies and
make laws; and is competent to make even definitions of faith, to
which the assent of the dispersed bishops gives the same force of
concurrent judgment which their conciliar action possesses.
Nevertheless, the pope with the episcopate assembled in
ecumenical council can do more than when they are dispersed. The
gift of active infallibility is in a higher and more intense
exercise, because the common intellect and will of the church is
prepared by common counsel and communion to receive a more
abundant illumination and vivification of the Holy Spirit. It is
by the councils, from that of Nice to that of Trent, that
heretics have been condemned, and the clear, explicit definitions
of the faith once delivered to the saints have been made. The
council of the Vatican will possess the same infallible authority
with that which met at Jerusalem under St. Peter, or that which
at under the presidency of the legates of St. Sylvester,
condemned the Arian heresy and defined the Son to be
consubstantial with the Father.
{366}
This august tribunal will therefore have full power to terminate
all controversies and differences among Catholics in regard to
which it shall judge that the interests of the faith and the
well-being of the church require a definite judgment to be made.
The result will be both a more perfect concordance in doctrine
and principles of action, regarding all the matters which will be
decided, and a more perfect recognition of liberty in reference
to all opinions which are left as open questions. That this will
be a great gain no truly loyal Catholic can doubt. Another result
to be expected is a more precise, definite, and uniform system of
ecclesiastical law and administration, providing a more perfect
adjustment of all the multiform relations of the church and her
hierarchy. Those portions of the church which are in an apathetic
and torpid state we may hope will be roused up; a multitude of
sluggish and unfaithful Catholics become reanimated with the
spirit of faith; and the unity, sanctity, catholicity, and
apostolicity of the church--the immortality of her life, the
divine authority of her teaching, the irresistible and universal
power of that spirit which is in her--be manifested with a
brightness which will make for ever glorious the close of the
nineteenth century, whose opening was so very dark and
inauspicious.

----------

               St. Mary's.

If there is one spot in our country to which the American
Catholic turns with special interest, it is certainly to the
landing-place of Lord Baltimore's colony in Maryland and the site
of St. Mary's City. New Englanders are never weary of boasting of
"our pilgrim forefathers," who landed on Plymouth Rock to obtain
freedom to worship God according to their own peculiar notions.
To have an ancestor who came over in the Mayflower is equivalent
to a patent of nobility--it sets the fortunate individual above
his fellows, and makes him a member of a caste truly Brahminical.

The Catholic can turn with far greater pride to those spiritual
forefathers who, with no self-righteousness, sought in the new
world not only liberty of conscience, but allowed it to others;
who were so just in their dealings with the natives that they
never took an inch of land without paying for it; and who, by
their Christian kindness, won over so many of the Indians to
genuine Christianity. We truly have reason to say,

  "Ay, call it holy ground
   The soil where first they trod!"

I had always wished to visit this consecrated spot so dear to the
Catholic heart, and embraced the first convenient opportunity of
doing so. I rode down from Leonardtown during the pleasant Indian
summer time.
{367}
My most vivid remembrance of the ride is of passing over a
frequent succession of what my Aunt Pilcher used to call
"sarvent-madams."--a sudden depression, as if be tween two logs,
which unceremoniously pitched you forward in the carriage and
then brought you up with a sudden jerk, thus forcing you to make
an impromptu bow which gave point to the pleasant name of
"sarvent-madams." This sort of exercise may be novel, but a
continuation of it is not at all amusing, and I was glad when,
after a ride of about twenty miles, we emerged from a woody path,
crossed a stream, and found ourselves on the high plain where
once stood the city of St. Mary. One is surprised--pained--to
find not one stone left upon another of that settlement. When the
seat of government was removed, nature resumed her sway and
avenged herself for the ravages of man by obliterating most of
his traces and reclothing the place with her own freshness and
beauty. There are now a few dwellings belonging to the farmer who
owns this historic site, a barnlike church belonging to the
Episcopalians, said to have been built of the ruins of the old
state-house, and a large brick building that stands dreary and
treeless, looking like a factory, but which is really a seminary
for young ladies, the monument erected by the Maryland
legislature to commemorate the landing of the first colonists! It
would be an excellent place for a convent of Carthusians; but to
banish lively girls to this lonely region, lovely though it be,
so far from any town, several miles from the post-office, and
with no literary advantages, must have been the conception of
some malicious and dyspeptic old bachelor. The young are rarely
lovers of nature. Those whose souls have been chastened and
weaned from the world alone find a balm therein. It is a great
defect in the training of our youth that they are not made more
observant of natural objects. Insects, vegetation, the very
stones beneath the feet, are a source of unceasing pleasure to
the heart in sympathy with nature in all her infinite variety.
But this requires teachers who are capable of opening to youth
the great treasure-house of nature. It is not always the most
intellectual people who are the most fond of the country. Madame
de Staël preferred living in the fourth story of a house on the
Rue du Bac in Paris to a villa on the enchanted shores of Lake
Geneva. And Dr. Johnson thought there was no view that equalled
the high tide of human beings at Charing Cross.

This seminary is intended to educate the young ladies of
prevailing religious sects of the country, each of which is
represented by a teacher. I have understood that at times there
have been serious conflicts between those who were for Paul and
those who were for Apollos; but this is not at all surprising in
a place where they must be driven to desperation for a little
excitement. The only church near is the Episcopal, where the
services are very intermittent indeed, which obliges the teachers
to play the part of chaplain.

This uninviting church is in a yard full of old graves, shaded by
clumps of hollies and gloomy cedars. There is a venerable old
mulberry-tree in the midst, now quite decayed, but still putting
forth a few leafy branches, said to have been planted (a twig
from old England) by Leonard Calvert's own hands. There is a
tradition that he was buried in this yard--perhaps near his tree,
familiarly known as Lord Baltimore's tree--but there is nothing
to indicate the precise spot. It is more probable that he was
buried near the Catholic church, which was about a quarter of a
mile farther down.
{368}
Relic lovers have nearly killed this venerable tree, by cutting
out pieces for canes, crosses, etc. Passing through the grassy
graveyard, and descending a steep bank, you come to a narrow line
of sand, a miniature beach on the shore of St. Mary's River, the
place where the colony landed. The water is as salt as the sea,
and the broad river deep enough for the Dove and the Ark to
anchor. A gentle ripple came up over the yellow sand and
crystalline pebbles. The broad expanse of water lay like a lake,
with undulating hills in the background all covered with woods in
their gorgeous autumn foliage. The whole scene was as calm and
peaceful as if these waters had never been disturbed by Indian
canoe or white man's craft.

A quarter of a mile south of the seminary was a turnip-field,
where once stood the church the colonists hastened to build. You
would not imagine you stood on consecrated ground where holy
rites were once performed. This was not the place where the holy
sacrifice was first offered. Their first chapel was an Indian
wigwam, which a friendly native gave up to Father White; for the
colonists founded an Indian village here which owned the pacific
rule of King Yaocomico, and established themselves in peace
beside it. Opposite the place where the church stood, and east of
it, are some traces of the lord proprietary's residence. The old
cellar is nearly filled with rubbish, in which are found
fragments of crockery and bricks--bricks brought from the old
country. There were grand doings here once. Hilarity and
merriment had their hours in that miniature court, amid those of
grave deliberations. But, at last, Pallida Mors, "that at every
door knocks," came in the train, and brought mourning to all the
settlers; for here died Leonard Calvert. He was nursed in his
last moments by his relatives Margaret and Mary Brent. He died on
the 9th of June, 1647. The place of his burial is not known. In
these days of woman's rights, it may not be amiss to recall the
first woman in this country, perhaps, who asserted her claim to
share the privileges of the stronger sex. Margaret Brent was
appointed by Governor Calvert his sole administratrix, which is
certainly a proof of her capacity for business. By virtue of this
appointment she claimed to be the attorney of the lord
proprietor. Her claims were admitted by the council. She then
appeared in the general assembly, and claimed the right to vote
as Lord Baltimore's representative. This was not permitted. She
was a large land-owner, and displayed her energy in laying out
her estates; and she quelled a mutiny among some Virginia
soldiers who had served under Leonard Calvert. It is surprising
the strong-minded women of this day have not brought forward this
fine precedent, who has been ranked with the famous Margaret of
Parma, regent of the Netherlands. Let us hope, with all her fine
abilities, that she retained her sweet womanly ways and that
modesty which is the charm of her sex. I fancy she did, or she
would never have subdued those early representatives of the
gallant Virginia chivalry.

Close by the lord proprietary's place is a spot charming enough
for Egeria. It is a spring of delicious water bubbling up from
the rocks, that flows off in a streamlet, over tufts of the
thickest and greenest moss. It is shaded by a dense clump of
cedars and holly bushes---a fit haunt for the dryades and all the
sylvan deities. The warm noontide air was fanned into this cool
and leafy bower, where the birds still sang and insects floated,
bringing with it a certain aroma from the crushed leaves of the
wood.
{369}
From a distance came the measured cadence of some negro song,
snatched up at the hour of noonday rest, which harmonized with
the spot and the atmosphere. There is always an undertone of
melancholy in the gayest songs of the colored race which lulls
the heart, as sorrow underlies all gayety in the heart of man. It
was a place to be alone with nature, poetry, God, and just the
spot for an old hermit to set up his cell, and pass his days in
sympathy with nature and in communion with nature's God.

With all its beauty, this plain of St. Mary's is full of
melancholy, especially in the fall of the year. Haunted with
memories, its loneliness is in such contrast with its past
history that it touches the spring of regret. The autumn winds,
the slight veil of haze that hangs over the landscape, are full
of sadness. One seems to hear the wail of the forsaken lares
whose altars have so long been levelled with the rest.

      "In consecrated earth,
       And on the holy hearth,
  The lares and lemures moan with midnight plaint."

The wailings of Jeremiah come to mind as we wander over the site
of the city that was once full of people, but now sitteth
solitary. "The city of thy sanctuary is become a desert, and the
house of thy holiness and our glory, wherein thou wert praised,
is laid desolate." Perhaps, after all, the melancholy was in my
own heart; for the sky was clear, the earth smiling, and before
us lay, glad and gleaming, the bright waters of the St. Mary's
river,

  "Like any fair lake that the breeze is upon,
   When it breaks into dimples and laughs in the sun."

There is this peculiarity about the river: its windings are so
abrupt that from certain points there seems to be no outlet, and
it has the appearance of a succession of lakelets; pellucid gems
set at this autumn time in bosses enamelled with every shade of
crimson and gold, which I loved to think a bright rosary strung
by nature in honor of Our Lady.

Two or three miles from St. Mary's is Rose Croft, a charming old
place at the very point between St. Inigoes Creek and St. Mary's
River. In old colonial times it was the residence of the
collector of the port of St. Mary's, and here lived the heroine
of Kennedy's _Rob of the Bowl_. As I rode up to it, I half
expected to see the fair Blanche peeping out of the window to see
if the carriage did not contain the secretary.

The house is a low, broad one, with verandas and porches, and
large, airy rooms, which look out upon a lovely water view. There
is a good deal of wainscoting about it, and some carvings in the
large parlor that witnessed the birthday festivities. The lady of
the house told me that, in making some repairs, a few years ago,
a ring and a pair of velvet slippers were found, perhaps once
worn by Blanche. All around the yard grows spontaneously the
passion flower, winding over every shrub and tree, and trailing
along the ground. Everything was left very much to nature, and
she had thrown over the grounds a certain sad grace of her own,
which harmonized with the antiquity of the house, and the echo of
past times that lingered in its rooms. A spruce garden and
well-trimmed trees and shrubbery would have ill accorded with
such a spot. And there was a certain melancholy in the large, sad
eyes of the mistress of this charming place that spoke more of
the past than of the present, as if she had imbibed something of
its spirit.

{370}

On the point between the river and creek, opposite Rose Croft, is
St. Inigoes manor-house, belonging to the Jesuit fathers. St.
Inigo, or St. Ignatius, was considered, from the first, as one of
the patrons of the colony. This house is built of brick brought
from the old country, perhaps two hundred years ago or more. It
has quite a foreign look, with its high pitched roof and dormer
windows. I have seen similar houses in the valley of the Loire.
At a distance it looks, as Kennedy says, like a chateau with its
dependencies around it. There is a huge windmill at the very
point, around which are washed up fine black sand and some spiral
shells. On the gable of the southern porch of the mansion is the
holy name of Jesus, in large black letters--the cognizance of the
Jesuits. The yard is a garden of roses. They grow in bushes,
cover the cottages, and climb the trees, blooming often as late
as Christmas tide. And the whole place is like an aviary--a
rendezvous of all the martins, wrens, whippoorwills, etc., of the
country--the very place for poor Miss Flite, who would never have
found names enough for them. There are martin-houses, dove-cotes,
and trees full of the American mocking-birds. When the windows of
the chapel are open in the morning, it is filled with their
musical variations, and with the perfume of the roses and
honeysuckles. That chapel always seemed to me a little corner of
heaven itself, full of the divine presence of which one never
wearies. I often betook myself to that sweet solitude. There were
memories that haunted me, an image between me and God, which I
sought there to consecrate to him. I loved to think the little
lamp could be seen all night from the very Potomac and miles up
the St. Mary's River; perhaps lighting up in some dark and sinful
soul some sweet thought of him before whom it burned.

A religious air prevails at St. Inigoes. Everything is quiet and
subdued, and favorable to meditation. The day commences with Mass
in the chapel. The Angelus is rung three times a day, which every
one kneels to say. Even Nimrod, the dog, howls while it is
ringing, as if infected by devotion. And they told me his
predecessor would pull at the bell till it sounded, if it was not
rung at the moment. Such devotional dogs certainly deserve a
place--if it is not profane to say so--among those fine little
dogs whom Luther declared would be among our companions in
heaven, whose every hair would be tipped with precious stones and
whose collars be of diamonds.[Footnote 86]

    [Footnote 86: See Audin's _Life of Luther_.]

Everything about the house is extremely tidy and well preserved,
the garden trim, the walks swept, the whole house a temple of
purity and cleanliness. One could sit for ever in that southern
porch reading and dreaming life away. Thought would flow on for
ever with that current whose waters are as changeable in their
aspect as our own varied moods. When so many live merely for the
body, why should not some live for the imagination and fancy?
This is the very place for Mr. Skimpole, who had no idea of time,
no idea of money; who only wished to live, to have a little sun
and air, and float about like a butterfly from flower to flower;
who loved to see the sun shine, hear the wind blow, watch the
changing lights and shadows, and hear the birds sing. He asked of
society only to feed him, to give him a landscape, music, papers,
mutton, coffee, and to leave him at peace from the sordid
realities of the world.

{371}

In the dining-room is a large oval table of solid oak which once
belonged to the house of the lord proprietary. It is not
misplaced in this hospitable house. Daniel Webster, when at Piney
Point, used to sail over to St. Inigoes and sit at Leonard
Calvert's table. And he taught the cook how to make a genuine New
England chowder.

There is, hung up in one of the rooms, a picture of the famous
Prince Hohenlohe which interested me. I could not account for its
being there till I learned that Father Carberry, a former
incumbent, was a brother to Mrs. Mattingly, of Washington, who so
many years ago was miraculously cured by the prayers of the holy
prince--an occurrence that caused a great excitement at the time.

The parish church is about a half a mile from the manor-house. On
Sundays and other festivals you can see boats full of people
sailing up the creek. Others come flocking in on horseback or in
carriages. A graveyard surrounds the church, which is so hid
among the trees that it is not perceived till you are close upon
it. The yard is filled before service with the country-people,
who fasten their horses around the enclosure, and stand talking
in groups, or go wandering around among the grassy mounds,
reminding you of the English country church-yards. Our northern
churches are almost so exclusively filled up with foreigners that
it seemed strange to worship in a congregation almost wholly
American. A gallery was appropriated to the colored people, and
it was crowded. They seemed quite devout and kept up a great
rattling with their large rosaries. I noticed that the father, in
preaching, was careful to make them feel that his sermon was
addressed as particularly to them as to the others. I was
especially interested to see the number that came filing down the
aisle to receive holy communion. Sunday after Sunday it was the
same, and I was always affected to see these "images of God
carved in ebony," as old Fuller calls them, at the holy table to
receive Him who is no respecter of persons. In talking with the
father about their devotional tendencies, he told me there was
one saintly old negro who walked fifteen miles every Sunday to
worship the Word made flesh. What an example to the cold and
lukewarm in cities who daily pass our churches with scarcely a
thought of the Presence within! This little church is a
substantial one of brick, with arched windows, but no pretension
as to architecture. When the services were over, the ladies all
followed the priest into the sacristy to pay their respects to
him, and there is a pleasant exchange of greetings which is
pleasing and family-like. And many of the men, too, stroll around
the building to the rear door to take part in it.

Wandering off into the churchyard, I came upon a large cross
around which were clustered the graves of several priests. There
is a large monument to the memory of Father Carberry, a genial
old priest renowned throughout the country for his hospitality.
Among those buried here is Mr. Daniel Barber, of New Hampshire,
who became a convert to the Catholic Church, together with his
son's whole family, at a time when converts were more rare than
at the present time. The son, Rev. Virgil Barber, who was an
Episcopal minister, with his wife and five children, embraced the
religious life. One of the latter took the white veil at Mount
Benedict, near Boston, and was remarkable for her beauty and
accomplishments. She made her profession in Quebec, where she
died young.
{372}
I have heard a nun of that house tell, and with great feeling, of
her descending every morning to the chapel before the rest of the
community, even in the rigorous winter of that latitude, to make
the Way of the Cross, that touching devotion to the suffering
Saviour.

The grandfather, Mr. Daniel Barber, who was also a minister, only
took deacons' orders in the church on account of his age. He
loved to visit the old Catholic families of St. Mary's, but was
ill pleased when he did not find the cross--the sign of our
salvation--in the apartment. "Where's your sign?" he would
abruptly ask. He rests in peace in this quiet country
church-yard.

The father at St. Inigoes has to possess a variety of
accomplishments not acquired in the theological seminary. Priest,
farmer, horseman, and boatman must all be combined to form the
fine specimen of muscular Christianity required in this extensive
mission. The place is no sinecure.

Good Father Thomas, obliged to visit a sick person at the very
head of St. Mary's River, invited me to accompany him, and I
gladly did so. Two colored servants went to manage the sail, or
to row if necessary. The boat was black as a gondola of Venice.
Sailing over these waters, where passed the Dove and the Ark,
reminded me of the Père Jean and the novice René on the St.
Lawrence. The whole country was, as we set out, glorified by the
setting sun. The long points of land around which the river wound
were bathed on one side by a golden mist, and on the other in a
faint lilac. Over the gorgeous woods hung a purple haze that
faded every instant. The amber clouds grew crimson, and then
faded away into grey. The father said his breviary, leaving me to
my own reflections a part of the way. There was not a ripple on
the broad sheet save the receding ones left by our boat. Now and
then we would stop to drink in the beauty of the scene--the sky,
the water which reflected it, the lights and shadows on the
banks, the melancholy cry of the whippoorwill, and the gay sounds
of the laborers just through with their day's work. As it grew
darker, the deep coves were filled with mysterious shades; the
ripples left behind seemed tipped with a phosphorescent light. We
glided at last into a sheltered cove just as the moon came out,
giving enchantment to the whole scene. In such bright waters
bathed Diana when Actaeon beheld her and was punished for his
presumption. One of us repeated the beautiful lines of Shelley:

  "My soul is an enchanted boat,
   Which, like a sleeping swan, doth float
   Upon the silver waves of thy sweet singing;
     And thine doth like an angel sit
     Beside the helm conducting it,
   Whilst all the winds with melody are ringing.
     It seems to float ever, for ever
     Upon that many winding river,
     Between mountains, woods, abysses,
     A paradise of wildernesses!
   Till, like one in slumber bound,
   Borne to the ocean, I float down, around,
   Into a sea profound, of ever-spreading sound."

A few days after, I sailed over to the Pavilion to take a boat
for Washington.

----------

{373}

              A May Carol.

  She hid her face from Joseph's blame,
    The Spirit's glory-shrouded bride.
  The Sword comes next; but first the Shame:
    Meekly she bore, and naught replied.

  For mutual sympathies we live:
    The outraged heart forgives, but dies:
  To her, that wound was sanative,
    For life to her was sacrifice.

  At us no random shaft is thrown
    When charged with crimes by us unwrought;
  For sins unchallenged, sins unknown,
    Too oft have stained us--act and thought.

  In past or present she could find
    No sin to weep for; yet, no less,
  Deeplier that hour the sense was shrined,
    In her, of her own nothingness.

  That hour foundations deeper yet
    God sank in her; that so more high
  Her greatness--spire and parapet--
    Might rise, and nearer to the sky:

  That, wholly overbuilt by grace,
    Nature might vanish, like some isle
  In great towers lost--the buried base
    Of some surpassing fortress pile.

                    Aubrey De Vere.
-------

{374}

      St. Peter, First Bishop of Rome.

The question of which we purpose to treat in this article is one
of those that are sure to receive prominence whenever the claims
of the Roman see are discussed with more than ordinary interest
and warmth. Just now the "Anglo-Catholic" mind is exercised to
find some way of establishing the existence of a one holy
catholic and apostolic church, without admitting the supremacy of
the bishop of Rome; besides, the approaching ecumenical council
directs men's attention to the eternal city, and the high
prerogatives of its pontiffs. Not unfrequently we meet with a
broad denial that St. Peter ever was at Rome at all, or at least
that he was ever bishop of Rome. This is not, indeed, the course
pursued by the most learned or thoughtful amongst our opponents;
they know history too well to stake their reputation for
erudition or fairness on any such denial; but it is in favor with
a lower or less instructed class of minds, and is adopted in
text-books for theological seminaries, as well as in some popular
works intended chiefly for the perusal of persons who, in all
likelihood, may never have the opportunity, even should they have
the inclination, of recurring to those more learned authorities
by consulting whom the imposture would soon be detected. Thus it
has come to pass that in popular works, lectures, magazine and
newspaper articles, and the like, one frequently meets with the
flippant assertion that it is very doubtful whether St. Peter
ever was at Rome, that the place of his death is uncertain; all
that we know for certain being that, shortly before his demise,
he was in Babylon, whence he wrote his first letter. We shall
endeavor to establish as a historical truth beyond all reasonable
doubt, supported by evidence that must be admitted as sufficient
by any unprejudiced critic, that St. Peter visited Rome, dwelt
there, was first bishop of the Roman church, and there, together
with St. Paul, laid down his life for his Master, in fulfilment
of the latter's prophecy, "When thou wilt be old, thou wilt
stretch forth thy hands, and another will gird thee, and lead
thee whither thou wouldst not;" words which, as the inspired
writer tells us, signified "by what death he should glorify God."
[Footnote 87]

    [Footnote 87: John xxi. 18.]

The question has been so fully discussed, that we may not hope to
say anything that will be considered new; to the learned reader,
indeed, we can but repeat a "thrice-told tale;" but, as the
adversaries of the holy see do not disdain to furbish up the arms
which have already been stricken from the hands of their
predecessors, we shall be content to draw from the same arsenals
whence our fathers drew the weapons that they knew how to wield
so skilfully and successfully. All that we ask of the
non-Catholic reader is, that he approach the question as a merely
historical one, to be judged on the ordinary rules of historical
evidence. All dogmatical preoccupations against the supremacy of
the Roman pontiffs should be laid aside.
{375}
This is demanded by fairness and a sincere love of truth;
besides, although we acknowledge that to establish St. Peter's
Roman bishopric is, if not an indispensable, at least a very
important, preliminary to the successful assertion of the Roman
primacy, yet the ablest amongst Protestant theologians have
thought that, even admitting the historical fact, they could
successfully refute the dogma. Our inquiry, then, shall be purely
historical, to be decided on purely historical grounds. At the
beginning of this century, no one having any pretensions to
historical learning attempted to deny that St. Peter had really
lived and died at Rome. Such high names in the Anglican Church as
Cave, Pearson, and Dodwell had given their unbiassed and positive
testimony to the truth. Whiston had said: "That St. Peter was at
Rome is so clear in Christian antiquity, that it is a shame for a
Protestant to confess that any Protestant ever denied it." But,
about this period, the rage for the new system of biblical
interpretation raised doubts about the accepted meaning of the
word _Babylon_ in the thirteenth verse of the fifth chapter
of the first epistle of St. Peter, and the question whether the
apostle ever was at Rome again came up for discussion. Very
little new has been said, so that little remains to be confuted.
We repeat, we have merely to sum up what has been well and
conclusively said before. We have before us a work entitled _An
Exposition of the Thirty-nine Articles, Historical and
Doctrinal_, by Edward Harold Browne, lord bishop of Ely, in
which [Footnote 88] the author endeavors to confute "the position
of the Roman Church, that St. Peter was bishop of Rome."

    [Footnote 88: Art. xxxvii. sec. II.]

As this work is used as a text-book in the New York Protestant
Episcopal Seminary, and may, therefore, be supposed to furnish
ideas and facts on church questions to the average Episcopalian
clerical  mind, we shall follow the author in his argument, and
show how a plain tale can put down all his ingenious explanations
and evasions.

The plain statement is as follows: The earliest and most reliable
documents of Christian antiquity, with a clearness and unanimity
that leave no room for doubt or cavil, state that St. Peter was
at Rome, took a special care of the Roman Church, and died there.
The bishops of Rome are always represented as his successors, not
merely in that inheritance which has come down to all bishops
from the apostles, but as his successors in his _Cathedra_,
or episcopal chair. Our witnesses are numerous; their knowledge
and fidelity are unimpeachable; their statements cannot be evaded
or explained away; and thus the Roman bishopric of St. Peter is
as undoubted a fact of ecclesiastical history as any other in the
earlier ages. We shall give the proofs one by one, confining
ourselves to the first three centuries.

St. Clement, who was certainly bishop of Rome, and who, according
to Tertullian was ordained by Peter, in his epistle to the
Corinthians--admitted as genuine by the best
authorities--referring to the late persecution of the Roman
Church under Nero, mentions among other troubles the recent
martyrdom of SS. Peter and Paul, alleging them as noble examples
of patience under tribulation. We have here a witness on the
spot, who had seen the apostles, and been a special disciple of
St. Peter.

We have next another apostolic father, St. Ignatius of Antioch,
who suffered martyrdom about A.D. 107, and in a letter to the
Romans speaks of SS. Peter and Paul as their special preceptors
and masters: "I do not command you as Peter and Paul; I am a
condemned man."
{376}
It is to be remarked that no one attempts to deny that St. Paul
was at Rome, as one of his journeys thither is related in the
last chapter of the Acts, and he speaks of himself as in that
city; [Footnote 89] the union of St. Peter's name with his, as
both commanding the Romans, shows that the former apostle had
been with them in person as well as Paul.

    [Footnote 89: 2 Tim. i. 17. This letter would seem to have
    been written not long before the apostle's death. See ch. iv.
    6,7.]

Papias, Bishop of Hierapolis, probably a disciple of St. John the
Apostle, as quoted by Eusebius, says that St. Mark wrote his
gospel from the preaching of St. Peter at Rome, [Footnote 90] and
that the apostle wrote his first letter from the same place,
calling it Babylon. [Footnote 91]

    [Footnote 90: _Eus. Hist. Eccl._ lib. iii. c..39.]

    [Footnote 91: _Ibid_. lib. iii. c. I.]

St. Dionysius of Corinth wrote a letter to the Roman Church under
the pontificate of Soter, (A.D. 151-170,) which is also quoted by
Eusebius, [Footnote 92] in which he says that SS. Peter and Paul,
after planting the faith at Corinth, went into Italy, planted the
faith amongst the Romans, and there sealed their testimony with
their blood.

    [Footnote 92: _Ibid_. lib. ii. c. 25.]

St. Irenaeus, (Bishop of Lyons A.D. 178,) a disciple of Polycarp,
who was himself a hearer of the Apostle John, speaks of the Roman
Church as "the greatest and most ancient church, known to all,
founded and established at Rome by the two most glorious
apostles, Peter and Paul. [Footnote 93]

    [Footnote 93: Lib. iii. _adv. Har._ c. iii.]

He adds: "The blessed apostles having founded and arranged the
church, delivered its bishopric and administration to Linus. To
him succeeded Anacletus, after him Clement, to him Evaristus, and
to Evaristus, Alexander. The sixth from the apostles was Sixtus,
after him Telesphorus, next Hyginus; then Pius, after whom came
Anicetus. Soter succeeded Anicetus, and now the bishopric is held
by Eleutherius, the twelfth from the apostles." This is an
authentic list of the bishops of Rome from the apostles to the
writer's time, placing the date of his work between A.D. 170 and
185, the fifteen years of the pontificate of Eleutherius.

Cajus, a priest of Rome under Zephyrinus, who governed the church
during the first seventeen years of the third century, says, in a
work quoted by Eusebius, [Footnote 94] but now lost: "I can show
you the trophies of the apostles; for whether we go to the
Vatican or the Ostian way, we shall meet with the trophies of the
founders of this church." This is remarkable testimony to the
accuracy of the tradition that prevails to this day of the places
where the apostles were buried--St. Peter at the Vatican, St.
Paul in the Ostian way, which now are marked by "trophies,"
greater in splendor and magnificence, but raised by the same
spirit of reverence and love as those which this Roman priest
pointed out in the third century.

    [Footnote 94: _Ibid_. lib. ii. c. 15.]

Tertullian flourished about the same period, for he died A.D.
216. Speaking in his great work _On Prescriptions_ [Footnote
95] of apostolic churches, he says: "If you are near Italy, you
have Rome, whence we also [the African Church] derive our origin.
How happy is this church on which the apostles poured forth their
whole doctrine with their blood; where Peter by his martyrdom is
made like the Lord; where Paul is crowned with a wreath like that
of John!" Again: "Let us see ... what the Romans proclaim in our
ears, they to whom Peter and Paul left the Gospel sealed with
their blood." [Footnote 96]

    [Footnote 95: C. 36.]

    [Footnote 96: Lib. iv. adv. _Marcion_.]

{377}

And speaking in the book _On Prescriptions_ of the origin of
apostolic churches, he calls on heretics to "unfold the series of
their bishops, coming down from the beginning in succession, so
that the first bishop was appointed and preceded by any one of
the apostles, or apostolic men in communion with the apostles.
[Footnote 97] For in this way the apostolic churches exhibit
their origin; ... as the Church of Rome relates that Clement was
ordained by Peter." [Footnote 98] Clement of Alexandria (who died
A.D. 222) states that St. Paul wrote his gospel at the request of
the Romans, who wished to have a written record of what they had
heard from St. Peter. [Footnote 99]

    [Footnote 97: "Ut primus ille episcopus aliquem ex Apostolis
    habuerit auctorum et antecessorem." ]

    [Footnote 98: Ch. 32.]

    [Footnote 99: Eus. _Hist. Eccl_. lib. vi. c. 14. ]

Origen, (A.D. 185-255,) who visited Rome under the pontificate of
Zephyrinus, says that St. Peter having preached to the Jews in
Pontus, Galatia, Bithynia, Cappadocia, and Asia, toward the end
of his life [Footnote 100] came to Rome, and was crucified with
his head downward. [Footnote 101]

    [Footnote 100: [Greek text]]

    [Footnote 101: Quoted by Eusebius, _Hist. Eccl_. lib.
    iii. C. II.]

St. Cyprian, (Bishop of Carthage A.D. 248, put to death for the
faith A.D. 258,) speaking of the irregular proceedings of some
local schismatics who had appealed to Pope Cornelius, says: "They
venture to set sail, and carry letters from schismatical and
profane men to the _chair of Peter_, and to the principal
church, whence sacerdotal unity has arisen." [Footnote 102] And
in another letter he speaks of the election of Cornelius, "when
the place of Fabian, that is, the place of Peter, and the rank of
the priestly chair, was vacant." [Footnote 103] Even Bishop
Hopkins, whom his friends cannot blame for too great facility in
his concessions, admits that St. Cyprian acknowledged that St.
Peter was bishop of Rome.

    [Footnote 102: _Epist_. 59, ad _Cornel_.]

    [Footnote 103: _Epist_. 52, ad Antonianum.]

We do not wish to go beyond the three hundred years immediately
following the death of the apostle, and shall therefore omit here
the clear and unmistakable statements of Optatus, Jerome,
Epiphanius, Augustine, and others, closing with the account given
by Eusebius of Caesarea, (bishop A.D. 315-340,) who is justly
regarded as the father of ecclesiastical history, and of the
greatest weight in historical matters. His accuracy and research
are universally acknowledged, and his authority alone is
generally regarded as conclusive. [Footnote 104] He says that
Simon Magus went to Rome, and that "against this bane of mankind,
the most merciful and kind Providence conducted to Rome Peter,
the most courageous and the greatest among the apostles, who on
account of his virtue was leader of all." [Footnote 105] He adds
in his chronicle: "Having first founded the Church of Antioch, he
goes to Rome, where, preaching the gospel, he continues
twenty-five years bishop of the same city."

    [Footnote 104:  "In questions of critical investigation
    regarding the early church, no writer bears with him greater
    authority than that of the learned Eusebius, bishop of
    Caesarea. Removed only by two hundred years from the
    apostolic times, and being attached to the imperial court,
    and having at his command all the literary treasures of the
    Caesarean library, he ever displays a profound knowledge of
    the earlier Christian writers, and at the same time a truly
    refined critical acumen in discriminating between their
    genuine productions and those falsely assigned to them."
    --_Dublin Review_, June,1858, art. vii.]

    [Footnote 105: _Hist. Eccl._ lib. ii. c. xiv.]

We have here a continuous series of witnesses, from those who had
seen and conversed with the Apostle St. Peter to the date of the
first work on ecclesiastical history now extant, all of whom
clearly testify to the fact that he visited Rome, took special
charge of the Roman Church, and there died a martyr, as our Lord
had foretold he would die. After the apostolic writers, who, from
the proximity of the events to their own time, could not be
mistaken, the most important witnesses are Irenaeus and Origen,
Tertullian and Cyprian.
{378}
The two former had visited Rome, and are competent witnesses of
the tradition of the Roman Church, the most important of all in
this matter; the two latter can testify to the same tradition,
both because missionaries from Rome planted the faith in Africa,
and because the constant intercourse, as well in ecclesiastical
as in civil affairs, between the capital of the empire and
Carthage, must necessarily have brought about a community of
traditions between the two churches. The whole ancient church
thus bears witness to what some Protestants now vainly affect to
deny. Greece, Asia Minor, Syria, Egypt, Northern Africa, Gaul,
Palestine, repeat what Clement, ordained by Peter, tells. The
second century takes up the fact from those who had seen the
apostles; the third learns it from the second, and the father of
ecclesiastical history relates it as a matter beyond doubt, found
by him in those ancient records, for the greater part since lost,
the gist of which he has fortunately preserved to posterity.
Scarcely any matter of fact--and this is a _mere_ matter of
fact--connected with the early age of the church, leaving out
those recorded in the sacred pages, is better attested.

To these written records we must add the expressive testimony of
the catacombs. It is impossible to visit them without feeling
that the Roman Christians looked on the apostles Peter and Paul
as the founders of their local church. Eusebius was struck by the
"monuments marked with the names of Peter and Paul," which he saw
in the cemeteries at Rome, and these have been discovered, in
modern times, by the indefatigable industry of Christian
antiquarians; they are a living testimony to the fact that St.
Peter, as well as St. Paul, labored in Rome. The illustrious
Cardinal Borgia has traced the tradition in regard to the
presence of St. Peter's body in the Vatican from the beginning of
the third century, [Footnote 106] when, as we have seen, Cajus, a
priest of Rome, in a work against heretics, [Footnote 107] spoke
of the trophy of Peter in the Vatican, down to the days of Pope
Urban VIII. And thus the most splendid monument Christianity has
erected to the worship of the living God is also an authentic
record of the fact that the chief of the apostles selected the
city of Rome, in a special manner, as the scene of his labors,
and there consummated his glorious career in the service of his
Master. No wonder learned Protestants are ashamed to join with
their more ignorant brethren. One learned German writer of this
century says: "There is, perhaps, no event in ancient (church)
history so clearly placed beyond doubt by the consenting
testimony of ancient Christian writers as that of Peter having
been at Rome." [Footnote 108] Another more forcibly, if possible,
remarks: "Nothing but the polemics of faction have induced some
Protestants, especially Spanheim, in imitation of some mediaeval
opponents of the popes, to deny that Peter ever was at Rome."
[Footnote 109]

    [Footnote 106: In the work _Vaticana Confessio B.
    Petri._]

    [Footnote 107: _The Montanists._]

    [Footnote 108: Berthold, _Historisch-Krit. Inlet. in A. und
    N. T. apud_ Perrone.]

    [Footnote 109: Gieseler, _Lehrbuch der Kirchengesch._
    Ibid.]

A caviller may, indeed, say that all these witnesses prove, at
most, that Peter was at Rome, not that he was bishop of Rome. And
this is the point made by Bishop Browne, in the work to which we
have referred.

  "It is not to be doubted," he says, "that a tradition did exist
  in early times that St. Peter was bishop of Rome. But if that
  tradition be submitted, like others of the same kind, to the
  test of historical investigation, it will be found to rest on a
  very slender foundation.
{379}
  In the first place, Scripture is silent about his having been
  at Rome--a remarkable silence, if his having been bishop there
  was a fact of such vital importance to the church as Roman
  divines have made it to be. Then, the first tradition of his
  having been at Rome at all does not appear for more than a
  century after his death. It is nearly two centuries after that
  event that we meet with anything like the opinion that the
  Roman bishops were his successors. It is three centuries before
  we find him spoken of as bishop of Rome. But when we reach
  three centuries and a half, we are told that he not only was
  bishop of Rome, but that he resided five and twenty years at
  Rome; a statement utterly irreconcilable with the history of
  the New Testament." [Footnote 110]

    [Footnote 110: Loc. cit.]

  There is, indeed, no good reason to doubt that St. Peter was at
  Rome; that he assisted St. Paul to order and establish the
  church there; that, in conjunction with Paul, he ordained one
  or more of its earliest bishops, and that there he suffered
  death for the sake of Christ. But there is no reason to believe
  that he was ever, in any proper or local sense, bishop of
  Rome." [Footnote 111]

    [Footnote 111: _Ibid_.]

We leave aside for the present the alleged silence of the New
Testament. In the first place, it is not true that "the first
tradition of Peter's having been at Rome does not appear for more
than a century after his death." Clement of Rome, Ignatius of
Antioch, Papias, Dionysius of Corinth, belong to this period, and
all unmistakably testify to Peter's having been at Rome. Irenaeus
may be fairly counted also, as he was sent from Lyons to Rome in
A.D. 177. Of these, Bishop Browne mentions only Papias and
Irenaeus. He quotes Papias's opinion about the word
_Babylon_ in St. Peter's first Epistle, and tries to set it
aside. But, whatever the exegetical value of the opinion, it is
proof that Papias held it as an undoubted fact that St. Peter was
at Rome; besides, he also states that Mark wrote his gospel at
Rome, under the eye of Peter. Nor is it at all pertinent to say
that Eusebius tells us that Papias was a narrow-minded man, and
an enthusiast about the Apocalypse. Neither narrow-mindedness nor
enthusiasm prevents men from being competent witnesses to simple
facts, and the one about which we are now inquiring is a simple
fact. The only question is--Could Papias have known for certain
whether St. Peter was at Rome or not? He lived in the apostolic
age, not half a century after the death of the apostle. This is a
sufficient answer, and his views about either Babylon or the
Apocalypse cannot impair its sufficiency. As to Irenaeus, our
lord bishop quibbles in a way that is not handsome. He tries to
break down his and other writers' testimony by alleging, first,
that they disagree as to the first bishop of Rome after St.
Peter; second, that they disagree about the _time_ St. Peter
came to Rome.

We are almost ashamed to have to answer such quibbling. Neither
disagreement at all touches the substantial part of the
narrative. Neither is as great as our expounder of the articles,
in his despair, tries to make it. Neither could ever have been
alleged in ordinary controversy. All authors, save Tertullian,
mention Linus as first bishop of Rome after Peter. The African
father in reality says only that Clement was ordained by Peter;
the context, however, would suggest that he supposed he was the
immediate successor of the apostle. The truth appears to be that
Linus, Cletus, and Clement were consecrated bishops by one or the
other of the apostles. This was commonly done in the first age;
only one person in every city possessed episcopal jurisdiction,
but more clergymen than one were frequently invested with the
episcopal order. This was done in the Roman Church. St. Peter was
its first bishop; after his death, Linus, Cletus, Clement
governed it in succession, all three having been ordained by the
apostles.
{380}
There is nothing in this supposition at all at variance with what
is known to have been the common practice of the first age, a
practice which it is not ingenuous in the lord bishop of Ely to
suppress. As to the discrepancy about the time of the apostle's
coming to Rome, it is easily explained on the commonly received
hypothesis that St. Peter twice visited Rome. Eusebius says that
he went first under Claudius. He was obliged to leave Italy in
consequence of that emperor's decree banishing thence the Jews.
He returned thither, toward the end of his life, and there
suffered martyrdom. But it is plain that such discrepancies
cannot affect the substance, namely, that Peter was at Rome;
indeed, they are intelligible only on the supposition that all
the authors quoted held the main fact as certain. It is plain
also that there is not the slightest foundation for the lord
bishop's assertion that "at whatever time St. Peter came to Rome,
there was some one else bishop of Rome then." The courage
required for this assertion can be measured from another
statement, just four lines above: "All (the early writers) agree
in saying that the first bishop of the see was Linus." This is
simply shameful. Put after "see" the words _after Peter_,
and the quotation will be correct. But then what becomes of the
bishop's argument? He says Linus was bishop of Rome when Peter
went thither; and he also admits that "some (early writers) say
that St. Paul, others that St. Peter and St. Paul, ordained him."
These latter writers surely did not suppose that St. Peter
ordained a man in Rome before he himself ever went to Rome. The
bishop clearly does not stick at trifles. His chronology is also
entirely at fault. He says that it "is three centuries (after St.
Peter's death) before we find him spoken of as bishop of Rome."
But St. Cyprian, whom even Bishop Hopkins admits spoke thus of
the apostle, was put to death before the end of the second
century from St. Peter's martyrdom. He sneers at the statement
that St. Peter was five-and-twenty years bishop of Rome; yet he
admits that it is based on the authority of that eminent and
judicious critic, St. Jerome, who, from his high position under
Pope Damasus, had abundant opportunity for an accurate
examination of the then extant records. In reality, it is based
on an earlier authority, the great historian Eusebius. It is
plain that his polemic system is simply factious; he ignores some
authorities, misconstrues others, miscalculates dates, and
mistakes mere accessories for the principal fact; such a course
is not only a crime against historical truth, it is also a
blunder, for it can mislead only the unlearned or the unwary
reader.

The writers of the first age do not, it is true, assert in so
many words that St. Peter was bishop of Rome. The reason is
obvious. Treating of other matters, their allusions are merely
incidental, such as we might expect immediately after the death
of SS. Peter and Paul, and relating chiefly to the fact of the
apostle's connection with the Roman Church, or his martyrdom
there. For these facts they are unanswerable authority. These are
a necessary preliminary to the assertion of St. Peter's Roman
bishopric. This fact is broadly stated as soon as we meet with
the polemical development of the doctrine of apostolic
succession. Tertullian, in the text we have quoted from the book
_On Prescriptons_, where he accurately defines in what this
succession consists, namely, that the first bishop was appointed
and preceded by an apostle or an apostolic man, (_Apostolum ...
habuerit auctorem et antecessorem,_) says that in the Roman
Church Clement was ordained by Peter.
{381}
Tracing thus the succession in Rome from Peter, not from Paul,
whose death in the imperial city he mentions, he shows that he
knew Peter was the bishop of the see. St. Cyprian uses
unmistakable language on the same subject, and Eusebius asserts
positively that St. Peter was bishop of Rome. We might quote
other catalogues, but, though of great authority, they are of a
more recent date. But we shall give two more authorities which
can be connected with the period to which we have confined
ourselves. St. Jerome [Footnote 112] positively states that St.
Peter held the episcopal chair (_cathedram sacerdotalem_) of
Rome for twenty-five years. His historical knowledge and critical
acumen give to his words the authority of a statement based on
the very best records of the early age. No one can deny that in
the latter half of the fourth century there were such records at
Rome. St. Optatus of Millevi, in Africa, (A.D. 370,) in a
controversial work against the Donatists, speaks of St. Peter's
Roman bishopric as a matter of notoriety, which no one would dare
deny. "You ought to know," says he to the Donatist leader,
Parmenian, "and _you dare not deny_, that Peter established
at Rome an episcopal chair, which he was the first to occupy, in
order that through (communion with) this one chair all might
preserve unity." [Footnote 113]

    [Footnote 112: In Catal.]

    [Footnote 113: Contr. Parmenianum.]

A statement made so positively, so unhesitatingly, so boldly,
must have been founded on the very best historical evidence. And
the nineteenth century must accept the judgment of competent
writers of the fourth on such a subject. Unless, then, we wish to
deny all authority to authentic record of the early age of the
church, we must conclude, with the good leave of the lord bishop
of Ely, that there is excellent reason to believe that St. Peter
was bishop of Rome. Nor is there any force in the bishop's remark
that all the apostles had the world for their diocese, and were
not confined to any particular city. We do not, of course mean to
say that St. Peter confined his preaching to Rome. He was apostle
as well as head of the church. As apostle, he preached chiefly to
the Jews. As head of the church, he chose for his episcopal see
the capital of the world, in order that there might be no doubts
about the legitimate heir of his great dignity. For this reason
we find him in Rome among the Gentiles, though St. Paul had a
special mission to them. Dr. Browne says Peter was St. Paul's
_assistant_ at Rome; and this, in the face of the facts that
every writer, from Clement down, puts him before the great vessel
of election, and that St. Paul himself, as we shall see, speaks
of his ministry to the Romans as one merely of mutual
consolation, a tone he never adopted toward a church which he
himself had founded. We have purposely left to the last the
argument based on the alleged silence of the New Testament,
because we wished to clear an historical question of all purely
exegetical difficulties. We have established our thesis on
indubitable evidence; we might rest here and simply say that,
inasmuch as no one pretends that the New Testament contains the
entire history of the apostles, its silence cannot affect the
certainty of our proposition. This silence may puzzle the curious
reader; it may be variously interpreted, according to the
theological bent of the student; but it cannot disprove facts
which are proved by historical authority.
{382}
Bishop Browne feels the force of this, and does not insist much
on the silence of the New Testament. He merely remarks that this
silence is strange, if St. Peter's Roman bishopric be as
important as Roman divines make it out to be. Strictly speaking,
we might let this pass, as we are not now concerned in
establishing the supremacy of the Roman pontiffs, but merely
treating the historical question, Who was first bishop of Rome?
We may observe, however, that no believer in the doctrine of
apostolical succession can consistently urge this silence. How
does Dr. Browne trace _his_ succession in the office of
bishop from the apostles? Is it from St. Peter? Then he has to
meet the same objection about the silence of the New Testament on
what, from his point of view, is a vital matter. Is it from St.
Paul? But there is no scriptural evidence that St. Paul ever
ordained a bishop in Rome, or anywhere in the west. Is it from
any other apostle? The same remark holds good. No claim to
apostolical succession can be established for any see in the
western church unless on the evidence of tradition. This is
virtually admitted by Dr. Browne himself.

Since, however, the silence of the New Testament is commonly
urged as affording presumptive evidence that St. Peter never was
at Rome, we shall examine all that Protestants have to say on the
subject. The principal text--the only one having direct reference
to the subject--is I Peter v. 13: "The church which is in
Babylon, elected together with you, saluteth you, and so doth
Mark, my son." Nearly all ancient writers, commencing with
Papias, say that this letter was written at Rome, which city St.
Peter designates under the name of Babylon. Our Protestant
opponents, of course, reject this interpretation. Now, we wish it
to be understood that we do not allege this text to prove that
St. Peter wrote from Rome. We admit that, taken in itself, apart
from tradition, it is obscure, and can afford, at best, ground
but for conjecture. But, having established beyond all doubt the
fact that St. Peter was at Rome, we follow the interpretation of
the respectable ancient writers whom we have quoted. When the
letter was written, old Babylon of Assyria was in ruins,
according to Strabo and Pliny; and the Jews, to whom St. Peter
wrote, had been banished from Assyria, according to Josephus;
and, though Seleucia was afterward called Babylon, it had not
received the name at this early period. Some think that the
Babylon referred to was in Egypt, the place now called Cairo. But
it was then but a fort, or fortified village, (_castellum_,)
and the Christian church of Egypt has always looked on Alexandria
as its birthplace. St. Peter, moreover, warns the Christians of
the approaching persecution, and exhorts them to be subject to
the emperor and his subordinates. These allusions come very
naturally from the pen of one writing at Rome, but are almost
unintelligible if we suppose the writer in Babylon of Assyria,
out of the Roman empire. The opinion that the letter was written
at Rome, called Babylon by St. Peter for some reason which we can
only conjecture, is based on excellent ancient authority, agrees
with well-known facts of history, and with the internal evidence
of the letter itself. Leaving aside its bearings on the main
question we are discussing, it is by far the most probable view,
and, in any other case, would be accepted without difficulty.
[Footnote 114]

    [Footnote 114: Occasionally the love of novelty induces some
    Catholic writer to differ from his brethren. This is the case
    with Hug, who holds that we cannot admit mystical names in
    the letters of the apostles, as there is no instance of their
    use, save in this disputed case. This is criticism based on
    internal evidence run mad. One would suppose that there was a
    perfect course of sacred epistolary literature in the New
    Testament, based on fixed rules, instead of a few detached
    letters, written by different authors at different times,
    without any communication or agreement with one another about
    literary style. There is nothing more fallacious than the
    interpretation of any of the letters of the apostles on mere
    internal evidence. Hug's remark at most shows that internal
    evidence does not afford any proof that St. Peter meant Rome,
    which no one will deny.]

{383}

Protestants, moreover, commonly allege the absence of any mention
of St. Peter's voyage to Rome in the Acts of the Apostles, and
the absence of any reference to him, either in St. Paul's Epistle
to the Romans or in those he wrote from Rome. The silence of the
Acts is easily explained. After the council of Jerusalem, the
writer relates only the missionary labors of St. Paul, so that we
could not expect any mention of St. Peter's voyages. Dr. Browne
infers from Acts xxviii. 22, that "the Jews of Rome had had no
communication with any chief teacher among the Christians." This
inference is not borne out by the text, "We desire to hear from
thee what thou thinkest; or as concerning this sect, we know that
it is everywhere opposed." The obvious meaning is that the Jews
of Rome knowing that Paul was a Pharisee learned in the law,
wished to hear what he had to say in favor of the new religion.
They must have looked on St. Peter as a Galilean fisherman, who
had no right to attempt to expound the law and the prophets. It
is puerile for Dr. Browne to allege that they should have heard
him with respect because he was the apostle of the circumcision;
for, of what importance could this title be in their eyes, if
they did not believe in Him who sent the apostles?

If St. Peter went to Rome in the reign of Claudius, he certainly
was afterward absent from the city, as we find him after this
period at the council of Jerusalem. His absence from Rome
accounts for the fact that St. Paul does not salute him in his
Epistle to the Romans, a straw at which some Protestant writers
clutch with great avidity. The great respect with which St. Paul
speaks of the Roman Church, whose faith, he says, was spoken of
in the whole world, agrees with the supposition that St. Peter
had already preached there. On these words, [Footnote 115] "For I
long to see you, that I may impart to you some spiritual gift,
that ye may be strengthened; that is, I may be comforted together
with you, by that which is common to us both, your faith and
mine." Theodoret remarks as follows: "Because the great Peter had
first given them the doctrine of the gospel, he said merely,'that
ye may be strengthened.' I do not wish, he says, to bring a new
doctrine to you, but to confirm that which you have received, and
to water the trees which have already been planted." [Footnote
116]

    [Footnote 115: Ch. i. 11, 12.]

    [Footnote 116: In locum.]

The words certainly indicate that the faith had already been
firmly established by some teacher of high rank, and are a very
apposite commentary on Dr. Browne's reason why the Jews, some
years afterward, were anxious to hear St. Paul. We cannot really
understand what hallucination led him to quote these words to
show that St. Paul writes much as "if no apostle had ever been
amongst the Romans." But we admire his prudence in giving purely
a reference, not the words of the text. His other reference to
Rom. xv. 15-24 is even more unlucky. St. Paul therein says
plainly that he generally preached, "not where Christ was named,"
lest he should build on another man's foundation.
{384}
"_For which cause_," he adds, "I have been much hindered
from coming to you." Therefore some other apostle _had_
preached to the Romans. He even goes on to say that he hoped to
be gratified in his desire of seeing them, _when on his way to
Spain_, so that it is plain that he, though apostle of the
Gentiles, considered there was no necessity for his making a
journey to Rome on purpose to instruct the Roman Church. St.
Paul, then, writes very much as if an apostle _had_ been
with the Romans. Whatever else Dr. Browne does, he ought to quote
Scripture fairly. St. Paul's allusions, obscure though they may
be to us, were, of course, clear to those to whom they were
written. No familiar letter can be fully understood without
taking into account the facts which, being well known to those to
whom he writes, the author merely alludes to in a passing way.

The letters which St. Paul wrote from Rome were all written
during his first stay there, with the probable exception of the
second to Timothy. Colossians iv. II, and 2 Timothy iv. 16, are
quoted to show that St. Peter was not at Rome, else he would have
stood by St. Paul. But the epistle to the Colossians was written
during St. Paul's first imprisonment, when St. Peter, as we have
seen, must have been absent, and in the second to Timothy he
speaks expressly of his "first defence." Most writers think he
refers to his first imprisonment. Others suppose him to speak of
a preliminary hearing before Nero, during his second
imprisonment. Admitting this interpretation, he cannot include
St. Peter, who was his fellow-prisoner, in the list of those who
had forsaken him. The words apply to persons at large, who had
influence with the authorities, which they did not use.

We have thus fully examined all that Protestants allege
concerning the silence of the New Testament. The candid reader
will see that there is nothing in the sacred pages to contradict
the historical facts we have established; the allusions of St.
Paul to the instruction of the Romans in the faith by a teacher
of high rank, and the interpretation of the word _Babylon_
in St. Peter's first letter, which has come down to us from the
apostolic age, must be counted in their favor.

It is on historical evidence that the case must rest; and on it,
as we have rehearsed it, we are satisfied to submit it to
unprejudiced criticism. The testimony of the apostolic age, and
the two immediately following, is conclusive; it cannot be
explained away; much less can it be impeached. We must give up
all belief in well-authenticated history, or else admit that St.
Peter went to Rome, founded the church there, and was its first
bishop, and there died a martyr of Christ.

  "O Roma felix, quae duorum principum
     Es consecrata glorioso sanguine
   Horum cruore purpurata ceteras
     Excellis orbis una pulchritudines."

  "O happy Rome! whom the great Apostles' blood
     For ever consecrates while ages flow:
   Thou, thus empurpled, art more beautiful
     Than all that doth appear most beautiful below."


    Note By The Editor On The Chronology Of St. Peter's Life.

Eusebius says that St. Peter established his see at Antioch in
the last year of Tiberius, who died March fifteenth, A.D. 37. It
was probably, therefore, in the year 36; and St. Ignatius, the
second successor of St. Peter in that see; St. John Chrysostom,
who had been a priest there; Origen and St. Jerome, as well as
Eusebius, state that he governed that church seven years; which
probably means, not that his episcopate was just of that length,
but, that seven calendar years were included (the first and the
last partially) in it.
{385}
At any rate, this would make the establishment of his see in Rome
in A.D. 42 or 43; and the day celebrated by the church is January
18th. Now, Eusebius, St. Jerome, Cassiodorus, and others say that
SS. Peter and Paul were put to death in the fourteenth year of
Nero, that is, in A.D. 67; and their martyrdom is celebrated on
June 29th. This gives twenty-four and a half or twenty-five and a
half years for St. Peter's Roman episcopate, or twenty-five years
in the sense that the Antiochan was seven, if he came to Rome in
43; in which case he may even have established his see at Antioch
in 37.

St. John Chrysostom says that St. Paul's life after his
conversion was thirty-five years; which would make that event to
have occurred in A.D. 32 or 33. He himself says (Gal. i.) that
three years afterward he went to Jerusalem, and thence to Tarsus,
as is also stated in Acts ix. From this place he was called to
preach to the church at Antioch, as mentioned in Acts xi.; and
this visit, which could not have much preceded the establishment
of St. Peter's see there, may well have been in A.D. 35 or 36,
agreeing with the chronology given above.

These dates do not agree with that commonly assigned for the
crucifixion; but numerous evidences show that this occurred in
the year 29. As late a date as A.D. 31 might, however, be
allowed.

----------

              A Ruined Life.


It was the saddest, saddest face I ever saw.

She stood before the stove in my front office, on that dark
December day, and the steam from her wet, heated garments almost
concealed her from my sight. Yet the first glimpse I caught of
her, through the partition door, excited my interest to an
unusual degree; and, though I saw her not again for a half hour,
that one glance fixed her features in my memory as indelibly as
they are printed there to-day.

It was term time, and the second return-day of the term. For ten
days my eyes and brain had both been crowded with all that varied
detail of business which sessions aggregate upon the hands and
conscience of a rising lawyer; and the musty retinue of
_assumpsit, ejectment_, and _scire-facias_ had nearly
vexed and worn out the little life I had at the beginning. But
the criminal week, which was my peculiar sphere, was close at
hand, and I looked to its exciting, riskful cases as a relief
from the dull, dreary current of civil forms and practice.

The little room I dignified with the name of "_front
office_" was filled, as far as seats went, with rough
backwoodsmen, witnesses on behalf of a gentleman who occupied
with me the snugly carpeted "_sanctum_" in the rear. While
we discussed together the points of strength or weakness to be
tested at the impending trial, the voices of the rude laborers
reached us brokenly, and more than once words fell upon my ear
which made me tremble for the sensibilities of the lonely woman
who was with them.
{386}
They meant no harm, those bluff, hearty men. A tear from her
drooping eyes would have unmanned them. But they were not
well-bred, nor tender to the weakness of the other sex. My poor
client, as she afterward became, stood while they sat, kept
silence while they laughed and jeered each other. It was not
their fault that they never minded her. They were not hypocrites,
that's all.

At length I had the happiness to see the door close on the last
of them, and, after arranging the maps and diagrams which would
be needed on the morrow, I called to the stranger to come in. She
obeyed, hesitatingly, and then, for the first time, I saw that
she belonged to that most forlorn and pitiable of all the many
classes who throng around our mining districts, the recent Irish
emigrant. The very clothes she wore were the same with which she
dressed herself in the green isle far away, and her voice and
manner had not yet caught that flippancy and pertness which pass
among the longer landed for tokens of American independence and
equality. She was certainly very poor, or the rough, wintry winds
would not have been permitted to toss her long, black hair in
tangled masses around her shoulders, or drop their melting
snowflakes on her uncovered head. My chivalric interest died
without time to groan, and whatever thought of profit or romance
in assisting her I might have had, at the first sight of her,
perished at the same instant. But I saw poverty and sorrow, and I
determined in my heart, before she told her errand, that my life
of legal labor should embrace at least one act done thoroughly
and for nothing.

Her story was a short one. Her husband and herself had lived in a
neighboring village. Others of their own people dwelt around
them, and among these was an old woman and her son. No
difficulty, that she knew of, had ever risen between her family
and theirs. But, a few days before, as her husband was gathering
fuel by the roadside, these two had rushed out on him, and in
cold blood murdered him. The son had fled, and the murderer's
mother, with barred doors and windows, forbade the vicinage of
friend or foe. The broken-hearted wife, urged on to take such
vengeance as the law afforded, had come to me and asked my
counsel and assistance.

It was of little use to question her. Like most of her peculiar
class, her mind could entertain but one idea, and that, in some
form or other, recurred in answer to every inquiry I could make.
Satisfying myself, however, that a murder had really been
committed, and taking down such names and dates as were necessary
for the initial steps of prosecution, I sent her home, with the
assurance that justice should be done her, and her dead husband's
ghost avenged.

The warrant was issued, the arrest made, the indictment found,
the trial finished. There was no doubt of guilt. The murder was
committed in the broad light of day, and many eyes had seen it.
The counsel for the defence had felt the untenability of his
position before a tithe of the evidence was in, and slipped down
from innocence to justifiability, until his last hope for the
prisoner was in the allegation of insanity, late suggested and
faintly urged. It was useless. The twelve inexorable men brought
in their verdict of "wilful murder," and Bridget Davanagh was
sentenced to be hanged by the neck till she was dead.

{387}

It has never been my custom to follow cases, on which the solemn
judgment of the law has been pronounced, beyond those immediate
consequences of that judgment which the connection between a
lawyer and his client has compelled me to superintend. But there
was something in this case which both attracted and disquieted
me, and one day in vacation I found myself at the grated
prison-door, seeking admission to the cell of the condemned. The
old woman received me quietly. She seemed to have forgotten me,
or, at least, how active a part I had taken in the proceedings
which had ended in dooming her to a shameful death. She was
taciturn and moody; and, the longer I remained, the more
satisfied I became that her mind was now unsettled, if it had not
been before. I went several times after that, and gradually, by
kind words and the gift of such simple comforts as aged matrons
most desire, I won her confidence so far that, in her faltering,
disconnected way, she told me all that sad history of woe and
wrong and suffering which had brought an untimely grave to
Michael Herican, and a felon's fate to her. It was one of those
tales of falsity and sorrow which we cannot hear too often, and
whose moral none of us can learn too well.

The little village of Easky, in the County Sligo, was, when this
present century was young, one of those lonesome, scanty-peopled
hamlets whose very loneliness and isolation render them more dear
and homelike to their few inhabitants. The waters of the Northern
Ocean foamed about the rocks where its fisher-boats were moored.
The feet of its rambling children trod the rough paths and
crumpled the grey masses of the wild Slieve-Gamph hills. Thus
hemmed in between the mountains and the sea, it was almost
separated from the world. The white sails that now and then
flitted across the far horizon, and the slow, lazy car that twice
a month brought over his majesty's mail-bags from Dromore, were
all that Easky ever had to tell it that there were nations and
kingdoms on the earth, or that its own precipices on the one
side, and its weed-strewn rocks upon the other, did not embrace
the whole of human joys and sorrows.

In this solitary village the forefathers of Patrick Carrol had
dwelt for immemorial years. So far back as tradition went they
had been fishermen, and the last remaining scion now followed the
ancestral calling. He was a sort of hero among his
fellow-villagers. True, he was as poor as the poorest of them
all, and had no personal boast save of his vigorous arms and
honest heart. But his father, contrary to the custom of his race,
had refused to lay his bones within an ocean bed, and had died
fighting in the bloody streets of Killala. All victims of '98
were canonized by those rude freemen, and the mantle of honor
fell from the father upon the children, and gave to Patrick
Carrol a deserved and well-maintained pre-eminence. And so, when
Bridget Deery became his wife, the whole hamlet agreed that the
village favorite had found her proper husband, and, when the
little Mary saw the light, the christening holiday was kept by
every neighbor, old or young.

Four years of perfect happiness flew by. Death or misfortune came
to other families, but not to theirs. The little hoarded wealth,
hid away in the dark corner, grew yearly greater. Health and
affection dwelt unremittingly upon the hearthstone, and the
hearts of the father and mother were as full of gratitude as the
heart of the child was of merriment and glee. But the four years
had an end, and carried with them, into the trackless past, the
sunshine of their lives.
{388}
One long, long summer day the wife sat among the rocks, watching
for her husband's boat, and playing with the prattler at her
side. The boat came not. The sun went down. The gathering clouds
in the offing loomed up threateningly. The hoarse northwesters
felt their way across the waters, and whistled in her ears, as
she clasped the child to her bosom and hurried home out of the
storm. As the gale strengthened with the darkness, she fell upon
her knees, and all that wakeful night besought the Mother and the
saints to keep her baby's father from the awful danger. In vain;
for when the morning dawned, the waves washed up his oars and
helm upon the beach, and an hour later his drowned corse was
found beneath the broken crags of Anghris Head.

For the first few years after that fatal shock the widowed mother
lived she knew not how. One by one the treasured silver pieces
went, till destitution stared her in the face. The charity of her
neighbors outdid their means, but even that could not keep her
from actual suffering, and work for the lone woman there was
absolutely none. What wonder was it, then, that, when the flowers
had bloomed three times above the peaceful bed of Patrick Carrol,
his widow, more for her child's sake than her own, consented to
violate the sanctity of her broken heart, and become the wife of
Bernard Davanagh?

Bernard was a bold, reckless, wilful man, and both the mother and
the child soon felt the difference between the dead father and
the living. As time passed on, and the boy Bernard was born, the
passions of the man grew stronger, and cruel words, and still
more cruel blows, became the daily portion of the helpless three.
Oh! how often did the widow yearn to lie down with her children
by her dead husband's side, in the drear churchyard, and be at
peace for ever. But not _without_ them. No, not even to be
united with the lost, could she have left them, and so they clung
together, closer and closer, as the years rolled on--knowing
little of life except its dark page of sorrow.

There never yet was a life without some ray of joy, and, even in
the midnight darkness which hung around the childhood of Mary
Carrol, there were faint gleams of happiness. Next door but one
to their poor cot lived James Herican. He too was a fisherman,
and, in better days, had been Patrick Carrol's most intimate and
faithful friend. He had remained such to the widow and the
fatherless, and, but for him, the family of Bernard Davanagh also
might sometimes have perished from want and cold. He was the
father of one child, the boy Michael, older by two years than
Mary, and doubly endeared to his heart by the mother's early
death. The gossips of Easky had wondered, in their simple way,
why James Herican and Bridget Carrol did not marry, but the
memory of his dead wife and his dead friend forbade the one ever
to entertain the thought, and the poor widow was as far from
wishing it as he. They were happier as they were; he, by his
kindness and true Christian charity, laying up heavenly
treasures, which, as the second husband of a second wife, he
never could accumulate; she, keeping ever fresh and pure the one
love of her maiden's heart, the one hope of reunion in the skies.
What, and how different, the end had been, if they had married,
the eye of the Eternal can alone discern.

{389}

The friendship of these parents descended to the children. In all
their sports, their rambles, their labors, (for in that toiling
hamlet even tender childhood labored,) Michael Herican and Mary
Carrol were together. When her half-brother, eight years younger
than herself, grew into boyhood, Michael was his champion against
the impositions of larger boys, and taught him all those arts of
wood and water craft which village youth so ardently aspire to,
and so aptly learn. It could not happen otherwise than that these
constantly recurring kindnesses should beget firm and fast
affection, and knit together these young hearts in bonds
difficult, if not impossible, to sunder.

It may have been the law of nature, it may have been the
chastening of God, that Michael Herican and Mary Carrol should
come, in later years, to love each other. It was simply fitting,
to all human sight, that it should be so; and it was so. The
father and the mother thanked God for it, day by day, and
bestowed upon them such tokens of encouragement as the bashful
lovers could comfortably receive. The boy Bernard, when he heard
of it, (and there could be no secrets in Easky,) threw up his cap
for joy, and the old village crones for once smiled on the
prospects of a happiness they had never known. Only Davanagh
appeared displeased, but his abuse of the poor girl had been so
extreme for years that it could scarcely suffer any increase, and
all the influence he exerted over her or them was by his ruthless
fist and cursing tongue. This at last ceased; for ears less
patient than her own received his stinging insults, and a blow,
quicker than his drunken arm could parry, stretched him upon the
ground to rise no more.

Mary Carrol reached her twentieth birthday. She was a frail,
delicate girl, below the middle height, and with that beautiful
but strange union of large blue eyes and pearly complexion with
jet black hair and lashes which tells at once of the pure Irish
blood. We should not have called her handsome; perhaps no one
would, except those who loved her, and in whose sight no
disfigurement or disease could have made her homely. But she was
one of those superior natures which solitude and suffering must
unite with Christian culture to produce; and the whole
neighborhood, for this, and not for her beauty, claimed her as
its favorite and charm. Michael had grown to be a stalwart man,
half a head taller than his sire, and his fellows said that none
among them promised better for diligence and success than he. His
devotion to Mary Carrol knew no bounds, and she, in turn,
cherished scarcely a thought apart from him. Her mother had
rapidly grown old and broken. Grief, and that yearning for the
dead which is stronger than any sorrow, had made her an aged
woman long before her time, and the fond daughter, between her
and the one hope of her young life, had no third wish or joy. Her
only trouble was for her brother. The wild elements of his
father's nature became more apparent in him every day, and,
though he loved his mother and half-sister with an almost inhuman
passionateness, they frequently found it impossible to restrain
his turbulent and curbless will. The stern control of a seafaring
life seemed to be their only chance of saving him, and so, at
little more than twelve years old, he was torn away from home and
friends and sent out on a coasting merchantman to be subdued.
This parting nearly broke his mothers's heart, but her discipline
of suffering had been borne too long and patiently for her to
rebel now. It was only another drop to her full cup of
bitterness, when, a few months later, news came, by word of mouth
from a sailor in Dromore, that the merchantman had foundered in
the stormy Irish Sea.

{390}

It would be beyond the power of human pen to describe how these
lone women now clung to Michael Herican. His father went down to
the grave in peace, and he had none but them, as they had none
but him. Already the one looked on him as a husband and the other
as a son. When a few more successful voyages were over, and when
the humble necessaries, which even an Easky maid could not become
a wife without providing, were completed, the benediction of the
church was to fulfil the promise of their hearts, and give them
irrevocably to each other in the sight of God and man.



It was an ill-starred day for Michael Herican and the Carrols
when the Widow Moran and her daughter came to live in Easky.
Pierre Moran, deceased, had been a small shopkeeper in Sligo,
where he had amassed a little competence, and, now that he was
dead, his widow returned to her native village to pass her
remaining life among her former neighbors. There were few among
them who had not known more or less about the reckless girl who
ran away with the half-French half-Irish shopman, twenty years
ago, and her name and memory was none of the best among those
virtuous villagers. But she cared less for this because she had
enough of filthy lucre to command exterior respect, and it was
better, so she thought, to be highest among the lowly than to be
low among the high. In coming to Easky she had had two ends in
view: to queen it over her former associates, and to secure a
steady and good husband for her daughter. Kitty Moran was like
her mother, but without her mother's faults. She was a girl of
dash and spirit, and with a pride as quick and a nature as
impressible as her mother was emotionless. She was a thorough
brunette, with a brunette's violence and passion, with a
brunette's power to love and power to hate. In actual beauty no
maiden of the neighborhood could vie with her, and she had just
enough of city polish and refinement to give her an appearance of
superiority to those around her. Between her and Mary Carrol the
angels would not have hesitated in choosing--unless, indeed, they
were those ancient sons of God who took wives from among the
daughters of men because they saw that they were fair, and then,
like men, they would have chosen wrongly.

It was not many days before the Widow Moran heard of Michael
Herican, or many weeks before she had decided that he should be
the husband of her child. True, she knew of his betrothal, for
his name was rarely spoken unconnected with the name of Mary
Carrol, but this made no difference. The pale-faced step-daughter
of the drunken Davanagh was of no consequence to her, and to the
right or wrong of her designs she never gave a thought. Whatever
she wished, she determined to have. Whatever she determined to
have, she set herself industriously to secure. So when she
marketed, it was Michael's boat from which she purchased. When
there was a message to send to Sligo, or packages from thence to
be brought home to her, it was Michael's boat that carried it.
When she had work to be done around her cottage, it waited until
Michael had an idle day, and then he was hired to do it. Well
skilled, as every woman is, in arts like these, she used her
knowledge and her chances all too well.

{391}

It is but just to say that Kitty Moran had no share in her
mother's wicked plans. She was young and gay. Michael Herican was
the finest young man in the village. It was not disagreeable to
her to watch him and to talk with him, as he worked by her
directions in the little garden, or to sit beside him at their
noontide meal. Unconsciously, she grew to miss him when he was
away at sea, to have a welcome for him in her heart when he came
home, to look for him with impatience when she knew that his
vocation brought him back to her. Before she was aware of it, she
loved him; and when she realized her love, she threw herself into
it, as her one absorbing passion, without a dream of its results
or a suspicion of her error. She would not, for an empire, have
deliberately wronged the patient girl whom, by the stern law of
contraries, she had already learned to cherish, but to her love
there was no limit, no moderation. She could not help loving
Michael Herican, and no more could she mete out or restrain her
love. So, when it mastered her, it _was_ her master, and her
reason and her conscience were whirled away before the rushing
tide of passion like bubbles on the bosom of a cataract.

How Michael Herican came to love this new maiden not even he
himself could tell. Rochefoucault says, "It is in man's power
neither to love nor to refrain from loving." And false as this
may be as a general law of life, there are cases in which it
appears almost divinely true. It was so in his. He simply could
not help it. When he compared the calm, deep, tried affection of
the heart that had been his for years with the tumultuous
outburst of this impetuous soul, his judgment taught him there
ought to be no such comparison between them. He never had one
doubt as to his duty. He fought nobly and manfully against the
spell that seemed to be upon him. He would gladly have left
Easky, and have stretched his voyages beyond the northern seas;
but he could not leave Mary and her mother there alone. He
thought of hastening his marriage, thereby to put an end to all
possibility of faithlessness, (and this is what he should have
done,) but he had no reason for it that he dared to give. It was
a fearful trial for him, and would have bred despair in stronger
hearts than his, if such there be. He became lax and careless in
his business, harsh and moody in his intercourse with others. A
few tattling croakers, here and there, wiser than the rest, laid
the evil at the Widow Moran's door; but they could give no proof
when asked for it, and the frowns and chidings of the
neighborhood soon put them down.

In this way things went on for months. The day drew near when the
wedding-feast should usher in a new life to the waiting pair. It
was a drawing near of doom to him. The enchantment had not
weakened by indulgence. The siren's song was as soft and
seductive as when its first notes took possession of his soul.
Feeling as he did toward Kathleen Moran, he would not marry Mary
Carrol, although from his heart of hearts he could have sworn
that his love for her had known no change or diminution. Nor did
he dare to tell her that the fascinations of the stranger had
enchained him; for he knew that he was all she had, and all she
loved. But it could not go on thus always, and he knew it.
Something must be done. Had it been the mere sacrifice of
himself, he would not have hesitated for a moment. As little did
he hesitate between marrying where he did not love supremely, and
not marrying at all.
{392}
He had a conscience, and when his conscience decided between
these, and told him that he must not marry Mary Carrol, it
compelled him also to go to her and in plain words tell her so.

It almost killed her. The shock was so great, at the moment,
mightily though she strove to command herself, that her life was
in immediate danger. After a while she rallied again, a very
ghost to what she had been, though little else before. Her mother
bore the blow less calmly. She could not understand the
powerlessness of the one to save himself, or the self-sacrifice
of the other, which gave up her life's last greatest hope without
a murmur. She felt the disappointment keenly, but the injury
more. Dispositions, that through all her sorrows had never been
apparent in her character, began to show themselves. She grew
stem and vengeful in place of her old meekness and submission,
and brooded over their cruel wrong until it became a second
nature with her to impute to Michael Herican all her troubles,
and curse him in her heart as the destroyer of her child.

Of course all Easky soon knew the grief that had come to Bridget
Davanagh's household; and, not unnaturally, most of them sided
with her in her condemnation of Michael Herican. They could not
understand, they would not have believed, that he was under the
dominion of a passion which he could neither escape nor resist.
To them there was no fascination in the Widow Moran's daughter,
and they loved the mother too little for them to suppose that any
one could love the child. It was a hard lot for her, poor girl,
to hear their cutting censures passed upon her as the cause of
Mary Carrol's sufferings; for the people of that uncultivated
neighborhood did not care to conceal their bitterness beneath
soft-spoken words, and did not hesitate to tell her to her face
all that they felt concerning her. Nor spared they Michael
Herican. Old men and young greeted him now with looks askance and
cold, instead of the warm welcomes which every hearth had had for
him a month before. And every woman in Easky, except the few old
crones who grudgingly had wished him well when all was well with
him, went by him on the other side, and prayed the saints to
deliver their young maidens from such faithless lovers as he.

Intolerable as all this was to him, and unjust as it would have
been, even in their sight who did it, could they have known how
he had fought against his destiny, it still had its inevitable
effect upon him. As there was but one house in Easky where he met
a cordial greeting, that house became his continual resort. As
there was but one heart into which he could look and find
responsive love, he sought his consolation in that heart alone.
To Mary Carrol he would gladly have continued to be a friend and
brother, but her mother would not suffer him to come inside the
doors, and if the broken-hearted maiden could have received his
kindnesses, they would have been to her a mockery worse than
death. Thus Kathleen Moran's was sometimes the only voice he
heard for days, her smile the only smile ever bestowed upon him,
and she became, in time, as necessary to his existence as Eve to
Adam. They were almost always together. He made longer voyages,
and took longer rests; and, when on shore, rarely left the roof
under which she dwelt. But he had no definite aim and purpose for
which to earn, or to lay up his earnings. He never trusted
himself to plan for, or look upon the future.
{393}
He never yet had dreamed of marrying Kitty Moran. The light had
fallen out of his life as effectually as out of Mary Carrol's;
and it would have seemed to him as bootless to have heaped
together money as it would to her to have finished and arranged
her bridal gear.

A year like this told terribly upon him. The indignation of the
villagers did not abate with time, and more and more did Michael
Herican become an outlaw. It was strange that an event which, in
the swift whirl of our metropolitan career, we meet almost every
day, should have made such an impression on the minds of sturdy
men and women. But it was the first time, in the memory of man,
that an Easky lover had proved faithless to an Easky maid, and
these rude hearts were as honest in their hate as in their love.
He bore it as long as he could, but he was only human; and when
the Widow Moran, herself made most uncomfortable by the active
hostility of her neighbors, determined to return to Sligo, he was
only too willing to go with her. He sold the little cottage where
his forefathers had lived and died for many generations, and bade
farewell for ever to the home where he had known so many years of
happiness, such months of weary suffering.

If Mary Carrol suffered less in conscience and in self-respect
than Michael Herican, her suffering made far more fearful havoc
with her bodily and mental health. The privations of her
childhood had sown the seeds of premature decay; and, at her best
and strongest, she was frail and weakly. The shock she had
sustained when her life's hopes were shattered had partially
unsettled her mind, and physical disease, now slowly developing,
sank her into hopeless imbecility. She was not violent or
peevish. She never needed any restraint, and, usually, but little
care. She would sit all day in the sunlight, listening to the
roaring of the sea, her hands folded in her lap, and her great
blue eyes gazing out vacantly into the sky. She knew enough to
keep herself from danger, and, at long intervals would go alone
into the narrow street, and wander up and down, groping her way
like a blind person, yet taking no notice of anything that passed
around her. It was a sad sight, indeed, for any eyes to see, but,
far more so to those who knew her history, and could repeat the
story of the cruel wound she bore. There was not among them a
heart that did not bleed for her, and scarce a hand that could
not have been nerved to vengeance, if the blood of her destroyer
could have put away her doom.

The old woman--God knows how old in sorrows!--became more firm
and resolute as her daughter grew more helpless. She never
wearied in doing all that a mother's heart could prompt, but it
was gall and bitterness to her that Mary suffered so
uncomplainingly. If she could once have heard her say one hateful
word of Michael Herican, it would have satisfied her, but she
never did. She learned that Michael had left his home, and had
gone with the Morans, and she felt as if she were robbed of her
prey. Not that she ever purposed ill to him, but she did wish it,
and the scoffs and denunciations of his neighbors seemed to her
so many weapons in her hands against him. Alas! for her that this
should be the lot of Patrick Carrol's bride.

{394}

It might have been a half year since the widow and her victim
left Easky, and the midsummer days had come. Mary Carrol had been
so long an invalid, and, in her many wanderings, had been so
singularly free from harm, that her absence from the cottage
caused her mother no surprise or fear. The village children, as
they met her rambling in the fields, would sometimes lead her
home, and the seaward-going fishermen would often watch her
footsteps on the beach with fond solicitude; but they became
accustomed to it by and by, and let her have her way.

One cloudless day in July she had strayed out at early dawn while
the dew was scarcely dry, and wandered off along the shore,
beyond the furthest cottage. The matron of that house, as she
went by, sent out her little boy to see that she came to no
danger, but in a moment he returned to say that she was sitting
on a broken rock out of the water's reach, and so for the time
she was forgotten. The day wore on, and Bridget Davanagh grew
lonely in her desolate home. A dread of coming evil fell upon
her, and, though her cup already so ran over that she could
hardly realize the possibility of further misfortune, she could
not shake off the new shadow. Restless and uneasy, she started
out to seek her child. She hurried past the village eastwardly
along the sands. She peered into every crevice of the rocky coast
that was large enough to hide a sea-gull's nest, and hunted
behind every fallen fragment that might conceal the object of her
quest. Slowly, for it was severest toil to her aged feet, she
groped over one mile after another, until the lofty cap of
Anghris Head rose up before her. She had never been so near it
since that fearful day, long years ago, when she came out to see
the mangled body of her young husband lying underneath its stormy
crags. And now there came over her an impulse to go there once
again; again to visit the place where the waves cast him in their
murderous wrath; the place whither she event last to meet him
when he last came home to her. So she climbed over the huge
boulders, one by one, in the declining sunlight, till she stood
directly underneath that ragged spire which Anghris lifts aloft
above the waves, and there she saw the spot where her beloved had
lain in his sad hour of death. There, too, she found her
daughter, lying on the same rocky couch where her father lay
before her, one arm beneath her head, her face turned up to
heaven in the unbreaking slumber of the dead.

This same midsummer's day brought news, from Sligo to Easky, that
Michael Herican had married Kitty Moran, and that the widow's
heartless schemes had been accomplished.

The house of Bridget Davanagh was now desolate indeed. Her son
lost for ever in the unknown waters. Her daughter sleeping in the
village churchyard, bearing the burden of her cross no more.
There was no cheer for her in the well-meant gossip of her
neighbors. There was no comfort for her in the promise of a land,
beyond this mortal, of perpetual rest. If her religious instincts
and principles were still alive, they remained dumb and dormant.
She could not read. She loved not company. Her few personal
necessities rendered much bodily toil superfluous, and, when her
work was done, she had no other occupation than to sit down and
brood over her sorrows. The range of her thought was narrow. She
had no future to look forward to. Her eyes were only on the past,
and the past held for her but two figures--her murdered Mary and
her Mary's murderer. It was in vain that the good parish priest
sought to divert her mind and lead her to better things; for,
though she said but little and that quietly, he could see, like
all who now came intimately near her, that her faculties were
clouded and her control over her will and imagination almost
totally destroyed.

{395}

How long she might have lived thus without becoming fully crazed
was, fortunately, never tested. A letter came to her one evening,
bearing a foreign post-mark, and dotted over with the many
colored stamps which tell of journeys upon sea and land. It was
the first letter she had ever received. No relative or friend, no
acquaintance except Michael Herican, has she out of Easky, and
she was sorely puzzled, as she broke the seal and turned the
pages up and down and sideways, in the useless attempt to tell
from whence it came. She called in a passing school-child to
decipher it, and, as he blundered through its weary lines, she
sat with her face buried in her hands, rocking her body
ceaselessly to and fro. He reached the end and read the signature
of "Bernard Davanagh." The widow's boy still lived. She lifted
her worn face out of her hands and the tears chased each other
down her cheeks. They eased her throbbing brain, and she bade the
child go over it again, for of its first reading she had scarcely
heard a word except the name. And now she learned that he was in
America. He had been left sick on shore, at the last voyage of
his ill-fated vessel, and escaped alive. Since then he had been
tossed on every sea which bears a name, till, tired of the toil
and danger, he had settled in the far-off mining regions of the
western continent. He now sent for her and Mary to come out to
him, enclosing money and passage certificates for each, and
saying that in two month's time he hoped to have them both with
him in his new home. It was a long time before the old woman
could comprehend the message; but, when she once really
understood that Bernard was alive, she would have started on the
instant to reach her boy. Her idea of the distance was, that
America lay somewhere out beyond Dromore, as far, perhaps, as
that was from Easky, and it was with difficulty that the
neighbors, who came flocking in when the news went flitting up
and down the street, could control her. Those who stayed with her
through the night, and those who went back homeward, had settled
it, however, before morning dawned, that, though the journey
might be fearful and the chances few, it was better she should go
and perish by the way, than stay at home to grieve, and craze,
and die.

There was not much preparation. Her cottage sold, her furniture
distributed among her friends, the other passage-paper given to a
woman in Dromore, who eagerly grasped the chance of going out to
seek her husband, and Bridget Davanagh left Easky and its graves
for ever. The emigrant best knows the weariness and hardship of a
steerage passage in a crowded ship, and this old and worn-out
woman endured them as a thousand others, old and feeble, have
done since then and before. But the long voyage had an end some
time, and, in a day after the ship was moored at New York
wharves, the mother had found her son. He had a cabin built and
furnished, deep in the wild gorge of a mountain, out of whose
sides the glittering anthracite was torn by hundreds of tons a
day; and here he took her to live and care for him. Not a face
around her that she ever saw before; the dialect of their
language so differing from her own that she could only here and
there make out a word; Bernard himself grown up into a tall,
stout, burly man, black with dust and reeking with soot and oil,
she longed almost fiercely for her home by the green sea, and
wished herself back again a score of times a day.
{396}
When her homesickness wore off, as it slowly did, and she formed
new acquaintances, and grew familiar with the scenes around her;
above all, when she began to realize the comforts which the new
world gave beyond the old--she became reconciled to her strange
life, and seemed almost herself again. Only when, now and then,
her spite and hatred to the name of Herican broke out again did
her mind reel with its fury; otherwise, she was more like Bridget
Davanagh in her early days of second widowhood than she had been
for years.

Meanwhile, of Michael Herican. He had married Kitty Moran, as the
Easky story said. It was, on his part, an act of sheer despair.
Not that he did not love her. His passion had grown stronger and
more absorbing every hour, and she well returned it. But it was
no calm conclusion of his judgment that led him to unite his life
with hers. It was more like the suicide of a felon who sees his
fate before him, but would rather die by his own free act,
to-day, than anticipate inevitable death to-morrow. When the
Widow Moran "went to her own place," her fortune fell to them. He
opened a little store, and, for a while, life, cheered by
business, seemed more bearable; but misfortune followed him and,
by one loss and another, both his credit and his stock were
sacrificed. Honest to the last farthing, he stripped himself of
everything to pay his debts, and turned himself and his young
wife, to whom privation had ever been a stranger, into the
streets--to work, or beg, or starve. Then, for a time, he went to
sea; but the lone hours of watchful idleness upon the deep gave
him too many opportunities for recollection, and he could not
endure it. As a common hireling he worked about the docks, and
earned by this chance toil a meagre pittance for the bare
necessities of life. But he could not settle permanently to
anything. Of good abilities, with strong arms and a willing
heart, it was this mental burden only which unmanned him, and
this pursued him everywhere and always, like an avenging ghost.
Then he began to wander. From Sligo they went to Ballina, and
thence to Galway, and thence to Dublin, living awhile in each,
but evermore a restless, wavering, aimless man. His poor wife
suffered fearfully. Deprived of all the comforts she had ever
known, and cut down sometimes to a mere apology for food and
clothing, she rued the day when she was born; but she never
blamed her husband. Through all, she clung to him faithfully; and
when she found herself, at last, in the lowest portion of the
capital, and living among those whose touch in other days would
have been infection, however else she murmured, it was never
against him. They stayed in Dublin for a year and more. A child
was born there, but it soon died from exposure and insufficient
food, and this made the mother's heart uneasy, and she longed to
move. A berth fell in his way on board a homeward-bound Canadian
timber-ship, and he agreed to go. He also paid the passage of his
wife with labor, and, in due time, their weary feet were standing
on the shores of a new world, ready for other journeys and,
perhaps, better paths.

{397}

But it did not so eventuate. He was the same man still, though
under other skies. There was a doom upon him. His family grew on
his hands and opened in his heart new chambers of affection, but
they could give no ballast to his brain. He could not anchor
anywhere. The weird ship that sails up and down antarctic seas in
an eternal voyage is no more harborless than was he. He fought
the forests, axe in hand, and smote down many pillars of the
olden fane. He toiled on board the river-craft that drift to and
fro upon the broad St. Lawrence. He was a stevedore in Quebec, a
laborer in Montreal. So he worked on from one town to another,
fretting away his own existence, wearing out the health and
strength of his devoted wife, until he reached the "States," and,
by some mysterious fatality, came into the very village where
Bernard Davanagh and his mother lived. Here he found work
congenial to his tastes. The dark gloom of the long tunnels
underground, the ghastly lamps, and, more than all, the exciting
danger of the labor, kept his mind on the stretch and drowned his
memory more effectually than it had ever been before. He did not
know the nearness of Mary Carrol's mother. He would as soon have
dreamed of meeting his dead children in the street as her, and
his work late and early kept him out of sight, so that they did
not hear of him.

But it happened on one Sunday morning, as he went to Mass in the
great town, two miles away, that he heard the name of "Bernard"
called by some one in the throng. He looked anxiously around him,
and had no difficulty in recognizing, in the features of the man
addressed, the son of the detested Bernard Davanagh of his youth.
Had he not known the contrary, he might have thought it that very
father stepped out of his grave. The recognition was not mutual,
but the unquiet heart of Michael Herican reeked little of the
sacrifice that day, for thinking where this new phase of his life
would end. He feared no bodily injury. He had not lost his animal
courage by his sufferings. But he felt like Orestes at the
banquet, when he dispels with wine the knowledge of the
ever-present furies, and then suddenly beholds the gorgon face
pressed closely up to his. He saw in this an omen that, go where
he would, the wrongs of Mary Carrol must live on outside him, as
they did within.

How Bridget Davanagh and her son became aware that Michael
Herican and his family were near them, it is of little
consequence to know. When they did find it out, however, it was
an evil greater in its results to them than to their enemy.
Bernard had warmly espoused his mother's hatred, and added to it
the natural fierceness of his own disposition. The discovery of
her child's betrayer, and an occasional glimpse of him as he went
by, revived all the old woman's vengefulness, and aggravated it
beyond control. If Kathleen Herican had known all this, sick of
her wandering life as she might be, she would not have stayed
near them for a single hour. But she did not know it. Bernard and
Bridget she had never seen in Easky, and Michael never told her
they were here. Thus she, at least, lived on unconsciously, while
vengeance sharpened its relentless sword for retribution, and
hung it by an ever-weakening hair over the head of him she loved
most of all.

Up to the morning of the fatal day no word or sign had passed
between Michael Herican and either of the Davanaghs. But, as he
went by to his work that morning, they both stood in their cabin
door. The old woman could not resist the impulse to curse him as
he passed her, and Bernard was as ready with his malison as she.
{398}
Michael turned up the path that led toward them, and tried to
speak in friendliness, but they would not hear him. At last,
exasperated by their violence and abuse, he told the mother she
was mad--mad as her daughter had been before her. It was a cruel
word for him to speak, cruel for them to hear; but he did not
mean it. It smote upon him as he hurried off to his work, and the
image of the dead Mary came back and upbraided him many times
that day. He left his work early, and went home. There was a
strange look in his eye which made the timid heart of Kathleen
beat faster when she saw it, and he was more than usually kind
and tender to her and his child. His half-eaten supper over, he
took his woodman's basket, and went out to gather fagots for the
morning's fire. On his way home with others who had been on the
like errand, as he came opposite the Davanagh cottage, the mother
and the son came out and rushed upon him. One struck him with a
stone, and felled him to the earth. The other smote him with an
axe, and cleft his skull. It was all over in an instant. Not a
word was said. The horror-stricken neighbors stood aghast a
moment. When they came to their senses, Bernard Davanagh was
climbing up the mountain on the further side of the ravine, and
Bridget Davanagh, with bolted doors, kept ward in her devoted
house alone.

They would have lifted Michael Herican from the roadside where he
lay, but he was dead. The red blood oozed out of the gaping
wound. It trickled on in narrow streamlets down the path. It
clotted on the feet of men and women who came to gaze upon the
mangled corpse. It stained the hands, and face, and garments of
his wife and baby as they lay sobbing and shrieking on his
pulseless breast. It dried up in the purple sunlight of the dying
day, and soaked away into the dust and ashes of the trampled
street.

I have little else to tell. The circumstances of the story, as I
heard them, piece by piece, left on my mind an impression which
would not let me stand by and do nothing. I was satisfied that,
if not absolutely crazed, the murderess had acted in a moment of
exceeding passion, no doubt resulting from the rankling words her
victim spoke to her on the morning of that day; and, in her
unsettled state of mind, the ordinary presumptions of the law,
that passion cannot last, were not reliable. It seemed unjust, to
me, that she should suffer the highest penalty known to our law,
when probably her guilt was actually less than that of hundreds
whom a few years in the state prison give their due. I therefore
drew up a petition which the presiding judge and nearly all of
the convicting jury signed, praying a commutation of her sentence
to imprisonment for life. The prayer was granted, and Bridget
Davanagh lives and will die an inmate of the Eastern Penitentiary
of Pennsylvania.

-------

{399}


      The Philosophy Of Immigration.

It is strange that while so many of the most enlightened minds of
the country are engaged in the investigation of the mysteries of
social and physical sciences, so few, if any, appear to give the
least attention to the phenomenon of American immigration; a
study which is equal in importance to any that can come within
the purview of the economist, and of much more practical value to
us, nationally, than most of the developments of nature,
considered in her material aspect.

The researches of geologists and astronomers often supply us with
curious and pleasing discoveries, and the laws which regulate
commerce and labor, manufactures and capital, are doubtless well
worth the attention of intelligent public men; but not more so
than the habits, qualifications, and destiny of the millions of
foreigners who of late years have made their homes among us, and
who are still annually coming in myriads to our shores.

It may safely be said that neither ancient nor modern history
presents a parallel to this American immigration. The emigration
from the plains of Shinar was a dispersion of one people over the
surface of the globe, a disintegration of a nation into several
fragments, each particle the nucleus of a separate and
independent race, speaking a peculiar tongue, and destined to
establish distinct laws and forms of religion. Ours is the
convergence of many peoples to one common centre, silently
arraying themselves under a uniform system of public polity,
yielding up their own political predilections, and to a certain
extent their creeds and language, and destined eventually to
profess one faith and speak one language. Subsequent migrations
in the old world offer points as strikingly dissimilar as the
first great exodus. Those were nothing else than succeeding waves
of population borne from one portion of the earth to the other,
generally preceded and heralded by fire and sword, and ending in
the subjugation and spoliation of the inhabitants of that country
over which they swept with irresistible violence. Our immigrants,
on the contrary, come to us in detail, peaceably to enjoy the
benefits of our laws and to respect our institutions, with no
thought of conquest but such as may be suggested by our yet
untilled fields of the west and our comparatively undeveloped
mineral treasures.

Viewed in this light, our knowledge of the past gives no rules of
guidance in our relations with this new and very important
element of our population, and it becomes the duty of every
patriot jealous of the welfare and reputation of his land to draw
lessons of wisdom from every-day, experience, in order to help
direct this perennial flood of life into the most proper and
useful channels. A country's true wealth lies primarily in its
population; the product of its soil is its surest and most
permanent concomitant. To give a helping hand and a word of cheer
and advice to those future citizens and parents of citizens is
the common duty of humanity and patriotism; to protect them until
sufficiently domiciled to be able to protect themselves, is the
absolute duty of our legislators.

{400}

The city of New York, being the centre of the commerce of the
country, is necessarily the objective point of European
emigration, though many of our neighboring seaports receive their
proportionate share of the precious human freight. It will be
scarcely credited that in the space of twenty-one years, ending
with 1867, there arrived at this city alone no less than _three
million eight hundred and thirty-two thousand four hundred and
four_ immigrants, or a number almost equal in amount to the
entire white population of the country at the time of the
Revolution. [Footnote 117] Those arrivals included natives of
every country in Europe, China, Turkey, Arabia, East and West
Indies, South America, Mexico, and the lower British Provinces.
Emigrants from Ireland and Germany were of course largely in
excess of all others. Until 1861, these two countries were nearly
equally represented, the numbers from them for fourteen years
previously being respectively 1,107,034 and 979,575, or nearly
four fifths of the whole arrivals. Since that year the German
element has largely preponderated, and is now equal to one half
the entire immigration. England, Scotland, France, and
Switzerland follow next in rotation, the northern countries of
Europe supplying a respectable number in proportion to their
sparse population, and the southern countries, like Spain and
Portugal, comparatively few.

    [Footnote 117: We are indebted to Bernard Casserly, Esq., the
    efficient General Superintendent under the Commissioners of
    Emigration, for the following official report of arrivals at
    Castle Garden:

      1847,    129,062
      1848,    189,176
      1849,    220,791
      1850,    212,603
      1851,    289,601
      1852,    300,992
      1853,    284,945
      1854,    319,223
      1855,    136,233
      1856,    142,342
      1857,    183,773
      1858,     78,589
      1859,     79,322
      1860,    105,162
      1861,     65,539
      1862,     76,306
      1863,    167,844
      1864,    182,396
      1865,    196,352
      1866,    233,418
      1867,    242,730

      Total,  3,832,404]

It were beyond the scope of this article to enter into an
extended inquiry as to the cause of this unequal abandonment of
nationality on the part of our new denizens. The misgovernment of
Ireland, which culminated in the terrible famine of 1846-7-8, and
the natural affinity of the people of that country for the
advantages afforded by free governments, will easily account for
the immensity of their numbers who have sought political and
social independence in this republic; while the low rewards of
labor and the heavy burdens of taxation experienced by the German
in his own home, form powerful incentives in his economical mind
to change his condition and abandon the fatherland of which he is
so justly proud. The same reasons, to a lesser extent perhaps,
operate on Englishmen and Scotchmen, with the additional one of
the rapid growth of our infant manufactures requiring the
experience of the workmen of Leeds, Birmingham, and Glasgow.
Spain and Portugal, the pioneers of immigration in former ages,
though now not essentially an emigrant people, as a general rule
prefer Central and South America, where their languages are
spoken and their religion universally established; while France,
of all European countries the least disposed to colonization,
has, on account of political troubles, sent us many of her best
mechanics, and Italy some of her finest artists.

With the influx of such vast unorganized masses of strangers,
representing all conditions, ages, and degrees, into one port,
and considering the unusual trials and dangers of a long
sea-voyage, it is not to be wondered at that a great amount of
sickness and distress should be developed; but we are glad to
know that all that private benevolence and judicious legislation
could do has been done for the unfortunate.
{401}
Refuges for the destitute and hospitals for the sick have been
established in this neighborhood. Employment for the idle, food
for the hungry, and transportation for the penniless have been
provided by the Commissioners of Emigration with a free and even
profuse liberality. Nearly thirty _per centum_of the total
arrivals, each year, have been thus benefited without any cost
whatever to the state, the money required being derived from a
fund created mainly by a small commutation-tax on each emigrant
passenger. Though this fund, as we have said, is especially
intended for the protection and support of immigrants, a portion
of it has necessarily been expended in the erection or purchase
of valuable buildings, requisite for the purposes of the
commission, all of which will revert to the state when no longer
required for their original objects.[Footnote 118]

    [Footnote 118:  This property, besides some on Staten Island,
    consists of one hundred and eight acres of land with water
    rights, etc., on Ward's Island, in the East River, upon which
    the commissioners have built very spacious and substantial
    structures, such as five hospitals capable of accommodating
    eight hundred patients; four houses of refuge for destitute
    males and females; a nursery, lunatic asylum, and two
    chapels, besides a number of residences for the officers of
    these institutions, out-offices, etc.--_See Commissioners'
    Report_, 1868.]

But this is not the only direct pecuniary advantage which we
derive from immigration. In 1856 it was ascertained that the
average cash means of every person landing at Castle Garden was
about sixty-eight dollars, a sum which, considering the improved
condition of those who have since arrived, must amount to much
more _per capita_, still, taking the standard of that year,
we find that in twenty-one years over three hundred and twenty
millions of dollars have been brought to the country and put into
direct circulation. Its effect on our shipping interest will be
appreciated when we learn  that during 1867 there were engaged in
the passenger business alone, at this port, two hundred and
forty-five sailing vessels and four hundred and four steamships,
requiring large investments of capital and employing thousands of
men.

It would be impossible to estimate the indirect stimulus given to
the general interests of the Union by the acquisition of so much
skilled labor and brawny muscle. We can see its developments,
however, in the rapid rise of our towns and cities, the superior
condition of arts and manufactures, and the extraordinary
increase of our agricultural productions. Coming from so many
lands, each heretofore celebrated for some peculiar excellence,
the European artisan, while he does not necessarily excel his
American fellow-workmen in the aggregate, contributes his special
knowledge to the general stock of industrial information. The
Swede brings his knowledge of metallurgy, the Englishman of
woolens, the Italian of silk; the German, of grape culture, and
the Frenchman, of those finer fabrics and arts of design for
which his country has been so long famous. When the ancient
Grecian sculptor designed to make a representation of the human
form in all its perfection, he selected, it is said, six
beautiful living models, copying from each some member more
perfect than the rest, and thus, by the combination of several
excellences, modelled a perfect and harmonious whole, in which
were combined grace, beauty, and harmony. So the republic,
availing itself of the genius and skill which every country sends
us so superabundantly, may attain that general superiority in the
arts of peace which was formerly divided among many nations.

{402}

The destination of this flood of knowledge and strength forms not
the least interesting phase of this subject. From the data before
us, we find that the State of New York retains about forty-four
per cent; the Western States receive over twenty five; the Middle
States, eleven; the New England States, eight; the Pacific slope,
two, and the Southern States a little less than two per cent, the
residue being scattered among various portions of the continent
outside of our jurisdiction. The comparatively small number who
have sought homes in the South may be accounted for partly by the
occurrence of our late civil war, but principally by the peculiar
organization of labor in that section before the abolition of
slavery. In [the] future we may expect a much greater percentage
of people, particularly from Southern Europe, to assist in
developing the almost inexhaustible wealth of such states as
Georgia and Tennessee. It is to be regretted that no record has
been kept of the nationalities and occupations of those who so
instinctively choose their favorite sections of our country; but
our own everyday experience, and the laws of labor and climate,
enable us to form a sufficiently accurate general opinion.
Irishmen, though not adverse to agricultural pursuits, generally
prefer large cities and towns, like those of New England, where
skilled labor is least required in the production of fabrics. The
Germans, on the contrary, though quite numerous in New York,
Philadelphia, and St. Louis, avoid New England, and prefer
farming in the Western States, in some of which they already form
a majority of the rural population. Englishmen are to be met with
either in the Eastern factories or in the Atlantic cities,
keeping up a business connection with their countrymen at home.
Frenchmen find a market for their superior mechanical skill amid
the luxury of large cities, and are seldom tillers of the soil,
while a Welsh miner (if he do[es] not find his way to Salt Lake)
goes as naturally to Pennsylvania, and the slate quarries of New
York and Vermont, as the Swede and Norwegian do to the northern
parts of Michigan and Wisconsin. The mode of emigration may have
something to do with these selections. The continental nations,
particularly the Germans, understand migration better than their
insular neighbors, always leaving home in families and groups,
and settling down in small colonies where, as in all new
countries, union is strength; but the inhabitants of Ireland and
the other islands of the United Kingdom too frequently emigrate,
one member of a family at a time, without system or organization,
to the great disruption of those ties of relationship which are
always a bond of unity and a source of comfort, amid the
hardships attendant on great changes of habitation.

Considering the various manners, habits, and opinions of so many
nationalities, some of them, if not repugnant, at least strange
to the native-born of America, the power of absorption possessed
by the people of the United States is astonishing. Columbia,
taking to her ample bosom the fiery Celt and the phlegmatic
Teuton, the self-asserting Briton and the _débonnaire_ Gaul,
smiles complacently at their peculiarities, or, remembering the
good qualities which underlie such eccentricities, waits
patiently for time and example to cure them; and we venture to
assert that the German feels himself as free to indulge in his
national games and festivals in New York or Buffalo as if he were
in Vienna or Berlin, and the Irishman can dance as lively and
attend a wake or a wedding with as light a heart, and as free
from hindrance as if he had never left his own green isle.
{403}
In justice, also, to the immigrant, it must be said that, once
settled in America, he gives to its government his hearty and
unqualified allegiance, notwithstanding the occasional spasmodic
attempts of a despicable few to subject him to ridicule and
social ostracism. How many instances do we find of worthy men
who, having gained a competency here, acting upon that natural
and beautiful love of native land, return to the homes of their
childhood to end their days, but who almost invariably return to
us and the scenes of their manhood's toils and triumphs!

There are two other sources of accession to our population,
independent of that of acquisition of territory, which are worthy
of notice. The first, of present importance, is the passage of
our borders by natives of Lower Canada, and which, though now
more than usually remarkable, has been going on quietly but
steadily for at least a hundred years. [Footnote 119]

    [Footnote 119: Five hundred French Canadians took passage at
    Montreal, C. E., for the United States, in one week, during
    March, 1869.]

The French Canadians are a decidedly _unique_ people.
Originally from Normandy, early deprived of the protection of
France, and practically cut off from their fellow-countrymen by
the cessation of emigration, they have still retained all the
primitive simplicity, keenness, and hardiness of their ancestors.
Increasing in numbers with extraordinary rapidity, they have
tenaciously adhered to their faith, language, and manners of
life, in face of the opposition of a dominant and intolerant
master. They have not only, so far, held their own against
English laws and customs; but, despite the increase of British
colonists among them, they have nearly, if not altogether, kept
pace in numbers with the English-speaking inhabitants of the two
Canadas. They have likewise constantly shot forth numerous hardy
offshoots which have taken root and flourished in the far west.
Detroit, La Salle, Dubuque, St. Louis, St. Paul, Sault Ste.
Marie, and many other western centres of wealth and population,
were first selected and settled by those enterprising followers
of Jacques Cartier and the missionary fathers, and their names
are still honored in those places. Many of the later immigrants
from Canada find employment in our seaboard cities, but the
majority either still seek the northwest, as being more congenial
in climate, and offering more opportunities for that spirit of
adventure which distinguishes the race, or go directly to
California, where so many of the French people have already
settled.

The Chinese immigration to the Pacific coast is one of the most
unaccountable events in the history of that section of our
country, and one which may well attract serious public attention.
Those people, remarkable for centuries for their ingenuity and
industry, as well as for their exclusiveness and dislike to
foreigners, have at last crossed the Rubicon that confined them
within the limits of the Celestial empire, and when we reflect
that that empire contains within itself nearly half the
population of the world, we can readily suppose that a few
millions, more or less, transplanted to the new world would not
very perceptibly diminish its influence or strength. The Chinamen
are represented as quiet and docile, economical in their way of
living, and working for small wages, and as being eminently
adapted for the building of railroads, and the development of the
mineral wealth with which nature has so lavishly enriched the
territory on both slopes of the Rocky Mountains, and, being as
yet only a moiety of the population, are easily controlled. But,
should the tide of Asiatic emigration commence to flow freely
eastward, the gravest fears are entertained by many that it would
lead either to the systematic oppression or even partial
enslavement of the Chinese themselves, or to the deterioration of
the Caucasians of that beautiful region, soon destined to become
the garden of America.

{404}

Taking into account, however, the great adaptability of all
classes of immigrants in this country to the condition of affairs
by which they find themselves surrounded, the fears of even a
Chinese invasion appear groundless. Every day and year bring with
them large accessions of energetic and healthy minds to the ranks
of the native-born Americans--some the children of the sons of
the soil; others, of adopted citizens; but all American in spirit
and purpose, no matter what their parentage. Even this uniformity
extends to their _physique_, and it has been remarked by
visitors to our shores that the native-born boy or girl, however
dissimilar the peculiar physical traits of their progenitors,
presents strong points of resemblance in figure and face to each
other. Something of this may be accounted for by food and
climate, training and association, but much more by the fact of
the admixture of races constantly going forward. The heavy
features of the northern European are more or less elongated and
brightened into thoughtful cheerfulness in his American child,
while the angularity and pugnacity supposed to be characteristic
of the Celtic countenance are reduced to finer lines of grace and
repose in their cis-Atlantic descendants.

Taking American character as it stood at the beginning of this
century, we cannot deny our admiration of its essential features,
though many of its details were susceptible of improvement. Our
stateliness had a tendency to what is now generally called
Puritanism, and our simplicity was apt to degenerate into
parsimoniousness. Our ancestors wanted a little more breadth of
view, a little leaven of the poetry of life to mix with its stern
realities, and a great deal more love for innocent amusements,
and taste for the fine arts, which make man feel more kindly to
his fellow, and raise him so high above irrational animals.
Immigration has done much for us in this way, and we have done
something for ourselves. If we have extended to the strangers
within our gates hospitality, protection, and the rewards of
labor, they have paid us with the sculpture of Italy, the music
of Germany, the melodies of Ireland, and the fashions of France.
It has not only done this, but it has reproduced and naturalized
the love for them, and made them "racy of the soil." But what is
of more importance than all, it has efficiently helped the spread
of true religious faith over this portion of the continent. True,
there were Catholics and very good ones here, even in colonial
times; but they were few in number, and so scattered over the
country that they were in constant danger either of losing their
faith for want of spiritual ministration or were powerless to
assert their proper position before the opposing sects. We have
now not only numbers, but the influence that flows from numbers,
and generously and judiciously has our immigrant population used
the power inherent in it. During the late civil strife which so
afflicted our country, and endangered the Union, citizens by
adoption vied with citizens by birth in defence of our
institutions, and in their contributions to works of piety,
charity, and education they have been so profuse that to others
the results of their charities seem little short of miraculous.
{405}
Even those who have come among us of a different creed, or no
creed at all, have here a better opportunity of learning the
truth than they have had in their own countries. Unfettered by
statecraft or sectional laws, the Catholic priesthood have a
field of labor in America such as the whole of Europe cannot
present, and an audience composed of as many races as the sons of
Adam represent. Realizing the great things done by our
immigrants, and what may yet be expected from them, we hope to
see their protection and welfare occupy a portion, at least, of
the attention of our national and state authorities. But it is
not enough that the law has so completely thrown its protecting
shield over them. Individual charity can do much to supply the
deficiencies which every general law presents. In the city of New
York, especially, where a great deal has already been done by the
commissioners to whose especial care the immigrants are entrusted
by law, much remains still to be performed, in view of the
hundreds of thousands of strangers who may annually be expected
among us, for the next decade, at least.

----------

              Vigil.


                I.

  Mournful night is dark around me,
    Hushed the world's conflicting din;
  All is still and all is tranquil--
    But this restless heart within!


                II.

    Wakeful still I press my pillow,
      Watch the stars that float above,
    Think of _One_ for me who suffered;
      Think, and weep for grief and love!

                III.

  Flow, ye tears, though in your streaming
    Oft yon stars of his grow dim!
  Sweet the tender grief _he_ wakens,
    Blest the tears that flow for him!'

                          Richard Storrs Willis.

-------

{406}

          The Geography of Roses.


Wherever man has found a dwelling-place, bounteous nature has
conferred on him not only the necessaries of life, but a share
also of its pleasures. From "sultry India to the pole," the
useful and the beautiful are met with side by side. The bright
poppy and the blue cornflower rise with the wheat-ear in the same
broad field; the sweet-smelling amaryllis and the delicate iris
unfold their variegated petals among the thick stalks of the
African maize, while the marsh-rose and the water-lily float on
the surface of the waters that inundate the rice-grounds of Egypt
and India.

It is evident that nature regards these fair blossoms as
indispensable to man's happiness as those other more substantial
gifts are to his comfort and existence; and so, with lavish hand,
she scatters them on the mountain and in the valley, amidst
plains of burning sand, or half-buried in snow and ice.

  "Floral apostles! that in dewy splendor
      Weep without woe, and blush without a crime,
   Oh! may I deeply learn, and ne'er surrender,
                Your law sublime.

  "Not useless are ye, flowers! though made for pleasure.
      Blooming o'er field and wave, by day and night,
    From every source your sanction bids me treasure
                Harmless delight.

  "Ephemeral sages! what instructors hoary
      For such a world of thought could furnish scope?
   Each fading calyx a _memento mori_,
                Yet fount of hope."

The rose, fairest of the floral train, has been said by some
botanists to take its birth in Asia. "The east, the cradle of the
first man," writes a French author, "is also the native place of
the rose; the flowery hillsides near the chain of the frowning
Caucasus were the first spots on earth adorned with this charming
shrub." We do not incline to this opinion, for the researches of
science have proved that the lovely flower is found in every
clime, from the arctic circle to the torrid zone, and that under
every sun it seems to be endowed with some different grace. The
same species is sometimes met with over a whole continent;
another is unknown beyond the limits of a certain province; while
another again never leaves the mountain or dale where it first
shed its sweetness on the air. Thus Pollin's rose (_rosa
Pollinaria_) is never found but at the foot of Monte Baldo in
Italy, nor the Lyon rose (_rosa Lyonii_) out of the State of
Tennessee; while the field-rose (_rosa arvensis_) trails its
long branches and clusters of white flowers all over Europe, and
the dog-rose (_rosa canina_) displays its pale pink petals
and scarlet hips, not only throughout Europe, but also in
northern Asia and a part of America.

So numerous, indeed, are the varieties of this favorite of
nature, that we will not attempt to describe all that are
peculiar to each country; we will confine our attention to those
only most remarkable for their beauty, and most easy of culture.

First on the list of American roses, and far away among the
eternal ice that covers the almost desert regions which lie
between the seventieth and seventy-fifth degrees of north
latitude, blooms _rosa blanda_, the charming
_soft-colored_ rose, which as soon as the sun has melted the
snow in the valleys opens its large corolla, always solitary on
its graceful stem, to the warm breathings from the south.
{407}
We can picture to ourselves the delight of the stunted,
amphibious Greenlander, when, the long months of the fierce
winter past, he suddenly meets the expanding blossom. He smiles
as he remembers how his young wife mourned last year over the
death of the flowers, and he plucks the first rose of Greenland's
short summer to carry back to her as a proof that she must ever
hope and trust.

  "Why must the flowers die?
         Prisoned they lie
   In the cold tomb, heedless of tears and rain.
         O doubting heart!
      They only sleep below
      The soft white ermine snow:
      While winter winds shall blow,
    To breathe and smile on you again!"

_Rosa blanda's_ nearest neighbor is the pretty _rosa
rap_ of Hudson's Bay, whose slender, graceful branches are
laden in the early summer with corymbs of pale pink double
flowers. Nature herself has doubled _rosa rapa's_ sweet
corolla, as if she had foreseen that the wandering tribes of
Esquimaux who inhabit those inclement shores would have too much
to do in their never-ending struggle to pick up a precarious
existence ever to busy themselves with the culture of the cold,
unyielding soil.

_Rosa blanda_ and _rosa rapa_ are still at home in
Labrador and Newfoundland, but with them two remarkable
varieties--the ash-leaved rose, (_rosa fraxinifolia_,) with
small red heart-shaped petals, and the lustrous rose, (_rosa
nitida_,) which shelters its brilliant red cup-like flower and
fruit beneath the scraggy trees that grow sparsely along the
coast. The lustrous rose is a great favorite with the young
Esquimaux maidens, who dress their black hair with its shining
cups, and wear bunches of it, "embowered in its own green
leaves," in the bosom of their seal-skin robes.

The United States possess a great number of different roses. At
the foot of almost every rocky acclivity we meet the rose with
diffuse branches, (_rosa diffusa_,) whose pink flowers,
growing in couples on their stem, appear at the beginning of the
summer. On the slopes of the Pennsylvanian hills blooms the
small-flowered rose, (_rosa parviflora_,) an elegant little
species bearing double flowers of the most delicate pink; it may
fairly vie in beauty with all other American roses. In most of
the Middle States, on the verge of the "mossy forests, by the
bee-bird haunted," we find the straight-stemmed rose, (_rosa
stricta_,) with light red petals, and the brier-leaved rose,
(_rosa rubifolia_,) with small, pale red flowers, growing
generally in clusters of three.

The silken rose (_rosa setigera_) opens its great red
petals, shaped like an inverted heart, beneath the "cloistered
boughs" of South Carolina's woods, and in Georgia the magnificent
smooth-leaved rose, (_rosa loevigata_,) known in its native
wilds as the Cherokee rose, climbs to the very summit of the
great forest trees, then swings itself off in festoons of large
white flowers glancing like stars amidst their glossy, dark green
leaves.

When we leave the hills and woodlands, we find the marshes of the
Carolinas gay with the _rosa evratina_, the _rosa
Carolina_, and the _rosa lucida_, the resplendent rose,
whose corymbs of brilliant red flowers overtop the reeds among
which they love to blossom; while, nearer to the setting sun, we
see the pink petals of Wood's rose (_rosa Woodsii_)
reflected in the waters of the great Missouri.

The last American rose we shall note in this slight sketch is the
rose of Montezuma, (_rosa Montezumae_,) a solitary,
sweet-scented, pale red flower with defenceless branches. It was
discovered by Humboldt and Bonpland on the elevated peaks of the
Cerro Ventoso, in Mexico, and is perhaps the very rose of which
the unhappy Guatimozin thought when writhing on his bed of
burning charcoal.

{408}

These are some of the species yet known to belong peculiarly to
the western hemisphere; but it is highly probable that many
others remain still to be discovered. When we remember the
prodigality with which nature lavishes her gifts, we cannot
believe that while France alone possesses twenty-four varieties
of roses, all described by De Candolle in his _Flore
Française_, the great American continent owns but fifteen.

We will commence our European rose search in that most
unpromising of all spots, Iceland; there, where volcanic fire and
polar ice seem to dispute possession of the unhappy soil. So
scarce is every kind of vegetation in this rude clime, that the
miserable inhabitants are frequently compelled to feed their
cows, sheep, and horses on dried fish. And yet even here, growing
from the fissures of the barren rocks, a solitary cup-shaped rose
opens its pale petals to the transient sunbeams of summer. This
hardy little plant is, as its name, _rosa spinosissima_,
indicates, covered all over with prickles. Its cream-colored
flowers, numerous and solitary, are sometimes tinged with pink on
the outside, and its fruit, at first red, becomes perfectly black
when ripe.

In Lapland, too, a country almost as disinherited by nature as
Iceland, the pretty little May rose (_rosa maïalis_) expands
its bright red corolla even before the tardy sun has melted away
all the snow that has covered it during nine long months. A
little later on, in the full blush of the short summer, "when the
pine has a fringe of softer green," the Lapp maidens gather the
blood-red flowers of the _rosa rubella_ among the stunted
trees whose parasitical mosses and lichens afford a scanty
nourishment to the flocks of reindeer, sole riches of the land.

The May rose is also found in Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and
Russia, together with the cinnamon rose (_rosa cinnamomea_,)
and several other species.

England claims ten indigenous roses, many of them, however,
exceedingly difficult to distinguish from each other. The most
common is the dog-rose or Eglantine, found in every hedge and
thicket, and very precious to rose-cultivators, its elegant,
straight, vigorous stems being admirable for receiving grafts.
The light pink corolla is slightly perfumed. In olden times the
scarlet fruit was made into conserve, and highly esteemed in
tarts, but it seems now to be abandoned to the birds. The _rosa
arvensis_, a small shrub with long trailing branches and white
flowers, and the burnet-leaved rose, which resembles the _rosa
spinosissima_ of Iceland, are also very frequently met. But
the pride of the southern counties is the _rosa rubiginosa_,
the true sweet-briar, with deep pink petals and leaves of the
most delicious fragrance; a flower that seems to belong as
peculiarly to the soft English spring as the primrose and violet,
and like them to be emblematic of the English girl, delicate in
her beauty, modest and retiring in her garb and manners, and
diffusing around her an atmosphere of gentle sweetness. Such, at
least, was the English girl five-and-twenty years ago; it is said
that hoops and boots and croquet have produced strange changes.
Alas! that simplicity and modesty and sweetness should ever go
out of fashion.

{409}

In the Scotch fir-woods is found the rose with rolled petals,
(_rosa involuta_.) The large flowers are red and white, and
the remarkably sombre leaves when rubbed between the fingers give
forth a strong smell of turpentine, an odor the plant has
probably acquired from the resinous trees that shelter it. All
the rugged mountains of Scotland possess their roses; the _rosa
sabini_, with clustering flowers, and the villous or hairy
rose, (_rosa villosa_,) with white or deep red, are the most
worthy of notice.

It is only in the environs of Belfast that we encounter the Irish
rose, (_rosa hibernica_,) a species somewhat resembling both
the _spinosissima_ and the _canina_. The other roses of
beautiful Ireland are identical with those of England.

The fields and forests of France have been richly endowed with
nature's favorite flower. Our now well-known friend _canina_
flourishes there also in every hedge and by every wood-side,
together with a pretty white rose, (_rosa alba_,) which has
been very successfully cultivated in gardens. The smiling
hill-sides around Dijon are gay with the lovely little crimson
double flowers of the rose of Champagne, (_rosa
parviflora;_) and, in the south, the yellow rose (_rosa
eglantaria_) and its varieties surpass all others in the
richness of their coloring; their petals sometimes gleaming with
the brightest gold, sometimes deepening into a brilliant orange
red, sometimes reproducing both hues in vivid flecks and streaks.
The woods of Auvergne are bedecked with the small red solitary
corollas of the cinnamon rose, (_rosa cinnamomea_,) so
called from the color of its stalks; and in the department of the
eastern Pyrenees the musk-rose blooms spontaneously in
magnificent corymbs. This exquisitely scented species is also
extensively cultivated for its aromatic essential oil; one of its
kindred is the nutmeg rose, a pretty flower that smells of the
spice.

The Province rose, so often remarkable for its variegated petals
of white, crimson, and pink, is a variety of the rose of France,
(_rosa gallica_,) a species that has given horticulturists a
great number of beautiful offshoots.

Crossing the Pyrenean mountains, we again meet with the
musk-rose, but this time in close companionship with the rose of
Spain, (_rosa hispanica_,) whose bright red petals expand in
the month of May.

In the Balearic Islands the climbing branches of the evergreen
rose (_rosa semper-virens_,) are seen constantly arrayed in
lustrous green leaves mingled with innumerable white perfumed
flowers. This beautiful rose is also found in other parts of the
south of Europe, and in Barbary.

We have already mentioned Polin's rose, a sweet Italian blossom
which never strays from the foot of Monte Baldo, in the
neighborhood of Verona. Its large crimson corollas open in
handsome clusters.

Sicily and Greece possess the gluey rose, (_rosa
glutinosa,_) a small, red, solitary flower, with glandular,
viscous leaflets.

Germany is poorer in native roses than any other part of Europe;
nevertheless nowhere do the blossoms of the field-rose display
such beauty, unless, indeed, among the mountains of Switzerland.
Nowhere else are they so large, so deeply tinted, and
_double_. Germany also gives birth to the curious turbinated
rose, (_rosa turbinata_,) whose double corolla rests on a
top-shaped ovary.

The whole chain of the Alps abounds with roses. The field-rose,
and the ruby-red Alpine rose, (_rosa alpina_,) an elegant
shrub which has contributed many esteemed varieties to our
gardens, bloom in admirable luxuriance in every forest glade and
mountain dingle; while the red-leaved rose, (_rosa
rubrifolia_,) with red stalks and dark red petals, stands out
in the summer landscape, a charming contrast to the green foliage
of the surrounding trees.

{410}

The leaves of another species growing among the pines and firs of
these elevated regions, the rose with prickly leaflets, (_rosa
spinulifolia_,) emit when rubbed the same odor of turpentine
that we have already noticed in the _rosa involuta_of
Scotland. It is singular to observe that the only two roses we
know with this smell are both natives of pine-covered mountains.

The east has for ages been esteemed the home of flowers; almost
as soon as we can lisp, we are taught that

  "In eastern lands they talk with flowers,
     And they tell in a garland their loves and cares;
   Each blossom that blooms in their garden bowers
     On its leaves a mystic language bears."

And in joyous youth who has not dreamed of that "bower of roses
by Bendemeer's stream," so sweetly sung by the Irish bard? The
very name of India reminds one of Nourmahal and of that most
enchanting of all feasts, "the feast of roses."

It will then scarcely surprise any one to be told that Asia, the
birthplace of the great human family, is also the birthplace of
more varieties of roses than all the other parts of the world put
together. Thirty-nine species have been discovered indigenous to
this favored portion of the globe, fifteen of which belong to the
Chinese empire.

One of the prettiest of these fifteen is the Lawrence rose,
(_rosa Lawrenceana_,) a fairy-like bush, six inches high,
with flowers not much larger than a silver dime, blooming all the
year round. By the side of this pigmy tree, which we must not
forget to observe is remarkable for the symmetry of its
proportions, is often found the many-flowered rose, (_rosa
multiflora_,) whose flexible branches, rising sometimes to the
height of sixteen feet, are covered in the early summer with
magnificent clusters of pale pink double flowers.

Among the many double Chinese roses, the small-leaved one
(_rosa microphylla_) is highly prized and most assiduously
cultivated in its native land. Its delicate foliage and pale pink
very double flowers are well known also to the rose-fanciers of
the United States. Another beautiful variety, the _rosa
Banksiae_, climbs the rocky fells of China, hiding their
rugged barrenness with a living curtain of verdure, enamelled
with multitudes of little drooping flowers of a yellowish white,
which exhale the sweet odor of violets.

Cochin-China, with these same species, lays claim to two others
that we must notice; the very thorny rose, (_rosa
spinosissima_,) with scentless flesh-colored petals, and the
white rose, (_rosa alba_,) which we also find indigenous in
France, Lombardy, and other parts of Europe. Japan, besides the
roses of China, possesses the _rosa rugosa_, the only one
peculiar to the clime.

Passing on to Hindostan, we may believe that the tiger which
prowls along the burning shores of the Bay of Bengal ofttimes
crouches under the boughs blooming with the lovely white corollas
of the many-bracted rose (_rosa involucrata_) to make his
deadly spring, and that the crocodiles of the Ganges find secure
hiding-places to lie in wait for their prey, beneath the
ever-succeeding red blossoms and never-fading luxuriant foliage
of the _rosa semperflorens_. How often, all the world over,
are sweetest things but lurking-places for pain and death!

{411}

Among the hills of the peninsula we meet the large-leaved rose,
(_rosa macrophylla_,) the tips of whose white petals are
each stained with a small bright red spot; and on the margin of
the sunny lakes of cool Cashmere, the milk-white flowers of
Lyell's rose, (_rosa Lyellii_,) a beautiful species that has
been successfully acclimatized in France.

In the gardens of Kandahar, Samarcand, and Ispahan the rose
_tree_ (_rosa arborea_) is cultivated; a real tree,
with wide-spreading branches, covered in the spring with snowy
flowers of the richest perfume, making fragrant the surrounding
hill and dales. In Persia we also find the barberry-leaved rose,
(_rosa berberifolia_,) a singular variety which displays a
star-like yellow corolla marked in the centre with a deep crimson
stain. So unlike is this flower to all others of the family that
one feels almost inclined to deny its claim to any relationship
with the queen of flowers. Science, however, has decided that the
_rosa berberifolia_ is a true rose.

Further on to the west, beneath "the sultry blue of Syria's
heaven," we encounter the lovely corymbs of the damask rose,
(_rosa damascena_,) with crimson velvet or variegated petals
and gold-colored stamens. It is said that the valiant knights who
accompanied the French king Saint Louis to the Crusades brought
back with them to France this beautiful flower, an ever-living
witness of their prowess in the Holy Land. It is as beloved by
the honey-bees of Europe as its wilder sisters on the sweet banks
of Jordan have ever been by the blossom-rifling rovers of
Palestine.

As the rose-seeker wanders forth from Syria toward the north he
is arrested for a moment by the vivid yellow double flowers of
the _rosa sulfurea_, but has scarcely time to admire them,
graceful though they be, before he catches sight of the loveliest
and most fragrant of all roses, the _rosa centifolia_, the
hundred-leaved rose, the rose of the nightingale, the rose of the
poet!

      "Rose! what dost thou here?
         Bridal, royal rose!
       How, 'midst grief and fear,
         Canst thou thus disclose
   That fervid hue of love which to thy heart-leaf glows?

      "Smilest thou, gorgeous flower?
         Oh! within the spells
       Of thy beauty's power
         Something dimly dwells
   At variance with a world of sorrows and farewells.

       "All the soul forth-flowing
          In that rich perfume,
        All the proud life glowing
	  In that radiant bloom,
   Have they no place but _here_, beneath th' o'ershadowing tomb?

       "Crown'st thou but the daughters
          Of our tearful race?
        Heaven's own purest waters
	  Well might wear the trace
   Of thy consummate form, melting to softer grace.

        "Will that clime enfold thee
           With immortal air?
	 Shall we not behold thee
	   Bright and deathless there?
   In spirit-lustre clothed, transcendently more fair!"

The valleys of Circassia and Georgia are the birthplace of this
most beautiful of flowers, of whose exquisite form, color, and
perfume even Mrs. Hemans's rapturous verses can give no idea.

The fierce rose (_rosa ferox_) is sometimes found mingling
its great red flowers with those of _rosa centifolia_, and
the pulverulent rose (_rosa pulverulenta_) dwells near them
on the declivities of the Peak of Manzana.

As we hasten on through the dreary steppes of Russian Asia, we
meet the sad-looking yellowish rose, dismal in aspect as the land
it lives in, and more remarkable for its great pulpy hip than for
its flower. A little nearer to the north, the handsome,
large-flowered rose (_rosa grandiflora_) expands its elegant
corolla in the form of an antique vase, and on the plains lying
at the foot of the Ural mountains the reddish rose, (_rosa
rubella_,) with petals sometimes rich and deep in color, but
more often faint and faded-looking, gladdens for a moment the
heart-sore Polish exile as he wends his weary way to his living
grave, faint and faded-looking as the flower that reminds him of
his distant home.

{412}

Despite the cold breath of the frozen ocean, the acicular rose
(_rosa acicularis_) lives and thrives on its shores, and
regularly opens its pale-red solitary blossoms at the first call
of the short-lived Siberian summer. The icy breezes of the frigid
zone may have done much, however, toward developing the
ill-natured tendency to long, needle-like thorns to which this
rose owes its uncouth name.

Omitting ten or twelve other varieties, we will conclude the list
of the indigenous roses of Asia with the rose of Kamtschatka,
(_rosa Kamtschatica_,) a beautiful solitary flower of a
pinkish white color, and bearing some resemblance to the _rosa
rugosa_ of Japan.

The roses of Africa are still to be discovered; its vast
unexplored regions perhaps contain many as beautiful as those we
possess, but at present we are only acquainted with four or five
species, one of which, the dog-rose, so common all over Europe,
is a native of Egypt. Among the mountains of Abyssinia blooms a
pretty red variety with evergreen foliage, and on the borders of
that "wild expanse of lifeless sand," the great Sahara in Egypt,
and on the plains of Tunis and of Morocco, the corymbs of the
white musk-rose (_rosa moschata_) perfume the ambient air.
This charming flower is also indigenous to the Island of Madeira.

We have thus taken a bird's-eye view of the rose's
_habitat_, passing over much of interesting, much of curious
that has been written about the favorite flower. We might go on
and mention the singular and marvellous virtues attributed to it
by the ancients; we might (were we learned) learnedly discourse
on the Island of Rhodes, whose coins are found bearing the effigy
of the rose; of the rose-noble, and the old English fashion of
wearing a rose behind the ear; we might describe the gardens of
Ghazipour and the whole process of extracting the delicious attar
of roses; we might hint at the mysterious influence the scented
blossom appears to exercise over some strangely organized
individuals, who seem capable "of dying of a rose, in aromatic
pain;" but we prefer to conclude here our sketch of the geography
of roses.

Unlearned and superficial as we well know it is, it may show some
pleasant meanings to the young lover of flowers, and awaken his
curiosity to examine for himself the floral treasures that bloom
in every field, garden, and grove. Such a study will do more
toward filling his heart with a spirit of love and peace, and
elevating his mind above purely material cares, than any other
pursuit; for

  "Where does the Wisdom and the Power divine
   In a more bright and sweet reflection shine?"

"From nature up to nature's God" is the natural result of all
scientific investigations which are carried on with a real
capacity of observation and a sincere love of truth. Feeling and
thought, purified and sanctified by constant intercourse with the
high objects of life, with the enduring things of nature, fail
not to recognize the "Wisdom and the Spirit of the universe" in
his works.

   "Were I, O God! in churchless lands remaining,
      Far from all voice of teachers or divines,
    My soul would find, in flowers of thy ordaining,
      Priests, sermons, shrines!"

----------

{413}

     Spanish Life and Character. [Footnote 120]

       [Footnote 120: _Impressions of Spain_. By Lady
       Herbert. New York:  The Catholic Publication Society.
       1869.

       _Letters from Spain_. By William Cullen Bryant. 12mo.
       New York: D.  Appleton & Co.

       _Voyage en Espagne_. Par M. Eugène Poitou. 8vo, pp.
       483. Tours: A. Mame et Fila. 1869.]

Lady Herbert strikes the key-note of her narrative of Spanish
travel about the middle of the book. "Catholicism in Spain," she
remarks, "is not merely the religion of the people: _it is
their life_." Precisely because she feels this life, and,
despite her English common sense, sympathizes with the Spanish
people in their strong religious sentiment, she describes them
with a rare fidelity, and gives us, if not a highly colored, a
very vivid picture. No traveller who is not a Catholic can paint
Spain as she is. Mr. Bryant looked at the people with a kindly
eye; but he did not understand them. From him, as well as from
the common run of English and American tourists, we get mere
surface sketches--pleasant enough to read, perhaps, but that is
all. Protestant travellers see no more of the popular life and
character than if they sailed over the country in a balloon. They
find the diligences marvels of antiquated discomfort; the
railways, miracles of unpunctuality and slowness; travel, a
hardship which there is little attempt to alleviate. They find
that in Spain no Spaniard is ever in a hurry, and no stranger is
allowed to be so either. If they are kept shivering at a roadside
station three or four hours in the midst of the night, waiting
for some lumbering railway train, on a seatless, unsheltered
platform, they get no commiseration from the surly officials but
an exhortation to "paciencia." If government is bad and robbers
are bold, the Spaniard goes on sipping his sugared water and
repeats, "Paciencia, paciencia!" If the country is two or three
generations behind the rest of Europe in all the appliances of
material comfort, why, "_Paciencia, paciencia!_" That is the
great panacea for all the ills of human life. These
peculiarities, the wretchedness and extravagant charges of all
the hotels, and the horrors of the Spanish _cuisine_, fill
most of the travellers' journals. But Lady Herbert found a plenty
of religious beauty underneath this dilapidated exterior. God and
the church are so near to the people's hearts that the mixture of
religion with the language and business of every day shocks a
stranger at first as something irreverent. Pious traditions are
familiar to every Spaniard from his cradle. They come up every
hour of the day. They color every man's conversation, they
affect, more or less intimately, everybody's conduct; nay, it is
difficult sometimes to separate them from the Spaniard's faith,
for he clings to a pious legend almost as stoutly as he holds to
an article of the creed. The peasant woman plants rosemary in her
garden, because there is a story that when our Lord was an infant
the Blessed Virgin hung out his clothes upon a rosemary bush to
dry. Red roses get their color from a drop of the Saviour's blood
which fell on them from the cross. A swallow tried to pluck the
thorns from the head of the crucified Christ, and therefore no
Spaniard will shoot a swallow.
{414}
The owl was present when our Lord expired, and since then has
ceased to sing, his only cry being "_Crux, crux!_" Half the
dogs in Spain are called Melampo, because that was the name of
the dog of the shepherds who came to Bethlehem. Protestants may
laugh at the credulity which listens to such legends, but to our
minds there is the simplicity of real piety in the national
belief, and we cannot think that God will be angry with the
people if they believe a little too much in his honor.
Protestants may sneer at the public reverence which is paid to
sacred things, and call it a gross mark of superstition to show
as much respect to the Blessed Sacrament as to a governor or a
general in the army; but we confess our sympathies are with Lady
Herbert when she describes the sentinels at San Sebastian
presenting arms as he passes before the chapel door, or the
shopkeeper who interrupts a bargain to rush out into the street
and kneel down before the Viatacum, exclaiming "_Sua maesta
viene!_" What a sweet flavor of real piety there is in the
popular term for alms, "_la bolsa de Dios_," "God's
purse!"--a purse, by the way, which is never empty. Beggars are
treated with a tenderness that is felt for them nowhere else but
in Ireland. The poor peasant may have little or nothing to give;
but if he refuses, he begs pardon for doing so. There is no city
without its charity hospitals, marvels of cleanliness, comfort,
and order. There is hardly a town without its asylum, where
religious mea or women tend the unfortunate, shelter the
destitute, feed the hungry, and rear the orphan and the
foundling. Convents have been depopulated and monastic orders
banished throughout the kingdom, but the more active brotherhoods
and sisterhoods are spared, and are doing magnificent work. The
deserted convents, magnificent in their decay, speak eloquently
of the zeal and piety of the people, whose greatest fault it is
as a nation that they have trusted too much to weak and unworthy
rulers. Every one of these religious monuments is the scene of
some holy legend, and most of them are hallowed by incidents in
the lives of saints, of whom Spain has been the birthplace and
home of so many hundreds. Lady Herbert tells a significant story
which shows how closely religion is bound up with the thoughts of
the people. She was visiting the ancient palace of Toledo, when a
peasant woman, sitting by the gate, asked the guide if the
strange lady was an Englishwoman, "because she walked so fast."
On being answered in the affirmative, she exclaimed, "Oh! what a
pity. I liked her face, and yet she is an infidel!" The guide
pointed to a little crucifix which hung from a rosary at Lady
Herbert's side, whereat the peasant sprang from her seat and
kissed both the cross and the visitor.

Spanish courtesy even has a religious flavor. Ask a Spaniard to
point out the road, and nothing will do but he must go with you
on your way, and pray God's blessing on your head when he leaves
you. No matter how poor he may be, you must not offer money for
such services; he will be either grieved or indignant, at what
seems to him an insult. There is piety also in the Spanish
reverence for age. If an old man passes the peasant's door at
meal-time, he is offered a place at the table, and begged to ask
a blessing on the repast.

There is, in fine, a lovable and engaging side to Spanish
character from which we cannot but expect a great and beneficial
influence upon the national destinies. Faith has its rewards even
in this life, and we cannot believe that a nation which adhered
so firmly to religion will be overthrown without some very grave
offence of its own.
{415}
The reverential tendency of Spanish character has no doubt
overpassed, in political affairs, its legitimate barriers, and
loyalty has done some mischief as well as good. Respect for
legitimate authority has not always been distinguished from a
fanatical devotion to the persons of bad or incompetent rulers.
There is a great deal of truth, albeit much falsehood likewise,
in Mr. Buckle's explanation of the causes of Spanish greatness
and Spanish decay. Give the kingdom a great sovereign, like
Charles V., and with an obedient and devoted people the nation
may be raised to the pinnacle of greatness and prosperity. But no
people which has not been taught to depend upon itself can long
keep in the van. Greatness is not inherited with titles and
possessions; weak rulers are sure to come sooner or later, and
then the country finds that it leans upon a broken reed. Spain
discovers now that she has suffered her kings to monopolize the
responsibilities which ought to have been divided among the whole
people, and their duties have not been fulfilled. The nation has
slept a sleep of centuries in the comfortable confidence that
government would take care of everything, do all the thinking,
make all the needed improvements, and educate the country as a
father educates his children. It seems to have been forgotten
that this was a task which only those mighty geniuses who appear
once in a century are strong enough to perform. An indolent,
weak, and careless ruler under the Spanish system allows his
people to lag behind in the struggle for national preëminence; a
bad ruler plunges them into misery and disgrace. Spain has
suffered terribly from both these afflictions; we do not believe,
however, that her case is desperate. While there is much in the
present condition of the kingdom to fill all thoughtful men with
alarm, there is promise in the awakened activity of national
life, and in the very spirit of revolution which is driving the
liberal party into such lamentable excesses. It is dirty work to
clean up the dust of three or four centuries. Great political
changes are almost always accompanied by disorder; but when the
uproar subsides, and new parties crystallize out of the fragments
of the present tumult, when the people feel that to be great and
prosperous they must use their own power, and cease to be fed
with a spoon, we believe that there is so much faith and piety at
the bottom of the Spanish heart, and so much real nobleness in
the national character, that a brighter destiny will be within
their reach than has beamed upon them since the days of Charles
and Philip.


We have wandered far away from the volume with which we began our
remarks, and left ourselves little room to praise Lady Herbert's
narrative as it deserves to be praised. We shall content
ourselves here with citing a description of a man who has
occupied a prominent place in the recent history of Spain. We
mean Father Claret, the queen's confessor:

  "One only visit was paid, which will ever remain in the memory
  of the lady who had the privilege. It was to Monsignor Claret,
  the confessor of the queen and Archbishop of Cuba, a man as
  remarkable for his great personal holiness and ascetic life as
  for the unjust accusations of which he is continually the
  object. On one occasion, these unfavorable reports having
  reached his ears, and being only anxious to retire into the
  obscurity which his humility makes him love so well, he went to
  Rome to implore for a release from his present post; but it was
  refused him.
{416}
  Returning through France, he happened to travel with certain
  gentlemen, residents in Madrid, but unknown to him, as he was
  to them, who began to speak of all the evils, real or
  imaginary, which reigned in the Spanish court, the whole of
  which they unhesitatingly attributed to Monsignor Claret, very
  much in the spirit of the old ballad against Sir Robert Peel:

    'Who filled the butchers' shops with big blue flies?'

  He listened without a word, never attempting either excuse or
  justification, or betraying his identity. Struck with his
  saint-like manner and appearance, and likewise very much
  charmed with his conversation during the couple of days'
  journey together, the strangers begged at parting to know his
  name, expressing an earnest hope of an increased acquaintance
  at Madrid. He gave them his card with a smile! Let us hope they
  will be less hasty and more charitable in their judgments, for
  the future. Monsignor Claret's room in Madrid is a fair type of
  himself. Simple even to severity in its fittings, with no
  furniture but his books, and some photographs of the queen and
  her children, it contains one only priceless object, and that
  is a wooden crucifix, of the very finest Spanish workmanship,
  which attracted at once the attention of his visitor. 'Yes, it
  is very beautiful,' he replied in answer to her words of
  admiration; 'and I like it because it expresses so wonderfully
  _victory over suffering_. Crucifixes generally represent
  only the painful and human, not the triumphant and divine view
  of the redemption. Here, he is truly victor over death and
  hell.'

  "Contrary to the generally received idea, he never meddles in
  politics, and occupies himself entirely in devotional and
  literary works. One of his books, _Camino recto y seguro para
  llegar al Cielo_, would rank with Thomas a Kempis's
  _Imitation_ in suggestive and practical devotion. He keeps
  a perpetual fast; and, when compelled by his position to dine
  at the palace, still keeps to his meagre fare of 'garbanzos,'
  or the like. He has a great gift of preaching; and when he
  accompanies the queen in any of her royal progresses, is
  generally met at each town when they arrive by earnest
  petitions to preach, which he does instantly, without rest or
  apparent preparation, sometimes delivering four or five sermons
  in one day. In truth, he is always 'prepared,' by a hidden life
  of perpetual prayer and realization of the unseen."

For the rest, it is only necessary to add a word upon the
admirable manner in which the American publishers have presented
Lady Herbert's book to their patrons. It is beautifully printed
upon thick, rich paper, and illustrated with excellent wood-cuts,
and will easily bear comparison with the choice productions of
the secular press, as a book for the parlor table and for holiday
presents as well as for the library.

----------

          From The German Of Baron Stolberg.

  Filial Affection As Taught And Practised By The Chinese.


  "Honor thy father and thy mother,
  that thou mayest be long-lived in the land
  which the Lord thy God will give thee."

In a remarkable work, entitled _Mémoires concernant l'histoire,
les sciences, les arts, les moeurs, les usages, etc., etc., des
Chinois_, written by two natives of China who had spent their
early years in Europe, and had there added the sciences of the
west to the learning of the east, and hallowed their knowledge
with "the love of Christ which surpasseth all knowledge," the
greater part of a quarto volume is devoted to the "Teachings of
the Chinese concerning filial affection."

{417}

What follows is taken from _Li-ki_, a very ancient Chinese
work, written long before the time of the great Confucius.
Confucius was born in the year of the world 3452, before Christ
551, in the twenty-eighth year of the lifetime of Cyrus.

  "Be ever penetrated by religion and your exterior will bespeak
  a man whose regard is directed inward upon his soul; and your
  words will be the language of one who controls his passions."
  ...

  "Religion alone can render indissoluble the ties that attach
  the subject to his prince, the inferior to the superior, the
  son to the father, the younger brother to the elder."

  "A son filled with filial affection hears the voice of his
  father and mother, even when they are not speaking with him,
  and he sees them even when he is not in their presence."

  "At the first call of a father, all should be forsaken in order
  to go to him."

  "Mourning for parents should continue three years."

  "A son had murdered his father in the kingdom of Tochu. The
  authorities reported the crime to King Ting-kong. He rose from
  his mat; sighed, Alas! the fault is mine! I know not how to
  govern! He issued an edict for the future. Such a murderer must
  be instantly put to death; the house must be razed, and the
  governor must abstain from wine during a month."

  "The peace of the realm depends on the filial affection
  entertained for parents and the respect shown to elder
  brothers."

The following are extracts from a canonical book of the Chinese
entitled _Hiao-king_, the last work of Confucius, written
480 years before the birth of Christ, during the time of Xerxes.

  "Filial affection is the root of all virtues, and the fountain
  head of all teaching."

  "Whosoever loves his parents can hate nobody; whosoever honors
  them can despise nobody. If a ruler evinces unlimited respect
  and affection to his parents, the virtue and wisdom of his
  people will be increased twofold. Even barbarians will submit
  to his decrees."

  "If thou entertainest toward thy father the love thou hast for
  thy mother, and the respect thou hast for thy ruler, thou wilt
  serve thy ruler with filial affection."

  "O immensity of filial affection! how wonderful thou art! What
  the revolutions of the planets are for the citadel of heaven,
  what fertility is for the fields of the earth, that, filial
  affection is for nations. Heaven and earth never deceive. Let
  nations follow their example, and the harmony of the world will
  be as indefectible as the light of heaven, and as the
  productions of the earth!"

  "A prince who causes himself to be loved, and who improves the
  morals of men, is the father and mother of nations! How perfect
  must be the virtue which guides nations to that which is
  greatest of all, whilst they are following the inclinations of
  their hearts!"

The emperors of China have been giving examples of filial
affection from time immemorial. It is an ordinance of the
ancients that the new sovereign shall, during the first three
years, make no changes in the administration of his father. The
emperors of China, the mightiest potentates of the earth, show
the most profound reverence to their mothers before the eyes of
the whole people.

The great Emperor Kang-hi published, in 1689 of our chronology, a
large work, in one hundred volumes, on filial affection. In the
preface, written by himself, he says, amongst other things:

  "In order to show how the filial affection of an emperor should
  be constituted, it is here shown to what tenderness for his
  people, interest in the public good, solicitude for health,
  contentment, and the happiness of his parents bind him.
  Everything in life is filial affection, for everything refers
  to respect and love."

What a beauty and depth of meaning in these words!

Together with filial affection this comprises the corresponding
love of parents for their children, and the reciprocal duties of
both. From these are also deduced the reciprocal obligations of
rulers and subjects.

{418}

All is ultimately referred to God.

  "Who is to be feared, who is to be served,
  and who is to be regarded as the Father
  and the Mother of all men."

China is the only empire in which public censors of the acts of
the emperor are appointed. Their number, which originally was
seven, has been increased to forty. Their office is to warn the
emperor when he has transgressed or neglected his duty, and to
admonish him. In a work composed by the Emperor Kang-hi, and
published in 1733, several instances of these admonitions and
remonstrances are mentioned:

  "It is the cry of all ages, O Sovereign!
  that it is the most imperative duty
  of the son to revere his parents!"

After explaining how one must prove himself concerning the
fulfilment of this duty, and describing various evidences by
which to judge, the sage continues:

  "Such, O Sovereign! is the nature of genuine filial affection,
  of the filial affection of great souls, of the kind of filial
  affection that makes the world pleasant, gains all hearts, and
  secures the favor of heaven. ... Thy subject, O Sovereign! has
  heard that a good ruler attributes to himself whatever disturbs
  good order in the realm; that he is made sad by the smallest
  misdemeanors of his subjects, and that he devotes the best days
  of his life to the sole object of obviating whatever might
  interfere with the public weal."

This remonstrance was presented in the year 1064, of our
chronology, to the Emperor Ing-tsong by the Censor See-ma-kuang,
one of the greatest statesmen China has ever had, who was at the
same time a historian, a philosopher, and a poet. The people
loved him so that after his death the entire realm was disposed
to go in mourning. Another censor very boldly reprimanded the
Emperor Kuang-tsong, because in a journey to his country chateau
he had passed by the villa of his mother without calling to see
her.

At a later period this censor upbraided the same emperor in terms
of the deepest sorrow for not accompanying his mother's funeral
and wearing mourning in her memory, notwithstanding that all the
magnates of the empire had been plunged into the most profound
grief by the death of that excellent woman. The censor accused
him of having feigned indisposition on that occasion, whilst it
was generally known that he was engaged in his customary
pastimes.

Another emperor was reproached with a noble intrepidity, for
having weakly permitted a favorite daughter to squander a part of
the revenues of the state in embellishing her country residence
and gardens.

The Emperor Kang-hi, one of the wisest and greatest rulers the
world has ever seen, practised filial piety in a most perfect
manner toward his grandmother and mother during their lifetime
and after their death. When appointing one of his sons heir to
the throne--a right accorded him by the constitution--he declared
that he was guided in his choice by the wisdom of the two
empresses, his mother and his grandmother.

When his grandmother was sick, this emperor wrote to one of the
grandees of the realm, Hing-pu, who was probably minister of
justice:

  "My cares do not quit me, whether by day or by night. I have no
  relish for food or sleep; my only consolation lies in raising
  my thoughts to Tien, (Heaven, or the God of Heaven.) With
  tearful eyes I have prostrated myself on the ground, and buried
  myself in meditation on the manner of most surely obtaining his
  holy assistance; and it appeared to me that the preservation of
  men, the objects of his love, would be the surest means of
  obtaining, from his infinite goodness and mercy, the
  prolongation of a life that we would all be willing to purchase
  with our own."

{419}

Hereupon he reprieved all criminals not excluded from the favor
by the laws of the state. He concluded with these words:

  "I pray Tien that
  he may be pleased to bless my wish."

He walked in solemn procession, accompanied by the nobles, and
offered sacrifices for the empress. As her condition grew more
alarming, he spent day and night at her bedside, where he slept
upon a mat, in order to be always near to attend to her wants. To
the remonstrances of his court and the requests of the invalid
herself, he replied by answering them that he could not control
his grief, and could find consolation only in nursing his beloved
grandmother, who had nursed him in youth with so much wisdom and
tenderness.

Many a reader may consider this intense and openly acknowledged
sentiment of filial devotion as exaggerated; in China, men
thought differently. And the man of whom it is related was one of
the greatest princes that ever lived, a great _savant_, a
philosopher upon a throne, an undaunted hero, and during the
whole of his long reign the father of his country, the admiration
and joy of his numerous people. When he was besought by the
princes of the royal house and by the nobles of the realm to
permit the sixtieth anniversary of his birthday to be solemnly
commemorated, he replied:

  "I have never had any taste for and have never found any
  pleasure in grand festivities and entertainments. Yet I feel
  reluctant to refuse what the love of the princes and nobles
  requests from me. But as these festivities would fall upon the
  days whereon my much revered father and mother died, their
  memory is too vividly present in my heart to suffer me to allow
  them to be converted into days of rejoicing."

At the Chinese court it is customary for the emperor, on New
Year's day, to go in company with the princes and nobles to the
palace of his mother. A master of ceremonies called a mandarin of
Lizu, walks in front and reverently prays that it may be her
serene pleasure to ascend her throne, in order that the emperor
may throw himself at her feet. She then takes her place upon the
throne. The emperor enters the hall and remains standing with his
arms hanging down and his sleeves pulled over his hands--a mark
of reverence amongst this people. The imperial retinue remain
below in the ante-chamber. The musicians sound some thrilling
notes, whereupon the mandarin cries in a loud voice, "Upon your
knees!" The emperor and retinue fall upon their knees. "To the
floor!" The emperor bows his head to the floor, as also the
entire court. "Arise!" And all rise up together. After performing
three prostrations in this manner, the mandarin again approaches
the throne of the empress and reaches her a written request from
the emperor to be pleased to return to her apartment.

During the ceremony the sound of the bell from the great tower
announces to all the inhabitants of Pekin that the emperor of
China, "the ruler of the thousand kingdoms," as they style him,
is paying homage to humanity.

When the empress has returned to her apartment, the ringing of
the bell ceases, and then the emperor receives the felicitations
of the court in his own palace.

The idea of the relation between parents and children is, in
fact, the soul of the constitution of China, a constitution that
has continued unchanged for more than three thousand years.
Through this idea the chains of despotism, so galling in other
countries of the east, are rendered tolerable; by it a powerful
influence is exercised over the rulers of the mightiest empire of
the earth, so that most of them, even in modern times, devote
themselves to their exalted duties with the greatest care, and
look upon the empire not as their own possession, but as a trust
committed to them as vicegerents of heaven.
{420}
This idea is so deeply rooted that even the victorious Tartars
were forced to respect it and adopt it as their principle of
government, as we are shown by the example mentioned of the great
Kang-hi.

We subjoin some selections from a number of Chinese moral
proverbs relating to this subject,

  "Filial affection produces the same sentiment, the same
  solicitude, under every clime. The barbarian, compelled by want
  to wander through wildernesses, learns more easily from his own
  heart what a son owes to his father and mother than sages learn
  it from their books."

  "The most invincible army is that in which fathers are most
  mindful of their children, sons of their parents, brothers of
  their brothers."

  "The filial piety of the ruler is the inheritance of the aged,
  of widows, and of orphans."

  "Whosoever raises the staff of his father with reverence, does
  not strike the father's hand. Whosoever yawns at the old man's
  oft-repeated tales, will hardly weep at his death."

  "All virtues are threatened when filial affection is sinned
  against."

  "A good son never looks upon an enterprise as successful until
  it has received the approbation of his father."

  "Rocks are converted into diamonds where father and son have
  but one heart; harmony between the elder and younger brothers
  changes the earth into gold."

  "Subjects revere their parents in the person of the emperor;
  the emperor must revere his parents in the person of those of
  his subjects. The love of princes for their parents guarantees
  to them the love of their subjects."

  "The Emperor Gin-tsong was counselled by his minister to
  declare war. What, replied the emperor, am I to answer fathers
  and mothers when they ask their sons of me? and to the widow
  who mourns her husband? and to fatherless orphans? and to so
  many disconsolate families? I would willingly sacrifice a
  province to save the life of one of my own children; all my
  subjects are my children."

  "Whosoever cuts down the trees planted by his father, will sell
  the house that was built by him."

  "It is not the threats, nor the reproaches, nor the violence of
  a father that are dreaded by a dutiful son. He fears his
  silence. A father is silent either because he has ceased to
  love or because he believes that he is no longer loved."

  "The one who first shed tears was an unhappy father."

  "Much to be pitied is the son who is displeasing to his
  parents; but the unhappiest of all is he who does not love
  them."

  "A good son is a good brother, a good husband, a good father, a
  good cousin, a good friend, a good neighbor, a good citizen. A
  wicked son is simply--a wicked son."

  "Reverence and tenderness are the wings of filial affection."

  "When brothers will not come to an agreement before the
  sentence of the judge, public morals have already deteriorated.
  If father and son go before the mandarin that he may decide
  between them, the state is in danger. If children plot against
  the life of their parents, and brothers against that of each
  other, all is lost."

This tender reverence for parents instils into the Chinese a
similar regard for aged persons, for authorities, and for
national customs. Their empire has been in existence for almost
four thousand years!

The contrary disposition, which denies to old age its becoming
deference, which impels youth to contemn the experience of the
past, and to wish, in its immaturity of judgment, to pass
sentence upon all subjects, destroys social relations and
undermines and ultimately ruins empires. It robs youth of its
true grace; destroys the modesty and thirst for knowledge of the
young man as well as the blushing diffidence of the maiden;
defrauds age of its dignity; renders customs and laws altogether
powerless.

{421}

  _Quid leges, sine moribus
    Vanae, proficiunt._

said Horace.

The young man trifles with the gaudy display of ever-changing
fashion, a pest of our country from which the more serious east
never languished. His philosophy is of the fashion as well as his
clothes; and though, at present, he considers them as the very
best, he is nevertheless ready to change them both and decry them
as unsuitable, reserving the liberty, however, of resuming them
as soon as the wand of the enchantress Fashion will have given
the sign.

The religion of Jesus Christ confers a pure dignity upon the
worthiest and most tender relations of nature. It teaches us to
revere a father in the Being of all beings, to love him tenderly
whose eternal Son did not disdain to become our brother, to
become the Spouse of his church. It sanctifies every relation of
nature, every relation of society. But in attempting to picture
to ourselves a state of the world in which the great majority
would be doing homage to the religion of Jesus Christ, not merely
in words, but in spirit and in deed, a feeling of sadness takes
possession of the soul like to that which might come upon a
prisoner, highly gifted with musical genius, while reading with
the eye the harmonies of Handel and Gluck, when his ear was
denied the rapture of hearing their enchanting melodies.

----------

           New Publications.


  Daily Meditations,   by his Eminence, the late Cardinal Wiseman.
  Vol. I.
  Dublin, James Duffy, 1869.
  For sale at the Catholic Publication House,
  126 Nassau Street.

There is a peculiar charm about all the writings of Cardinal
Wiseman. It is the touch of genius, and of a great genius, whose
loss the world mourns. The present volume, now published for the
first time, comprises a series of meditations useful for all
classes of devout persons, but more especially designed for the
clergy and students in our ecclesiastical seminaries. They were
written, as the Most Rev. Archbishop of Westminster informs us in
a short preface, when the cardinal entered upon his first
responsible office as rector of the English college in Rome. The
subjects for the first six months of the year are taken from and
arranged under a certain number of heads, generally repeated each
week. These are,

  "The End of Man,"
  "Last Things,"
  "Mystery of our Saviour's Life,"
  "Personal Duties,"
  "The Passion,"
  "Sin."
  "Means of Sanctification,"
  "Self-Examination,"
  "The Decalogue,"
  "The Blessed Eucharist,"
  "The Blessed Virgin."

Each meditation consists of two or three reflections, and closes
with an affective prayer. "Preparations" are given, after the
method of St. Ignatius, before the meditations upon the mysteries
of our Lord's life. As a book of meditations, or for spiritual
reading, we could earnestly commend it to the laity, who will
find the greater part of it eminently suitable for these
purposes, while to the clergy it will be especially acceptable,
furnishing, as it does, subjects sufficiently amplified to aid
them in the ready preparation of a sermon or pious conference. We
have few works in good English of this kind, and the reading of
authors whose style is remarkable for purity and vigor cannot
fail of improving the style of a speaker. The works of the great
cardinal need no praise from us on these points, and we are sure
that it is only necessary to call attention to a new work from
his master hand to ensure its rapid sale.

{422}

We cannot refrain from transcribing one of the many beautiful
affective prayers. The meditation is on the crowning with thorns.

  "Jesus, King and Lord of my heart and soul, what crown shall I
  give thee to acknowledge thee as such? Alas! gold and silver in
  my poverty I have none: my gold hath been long since turned
  into dross, and my silver been alloyed. I have no roses like
  thy martyrs, who returned thee blood for blood; nor lilies,
  like thy virgins, who loved thee with an unsullied heart. My
  soul is barren, my heart is unfruitful, and I have placed thee
  to reign, as the Jewish kings of old, over a heap of ruins.
  Long since despoiled and ravaged by the enemy, every flower
  hath been ploughed up, and every green plant burned with fire,
  and thorns alone and brambles spring up there. Of these, then,
  alone can I make thee a crown, my dear and sovereign Jesus.
  Wilt thou accept it? I will pluck up my unruly affections, that
  they may no more have roots, and, weaving them together into a
  wreath, will lay them as a sacrifice at thy feet. I will gather
  the thorns of sincere repentance which there each day arise and
  prick my heart with a sharp but wholesome smart, and with these
  will I make a crown for thy head, if thou wilt vouchsafe to
  wear it. Or, rather, thou shalt take it from my hand, only to
  place it with thine around my heart, that it may daily and
  hourly be pricked with compunction. And may the thorns of thy
  crown be to my soul so many goads of love, to hasten it forward
  in its career toward thee."

------

   False Definitions Of Faith,
   And The True Definition.
   By Rev. L. W. Bacon.
   Reprinted from the _New Englander_
   for April, 1869.

Mr. Bacon defines faith to be trusting one's self for salvation
to Jesus Christ. "The act of faith--of intrusting one's self for
salvation to the Lord Jesus Christ--includes, not as a remote
consequence, but in itself, repentance, obedience, holiness, and
_whatever things beside_ are demanded in the Scriptures as
conditions of salvation." Dropping all dispute about terminology,
we will take faith as defined by Mr. Bacon, and prove that it is
inconceivable with out the act of intellectual assent to divine
revelation, which the church requires. Jesus Christ must be
accredited as the Messiah by God the Father in such a way as to
give rational, credible evidence to the intellect, before a man
can reasonably or conscientiously trust himself to him for
salvation. When he is convinced that Christ is the Saviour, and
trusts himself to him, he must receive from him certain and
infallible instruction as to the method of repenting and
obtaining pardon, as to the nature and extent of the obedience
and holiness required, and as to _whatever things beside_
are demanded as conditions of salvation. If his Master teaches
him certain doctrines, and requires his assent, he must give it
as a part of his obedience. If he prescribes sacraments and
communion with one certain visible church as a condition of
salvation, he must obey. The question with Mr. Bacon is,
therefore, not respecting the indispensable obligation of
believing what God has revealed respecting the way of salvation,
but respecting the medium through which that revelation is
communicated, and the actual subject-matter of its contents. Mr.
Bacon very reasonably revolts at the tyranny of imposing mere
human and probable opinions derived from private judgment on the
Scriptures as necessary to be believed for salvation. He has an
independent spirit and an active mind which will not suffer him
to acquiesce tamely in the dominion which certain great names and
traditional formulas have hitherto held among the orthodox
Protestants. He thinks for himself and expresses his thoughts in
a bold and manly way. In the _brochure_ which he has
reprinted from the _New Englander_, the defects of the
old-fashioned Puritan theology respecting justification are
pointed out with distinctness, and a far better and more
reasonable view presented, which includes the moral element in
the disposition of the soul for receiving grace, thus rejecting
the most fundamental and destructive of all the errors of Luther.

------

{423}

  The Relations And Reciprocal Obligations Between The Medical
  Profession And The Educated And Cultivated Classes.
  An Oration delivered before the Alumni Association of the
  Medical Department of the University of the City of New York,
  Feb. 23d, 1869.
  By Henry S. Hewit, M.D.
  Published by order of the Association.

This pamphlet contains a great deal of matter within a very short
compass. It shows the relation of medicine to philosophy and
intellectual culture, refutes the wretched materialism by which
the profession has been too much infected, castigates with
merciless severity that charlatanism by which some ignorant
pretenders practise on the credulity of the public, and that
criminal malpractice by which others more skilful, but equally
without conscience, prostitute their science to complicity with
licentiousness and child-murder. A higher standard of education
in medical science, a more liberal preparatory culture, and a
distinction in medical degrees are advocated. These are matters
of the deepest moment to society, in which Catholics have
especial reasons to be interested. The physician is next to the
priest, and, in his sphere, very like the priest in the
responsibilities of his office, his power of doing good or evil,
and in the necessity of resorting to him under which all men are
placed in those dangerous and painful crises of life where he
alone can give effectual help. According to Catholic theology, no
one can pretend to practise medicine or surgery, without grievous
sin, who has not received a competent education, and who does not
follow what, according to the judgment of learned and skilful
men, are truly scientific methods. Ignorance, carelessness, rash
empiricism, or violation of the laws of morality as laid down by
the church, are all grievous sins. They are followed by the most
fatal consequences to those who become their victims, causing
even the loss of life and the privation of baptism, which
involves the loss of eternal life, on a vast scale. It is of the
utmost consequence that we should have a body of Catholic
physicians whose scientific culture is the highest possible, and
whose professional code of morals is strictly in conformity with
the moral theology of the church. If we are ever so happy as to
possess a a Catholic university, it is to be hoped that Dr.
Hewit's suggestions in regard to medical education may be carried
out. The author has rendered a great service to the profession
and to the cause of morals and religion by the publication of
this able and high-toned oration, and we trust it may receive a
wide circulation, and exert an equally wide influence. Dr. Hewit
served with great distinction as chief of medical staff to
Generals C. F. Smith, Grant, and Schofield during the late war,
and contributed some valuable papers to the medical journals. We
are indebted to him for some of the best literary notices which
have appeared in our columns, and the present oration not only
shows scientific culture and sound principles, but also a
capacity for producing literary composition of many varied and
rare excellences, combining terse and close logical reasoning
with a vivid play of the imagination. The closing sentence is
remarkably beautiful, and speaks of the adventurous life which
the author led during his military career.

  "The sun has crossed the meridian, and tends toward the western
  horizon; the tops of the distant mountains are bathed in purple
  light, and the black shadows at their base _begin to creep in
  a stealthy and hound-like manner over the plain; _a rising
  murmur in the branches of the forest warns us to lift up again
  our burdens, and take our respective roads."

We should like to see a volume from the pen that wrote this
sentence, in which the descriptive power of the author would have
full scope, and another in which the sound principles of
philosophy and morals contained in the oration in an aphoristic
form would be fully developed.

------

  Glimpses Of Pleasant Homes;
  Or, Stories For The Young.
  By the authoress of _Mother McAuley_.
  Illustrated. 1 vol. 12mo, vellum cloth.
  Catholic Publication Society,
  126 Nassau Street. 1869.

No one can read a sentence of the preface to this volume without
becoming deeply interested in the book itself.
{424}
Every line tells us that the author has something important to
say, and that her whole soul is in the work of educating the
moral faculties of children simultaneously with their physical
and mental powers. Her aim is to enlist all heads of families in
the work, by making their homes pleasant refuges from the
troubles of busy life, in which their few leisure hours may be
spent in "fitting all those under their charge for the duties of
this earth, without unfitting them for heaven."

The responsibility of forming and directing the tastes of
children is often thrown upon the school-teacher; and, while the
father builds gorgeous business palaces for the benefit of his
family, their future welfare is perilled and their whole life
embittered by the system of education "which assumes the
obligations of priest and parent, and is gradually driving filial
piety from the face of the earth."

This book contains not only good examples of the practical
working of kindness and love, but points out the manner in which
the parents make many blunders in the management of young and
boisterous children. Some regard their mechanical toys as causes
of trouble, and wish their children would play outside, "and keep
their noise, dust, and confusion out of sight and hearing of
their seniors." Experience among families where such is the fact
has taught the author to depict with truth the results:

  "These parents who should have aided in developing and
  cultivating the tastes of their children, may possibly find,
  ere long, that there are no tastes to be developed save those
  acquired in the streets, where habits have been formed which it
  is now all but impossible to root out. Their children have, as
  the phrase is, got beyond them; not because, as is often
  falsely asserted, juvenile human nature is different now from
  what it was in other ages, or because its lot happens to be
  cast in the United States of America, but because parents have
  not done their part to multiply and strengthen the sweet and
  powerful ties that could and should bind their children
  indissolubly to them."

  To warn parents against this evil, to cause them to be kind to
  their children, and to bind the child more closely to its home,
  the author has written these _Glimpses of Pleasant Homes_,
  in which mothers, fathers, sons, and daughters are made to
  speak and act in so natural a manner that every reader will be
  forced to love them.

  In those happy homes, we find boys full of life and fun, but
  always eager to listen to interesting and useful instruction;
  girls who are not dolls, made to act and speak by machine; and
  fathers and mothers whose example will force every parent to
  give a little thought to the manner in which they treat their
  offspring. The story of little Frank will be long remembered by
  those who read it, and all will like the manly little fellow,
  who gravely says:

  "'I should rather be whatever it is right to be,' returned the
  boy. 'The Catholics have the Blessed Virgin, and I think they
  must be right, for every one knows the Lord would not let his
  own mother stay in the wrong place. I asked Mr. Griffin was she
  a Calvinist or a Unitarian, and he said no, that she was a
  Catholic. Now, I want to be of her church, and I don't see why
  I cannot receive the sacraments as well as Tommy and Bernard.
  Please, mamma, allow me, and I'll be ever so good and steady.'"
  And immediately after tells us that John Griffin is a
  first-rate fellow, because "he gives me lots of fruit, and
  tells me pleasant stories about birds and angels."

Every story in this book will amuse the young, interest the old,
and instruct all in the secret ways of showing kindness to those
with whom they may come in contact. Kindness is the author's
watchword; every line bears witness to her love of her
fellow-beings; she fulfils her mission of kindness in a
delightfully pleasant manner, and few will finish reading _The
Glimpses_ without wishing for many more such pictures, and
hoping that the author may enjoy a little of that happiness on
this earth, which she so lavishly bestows on her readers.

------

  Black Forest.
  Village Stories
  by Berthold Auerbach.
  Translated by Charles Goepp.
  New York: Leypoldt & Holt.

{425}

This volume is a collection of stories from the German, filled
with quaint illustrations of peasant life in the Black Forest.
The representations are well drawn and life-like; but the tales,
with two or three exceptions, fail to interest, except as
illustrations of strange phases of human life, and odd customs
retained from age to age by people who seldom left their own
hamlets, or heard from the outer world.

Each story carries through some of the characters introduced
before, so that there is an intimate connection between them all.
In general, they have no special moral teaching, but there are
two notable exceptions, in the story of "Ivo, the Gentleman," and
"The Lauterbacher."

The first of these, "Ivo the Gentleman", professes to give the
life of a Catholic family, and the story of a student in his
preparation for the priesthood. We cannot fail to be interested
in the home-life of the collegian, and anxiously watch the
development of doubts and difficulties in his path; but there is
a coldness and hardness in the analyzation of his perplexities
and his religious footsteps that lead one to feel that there is
little vitality in the creed of the author.

In the story of "The Lauterbacher," there are many striking
thoughts brought out with such charming familiarity as to make
one wonder why they have never before seen them on paper. The
moral of this tale is clear and good. Now and then, however, one
meets with a touch of the mystical transcendentalism with which
many of the works of this author abound; but we find in this
volume less of these fancies than in anything we have seen from
his pen.

The stories are interspersed with grotesque wood-cuts as
illustrations, with a sprinkling of fantastic rhymes, which
remind us forcibly of our childhood's first introduction to the
muses through the whimsical measures of Mother Goose's Melodies.

------

  Biographical Sketches.
  By Harriet Martineau.
  New York: Leypoldt & Holt. 1869.

No one at all familiar with the mental characteristics and
proclivities of Harriet Martineau could expect from her pen a
more liberal view of the characters which she has here attempted
to delineate than the volume before us actually presents. The
ordinary reader, ignorant of or not fully appreciating the
standpoint from which the authoress judges the dispositions and
achievements of mankind will, however, experience a feeling of
disappointment and dissatisfaction. The tone of many of her
sketches is depreciatory. The time-honored maxim, "_Nil de
mortuis_," etc., is rigidly ignored, and the shadows in the
lives of the personages she notices are brought into striking
contrast with the sunlight of their virtues and accomplishments.
We remark this especially in regard to those whose work in the
world was of a religious or charitable nature. It grates upon our
inward reverence for men, whose toil and self-sacrifice have
resulted even in a transient benefit to mankind, to be told that
they were mere creatures of an ephemeral occasion, or the
unconscious agents of political aspirants; that the seed which
they sowed had no root, and the plant has withered away. It seems
like an aspersion on the moral capabilities of the human race
when those men who reach the highest ranks of ecclesiastical and
religious preferment are represented as untrue to their
convictions, and recreant to the principles confided to their
propagating and protecting care. Miss Martineau does good morals
and large charity no service, by showing that their outward
exercise may coexist with hypocrisy, tergiversation, and sordid
self-seeking. Nor is it absolute justice to the dead that, having
during life received from her no admonition to correct their
faults, they should at last, when such correction has become
impossible, be held up to posterity as being, after all, but
frail and failing specimens of human kind.

With this exception, we have found the work before us worthy of
the encomiums bestowed upon it by the press both of this country
and England. It is a handbook to read and remember, to take up
with interest and lay down with pleasure, and, after the first
reading, to  consult, from time to time, as a gallery of
portraits painted from subjects of unusual eminence by a skilful
hand.

-------

{426}

  The Free-masons.
  What they are--What they do--What they are aiming at.
  From the French of Mgr. Sègur,
  author of _Plain Talk_.
  Boston: Patrick Donahoe. 1869.

The best notice we can give of this book is to reproduce an
extract from the translator's preface:

  "This short treatise, written, not by the archbishop of Paris,
  as carelessly stated by some newspapers, but by Mgr. de Sègur,
  the author of the work lately translated and published under
  the title of _Plain Talk_, was composed to unveil and show
  Free-Masonry _as it is in the old world_. Its strictures,
  therefore, are not wholly applicable to Freemasonry as it is in
  the United States. Yet Masons here may read it with profit to
  themselves; and those who are not Masons, but might be tempted
  to join some lodge, will, it is hoped, abandon the idea if they
  read this book. Even here, Free-Masonry is a secret society,
  and to become a member of it, one must take at least an oath,
  and swear by the name of God to do so and so. Now, God's
  command is, 'Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God
  in vain.' And surely it is taken in vain by American
  Free-Masons, because they take it without any sufficient and
  justifiable cause. For, apart from other ends of their society,
  and especially that of affording members a chance never to want
  what assistance they may need in case of a momentary difficulty
  in their affairs or loss of means or health, the main object
  seems to be to meet at times, in order to spend an afternoon in
  a merry way, and to partake of banquets provided for the
  occasion. But where is the necessity to bind one's self by an
  oath, to gather now and then round a bountifully supplied
  table, or even to be charitable, and, for such purposes, to be
  a member of a _secret_ society? We have many benevolent
  societies; there is no secret about them, no oath to be taken
  by those who wish to be members of them. Their object is to
  carry out the principles of Christian charity; to that they
  bind themselves simply by a promise, as also to contribute so
  much for the purposes of the society. There are other
  objections to joining Free-Masonry, even here; but this is not
  the place to discuss that subject."

------

    The Dublin Review, for April, 1869.
    London, Brown, Oates & Co.

Dr. Ward On American Orthodoxy.

The _Dublin Review_ for April closes a notice of F.
Weninger's late book on _Papal Infallibility_ with the
following sentence: "In the United States, no less than in these
islands, a higher and more orthodox type of Catholic doctrine
seems rapidly gaining the ascendant. To God be the praise!" This
implies that hitherto a low and unorthodox type of doctrine has
had the ascendant among us--an insinuation not very complimentary
to our hierarchy, clergy, professors of theology, and Catholic
writers. We deny the charge emphatically, and affirm positively
that no type of doctrine, whatever, is now gaining the ascendant
over any different one which has formerly had the ascendant. The
maxims of that set of court canonists, who maintain the
superiority of the episcopate in council over the pope, and deny
the superiority of the pope over a general council, have never
prevailed or been advocated in this country. The dogmatic decrees
of the holy see have always been received here as binding on the
interior assent to the full extent to which the holy see intends
to impose them; and as for filial obedience to the pontifical
authority in matters of discipline, Gregory XVI. expressed the
true state of the case when he said that he was nowhere so
completely pope as in the United States. The encyclical of Pius
IX. was received without a whimper of opposition, and our college
of bishops, in their steadfast loyalty to the holy father, amid
his struggles with the assailants of his temporal authority, have
represented the universal sentiment of their clergy and laity.
The spirit of the theology which has always been taught in our
seminaries, and prevalent among our clergy, may be seen in the
works of that great prelate, one of the glories of both Ireland
and the United States, the late Archbishop Kenrick.
{427}
A large number of our bishops and leading clergymen have been
thoroughly educated and received the doctor's cap at Rome, and we
are sure that they have never come into collision with any body
of their brethren holding contrary opinions, or found it
necessary to make any imputation on their orthodoxy. We esteem
highly the great services which Dr. Ward has rendered to
religion, and the many noble qualities of mind and heart which he
has exhibited from the beginning of his Oxford career to the
present moment. We think, however, that the impetuosity of his
zeal needs a little curbing, and that if he were somewhat more
sparing of reproofs and admonition to his brethren and fathers in
the church, which savor more of the novice-master than the
editor, his review would be much more useful, as well as more
generally acceptable. We know that our opinion on this point is
shared by some of our most distinguished prelates, who are as
thoroughly Roman in their theology as Dr. Ward can profess to be,
and we think there are few on this side the water who would
dissent from it.

------

  Church Embroidery, Ancient And Modern,
  Practically Illustrated.
  By Anastasia Dolby,
  Late Embroideress to the Queen.

  Church Vestments;
  Their Origin, Use, And Ornament.
  By the same.
  For sale by the Catholic Publication Society,
  126 Nassau St., New-York.

These two elegant volumes furnish a complete and practical
description of every kind of ecclesiastical vestment, from the
Roman collar to the Fanon, which, as Miss Dolby informs us,
"appertains only to the vesture of the sovereign pontiff." The
authoress is a "Ritualist," and, as will be seen, of the highest
order of that formidable sect of the English Church, as by law
established. Her books are full of costly engravings, the volume
on church embroidery being adorned with a fine illuminated
frontispiece--an antependium and frontal for high festivals--and
the one on church vestments, with one representing a
_Pontifical High Mass_, in which the deacon is a little out
of place for such a mass, according to the rite as celebrated by
the "Roman obedience," but which, we presume, is strictly in
accordance with the "Anglican obedience." We smile at the pretty
piece of assumption, but forgive Miss Dolby from our hearts, for
we have derived the greatest pleasure and benefit from the use of
her valuable books. Although the volumes are costly, yet the
information they contain would be considered cheap at treble the
price by those who are interested in furnishing the holy
sanctuary with all things appertaining thereto, in good taste.
The authoress is a practical workwoman, and not only tells us
_what_ to do, but also, what is of the highest moment to
many of us, _how_ to do it.

------

  The Ark Of The Covenant;
  or, a Series of Short Discourses upon the Joys, Sorrows,
  Glories, and Virtues of the Ever Blessed Mother of God.
  By Rev. T. S. Preston.
  New York: Robt. Coddington.

This is a new edition of a work already, we are sure, widely
known and much admired. It is prepared by the reverend author to
suit the beautiful devotion of the month of May, and we do not
hesitate to say that it is the best one for that purpose yet
written. It is truly refreshing to meet with a book like this,
when one has had a surfeit (as who has not) of the many namby
pamby _Months of Mary_, from whose pages we have been
expected to cull flowers of piety for our spiritual enjoyment of
the sweet season dedicated to the Blessed Virgin.

------

  The General; Or, Twelve Nights In The Hunter's Camp.
  A Narrative of Real Life.
  Illustrated by G. G. White.
  Boston: Lee & Shepard.

This is an account of the doings of the D---- Club, on one of its
annual excursions. It is interspersed with stories told round the
camp-fire, by "the general," of his own adventures in the west,
when it was still the home of the Indian, and immigrants and
land-surveyors were slowly finding their way through the forests
and over the prairies.

{428}

The club were encamped near Swan Lake, two miles east of the
Mississippi, and for twelve days gave themselves up to all the
pleasure and excitement of hunting and fishing. They had a good
time, and one almost envies them the fresh, pure air, the
freedom, the invigorating sport, and enjoyment of nature. The
author thinks that "more tents and less hotels in vacation would
make our professional men more vigorous. Moosehead and the
Adirondacks are better recuperators than Saratoga, Cape May, and
the Rhine; and fishing-rods and fowling-pieces are among the very
best gymnastic apparatus for a college." Summer is coming, and
the advice could be tried. The adventures of the general, and of
the hunters at Swan Lake, would while away most pleasantly the
hours of a warm summer afternoon on the Adirondacks or Lake
George.

------

  Reminiscences Of Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy.
  A Social and Artistic Biography.
  By Elise Polko.
  Translated from the German by Lady Wallace.
  New York: Leypoldt & Holt. 1869.

A woman's book in every page and line, charming for its
simplicity and pleasant gossip. Madame Polko was a friend and
enthusiastic admirer of the great musician. All that he ever did,
said, or wrote she tells us with an air of pride and earnestness
only equalled by the _naïve_ recital of all baby's wonderful
pranks and precocious intelligence peculiar to young mothers.

These reminiscences will do to beguile a dreamy summer hour, when
the mind needs relaxation, and is not able to bear anything
heavier than the innocent prattle of children, and the soothing
sound of the seaside waves.

------

  Ferncliffe.
  1 vol. 12mo.
  Philadelphia: P. F. Cunningham. 1869.

_Ferncliffe_ is an interesting tale of "English country
life." The author has been fortunate enough to give us scenes and
characters which appear in all respects very natural, and
therefore are exceedingly interesting. It is seldom we find a
book containing so many characters, each possessing some
peculiarity, and all kept in that complete subordination to the
principal one which is so necessary to the full development of
the plot.

The book is neatly printed on fine paper, and is a credit to the
enterprising publisher who, we are glad to see, is accepting the
"situation," and making his books in conformity with the
improvements of the age in style and manner of getting up. We
wish all our publishers would do the same; for it is high time
that Catholic books appeared in as good a dress as non-Catholic
books.

------

  Salt-water Dick.
  By May Mannering.
  Boston: Lee & Shepard. Pp. 230. 1869.

  The Ark Of Elm Island.
  By Rev. Elijah Kellogg.
  Boston: Lee & Shepard. Pp. 288. 1869.

In these volumes we have, in addition to the usual amount of
amusing incident and startling adventure inseparable from sea
voyages, a very full and interesting description of life at the
Chincha Islands, the great guano depot; pleasant glimpses into
Lima, Rio Janeiro, and Havana; graphic details of encounters with
sea-lions, etc.; a dreadful storm in the Gulf of Mexico, with a
wonderful escape from shipwreck by literally "pouring oil on the
troubled waters," the whole agreeably diversified with numerous
facts in natural history.

Combining amusement with instruction, books such as these have a
great fascination for boys, and may, in most cases, be safely
recommended.

------

  Dotty Dimple Stories.
  Dotty Dimple At School.
  By Sophie May, Author of _Little Prudy Stories_.
  Illustrated.
  Boston: Lee & Shepard.

{429}

This story is one of a series, although quite complete in itself.
They are all admirably written; for children's stories, they are
almost perfect. They teach important lessons without making the
children feel that they are taught them, or giving them an
inclination to skip over those parts. If the little folks get
hold of these books, they will be certain to read them, and ever
afterward count Miss Dotty Dimple and dear little Prudy among
their very best friends. Such a pen only needs to be guided by
Catholic faith to make it perfect for children. We do not say
this with any want of appreciation of what it is already, for its
moral lessons are beautifully given; but what might they not be,
enlightened by the truth, the holiness, and the beauty of
Catholic faith!

------

  Alice's Adventures In Wonder Land.
  By Lewis Carroll.
  With forty-two Illustrations by John Tenniel.
  Boston: Lee & Shepard, 49 Washington Street. 1869.

These adventures are most wonderful, even for Wonderland. One
cannot help regretting that children should be entertained in
this way instead of by some probable or possible adventures. They
are well written, and the illustrations are excellent.

------

  Juliette; Or, Now And Forever.
  By Mrs. Madeline Leslie.
  Boston: Lee & Shepard. Pp.416. 1869.

A religious tale, strictly Protestant, plentifully besprinkled
with scriptural texts, allusions, etc., which will, no doubt,
prove deeply interesting to those for whose special delectation
it is intended.

------

_The Catholic Publication Society_ have purchased all the
stereotype plates and book stock of Messrs. Lucas Brothers,
Baltimore. Some of these books have been out of print for some
years, or have not been kept constantly before the public. The
society will soon issue new editions of all of them.

Messrs. Murphy & Co., Baltimore, have just issued an edition of
Milner's _End of Controversy_, in paper covers, which is
sold for seventy five cents a copy.

Mr. P. F. Cunningham, Philadelphia, will soon publish _Catholic
Doctrine, as defined by the Council of Trent_, expounded in a
series of conferences delivered in Geneva during the Jubilee of
1851, by Rev. Father Nampon, of the Society of Jesus; proposed as
a means of reuniting all Christians. It will make an octavo
volume of some 600 or 700 pages.

From Roberts Brothers, Boston:

  Handy-volume Series. Realities of Irish Life.

  Little Women; or, Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy.
  By Louisa M. Alcott.
  2 Vols. Illustrated.

------

    Foreign Literary Notes.

The Abbé Sire, Superior of the Seminary of St. Sulpice, some time
since undertook to procure the translation of the bull
"_Ineffabilis_" into all the written languages of the world.
In this vast enterprise he has made great progress, and more than
a year ago his zeal received the honoring recognition of the holy
father in a letter addressed to him, beginning: "Hinc gratissimum
nobis accidit, Dilecte Fili, consilium a Te susceptum curandi, ut
Apostoliae Nostrae de dogmatica Immaculati ejusdem Dei Genitricis
Conceptus Definitione Litterae e latino idiomate in omnes
converteretur linguas."

Catholic Ireland has made a handsome contribution to M. Sire's
work in a volume published in Dublin, containing the Bull and its
translation into the French, Latin, and Irish languages. The
Irish translation is by the Rev. Patrick J. Bourke, President of
St. Jarlath's College, Tuam, where, alone in all Ireland, under
the auspices, and, we may say, the national enthusiasm of the Rt.
Rev. Dr. McHale, the language of Ireland is taught, and
endeavored to be preserved. We say endeavored; for it seems that,
excepting among the hills of Connaught, the mother tongue of the
Celtic race has died, or is rapidly dying out in the green
island. Dr. Bourke's volume, published in Dublin, is a fine
specimen of typography.

{430}

We believe, although we have never seen any announcement of it,
that Dr. Bourke is also the editor of the _Keltic Journal and
Indicator_, a semi-monthly commenced at Manchester, (England,)
in January last. Why it is called Keltic, instead of Gaelic or
Irish, we do not know, nor can we understand why it should be
published in England rather than in Ireland. Two other Gaelic
races, the Welsh, and the Bretons of France, have periodicals in
their native dialect; the latter, the Feiz he Breiz, and the
former, several.

The dying out of the Irish language on the lips of a million of
people who speak it, may be attributed mainly to two
causes--emigration, and the indifference of its own race.

There is still another difficulty. Its pronunciation no longer
accords with its received orthography, and, as written, it is
encumbered with a quantity of unpronounced letters. If the
language is to continue to exist as a written one, a radical
reform similar to that effected by the Tcheks in the Bohemian
dialect at the end of the last century is absolutely necessary.
Meantime, Dr. Bourke is entitled to great praise for his
unceasing efforts in the cause of Ireland's national literature.

------

The publishing house of Adrien Le Clerc (Paris) announces an
important work in press. It is _L'Histoire des Conciles_, in
ten volumes 8vo, (large,) of 640 pages each. The first volume
appeared on the 31st of January. It is a translation, by the
Abbés Goschler and Delarc, from the German of Dr. Ch. Jos.
Hefele, Professor of Theology at the University of Tübingen. The
Messrs. Clarke, of Edinburgh, have announced an English
translation of the same work from the German.

----

_The Femall Glory, or the Life and Death of our Blessed Lady,
the Holy Virgin Mary, God's owne immaculate Mother, etc. etc._
By Anthony Stafford, Gent. London, 1635. Reprinted in 1869. An
exact typographical reproduction of the original, in all its
quaintness of ancient characters and antiquity of English,
preceded by the apology of the author (Stafford) and an essay on
the cultus of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Edited by the Rev. Orby
Shipley.

Independently of its intrinsic merit, this work has always
attracted great attention, from the fact that it was written by a
member of the English (Episcopal) Church, and approved by
prelates of that denomination as distinguished as Laud and Juxon.

As a matter of course, such a book was found to be "egregiously
scandalous" by the Puritans, who looked upon it as nothing short
of a device of papacy. And Henry Burton, minister of Friday
street, London, in a sermon, _For God and the King_,
denounced  "several extravagant and popish passages therein, and
advised the people to be aware of it." This was the beginning of
a controversial war concerning the "Femall Glory" that made it
one of the most notable works of the day. That a papist should
have written such a book might have passed without comment, but
that a noble Stafford of Northamptonshire, a graduate of Oriel
College Oxford, and a staunch Church of England man, should have
done this thing was an irremissible sin in Puritanic eyes.

Stafford was distinguished as a man of letters, and wrote various
other works, most of them with quaint titles, according to the
taste of that day; as,

  _Niobe dissolved into a Nilus: or his Age drowned in her own
  tears._ 1611.

  _Heavenly Dogge: a Life and Death of that Great Cynick
  Diogenes; whom Laertius styled Canis Caelestis, the Heavenly
  Dogge_. 1615.

The attacks of Burton and others brought out _A Short Apology,
or Vindication of a book entitled Femall Glory, etc._, which
is republished in the fourth edition of 1869.

_The Femall Glory _ is a book of genuine English growth,
entirely free from imitation or adaptation of foreign words, and,
beyond mere sketches of the most meagre character, the only full
life of the Blessed Virgin.
{431}
It is valuable, in a controversial point of view, as contrasting,
the clear and distinct acknowledgment of the dignity and sanctity
of the mother of God, as recognized by English Protestants of
that, with the Episcopal Low Church views of the present day.
Citations might be made from such men as Jeremy Taylor, Bishop
Bull, Bishop Pearson, Archdeacon Frank, and Archbishop Bramhall,
to show this conclusively. Not the smallest charm about the book
is the odor of its quaint seventeenth century tone of thought and
expression. Thus, in the preface "To the Feminine Reader" she is
told, "You are here presented, by an extreme honourer of your
Sexe, with a Mirrour of Femall Perfection. ... By this, you
cannot curle your haires, fill up your wrinckles, and so alter
your Looks, that Nature, who made you, knowes you no more, but
utterly forgets her owne Workmanship. By this, you cannot lay
spots on your faces; but take them out of your Soules, you may."
Then there is "The Ghyrlond of the Blessed Virgin Marie."

  "There are five letters in this blessed Name,
    Which, chang'd, a five-fold Mysterie designe;
  The M, the Myrtle, A, the Almonds clame,
    R, Rose, I, Ivy, E, sweet Eglantine."

That such a book should not find favor in the eyes of the London
_Athenaeum_, is not surprising. The author of _Spiritual
Wives_ and the recognizer of the Pope Joan fable as veritable
history could scarcely be expected to recognize merit in such a
work as the _Femall Glory_.

------

_A Slavonian Version of the Bible_ is now in preparation at
Rome. The original Slavonian text was the work of St. Cyril and
St. Methodus, apostles to the Slavonians in the ninth century. In
the lapse of years, the original text has been seriously tampered
with by so-called emendators and incompetent copyists, so that it
is now very difficult to determine several important questions
concerning it. Was the translation made from the Latin, the
Greek, or the Hebrew? What class of manuscripts were used by
these apostles? Which of the Slavonian dialects was the vehicle
of the translation? And, finally, was the original version
written in glagolitic or cyrillic characters?

------

_The Staple of Biographical Notices_ of Pope Sixtus V., is
usually made up of a series of stories, to the effect that he was
the son of ignorant parents and himself a swineherd; that he rose
by his talents to the dignity of cardinal, and that, feigning
extreme illness to the point of appearing to be on the verge of
the grave from debility and disease, was no sooner elected to the
papacy than he threw away his crutches and declared himself
perfectly restored to health.

These stories have found such favor with compilers of historical
books that they have been carefully preserved in spite of their
want of confirmation by contemporary historians. M. A. I.
Dumesnil has lately written a life of Felix Peretti, Pope Sixtus
V., in which he shows that his origin was not low, and that he
was allied to the best families, short of nobility, of his
province. The stories of his illness, simulated feebleness, and
affected use of crutches, he pronounces to be all fabulous, and
quotes Tempesti, one of the historians of the conclave which
elected Sixtus, thus: "In electing Montalto pope, still vigorous
of years, since he had reached only sixty-four and enjoyed a
robust and vigorous constitution, it was felt certain that he
would live long enough to bury Farnese and his partisans." M.
Dumesnil does not appear to have added anything by research or
discovery to the materials already known to be in existence, but
has simply used the matter furnished by Tempesti, Guerra,
Fontana, and other Italian historians, with skill and judgment.
He bears testimony to the extraordinary talent, judgment, and
energy of the great pontiff, whose reign of less than five years
was, unfortunately, too short to complete the extensive reforms
commenced by him in the temporal government of his territory.
Sixtus V. was remarkable for his energy in the suppression of
abuses, order and economy in the public finances, and unbending
severity toward criminals, encouragement of industry, an
enlightened fondness for the arts, as shown by numerous monuments
and his patronage of the great architect, Fontana, and an
inflexible determination to raise the holy see from any
dependence upon foreign princes.

{432}

There is another _Life of Sixus_ in preparation by Baron
Hübner, formerly Austrian Ambassador to France, in which he
promises numerous documents, French, Spanish, and English, never
yet published.

  [Six paragraphs have been moved, three paragraphs toward the
  end, from this location according to the notice on page 711-2.]

------

_Concilium Seleuciae et Ctesiphonti_, habitum anno 410.
Textum Syriacum edidit latine vertit notisque instruxit,
T. J. Lamy. Lovanii, 1868.

From ancient Syrian literature, so rich in works relative to the
church, its history, its discipline, and its dogmas, the Abbé
Lamy, Professor at the University of Louvain, has here selected
one of its most precious monuments for translation and comment.
Not less remarkable for the charm of their antique simplicity of
language than their fulness of doctrine, these few pages alone
would almost suffice to establish the complete symbolism of the
church. "Confitemur etiam"--thus testify the fathers of the
Council of Seleucia--"Spiritum vivum et sanctum, Paracletum
vivum, QUI EX PATRE ET FILIO in una Trinitate, in una essentia,
in una voluntate, amplectentes fidem trecentorum decem et octo
Episcoporum, quae definita fuit in urbe Nicea. Haec est confessio
nostra et fides nostra, quam accepimus a Sanctis Patribus
Nostris.

  [The following six paragraphs have been moved to this location
  according to the notice on page 711-2.]

It will be remembered that in the fifth century the
Priscillianists, in those countries infected with the Arian
heresy, took unfair advantage of the special mention made by the
Council of Constantinople of the first person of the Trinity and
of the omitted mention of the Son, to maintain that the Son was
not consubstantial with the Father.

Then followed the express insertion of the word FILIOQUE by
decree of a general council.

The history of the Greek schism turns upon this point, and
students of church history will find high interest and solid
instruction in tracing the reasons and circumstances connected
with the fact that, although this addition of _filioque_
really made no change in the doctrine of the church, although in
the ninth century the western churches used it, and yet Pope Leo
III. insisted on the use in Rome of the form adopted by the
fathers of Constantinople, and although between the Greek and the
Latin churches there was no divergence on this doctrinal point,
nevertheless it was not until after the consummation of the
schism of Photius and of Michael Cerularius that the Greeks began
to pretend that they had never professed this dogma.

Then follows the treatment of this question by the councils of
fourth Lateran, (1215,) third Lyons, (1274,) and that of
Florence, (1439.)

Of course it will be seen that the importance of the action of
the Council of Seleucia lies in the fact that it was composed of
forty bishops, of whom one, at least, was a member of the first
ecumenical council of Constantinople, and that it was called at
the instigation and through the initiative of the Greek Church
herself.

So that, as the lawyers say, it does not lie in the mouth of the
Greek Church, at the present day, to say that it is simply
opposing a Latin innovation.



In almost immediate connection with what we here remark on the
Rev. Mr. Lamy's book, we may mention that the _Jacobi Episcopi
Edessem Epistola ad Georgium Episcopum Sarugensem de Orthographia
Syriaca_, so well known, at least by reputation, to oriental
scholars, has at last been published at Leipsic. Assemanni and
Michaelis frequently urged its printing, and Cardinal Wiseman,
who took a strong and appreciative interest in the work, speaks
of it at length in the first volume of his _Horae Syriacae_,
(Rome, 1828.)

------

Monsignor Giuliani, of Verona, has published a work on public
libraries, in which he shows that the libraries of Italy possess
a greater number of volumes than the libraries of any other
nation in the world. The Italian libraries number 6,000,000 of
volumes; France, 4,389,000; Austria, 2,400,000; Prussia,
2,040,000, Great Britain, 1,774,493; Bavaria, 1,268,000; Russia,
882,090; Belgium, 509,100. Collections of books are much
scattered in Italy. Paris has one third of all the library books
in France, and most of the European capitals are rich in almost
as great a proportion. This is not the case in Italy. Milan has
only 250,000 volumes in the Brera library, and 155,000 in the
Ambrosian.

-------

{433}

             The Catholic World.

        Vol. IX., No. 52.--July, 1869.


	   Columbus At Salamanca.

                      "----e di te solo
  Basti ai posteri tuoi ch'alquanto accume:
  Che quel poco darà lunga memoria
  Di poema dignissima e d'istoria." [Footnote 121]
         _Gierusalemme Liberata_, TASSO.

    [Footnote 121: "Thy single name will pour diviner light O'er
    history's pages; and thy fame inspire Bards, who are yet
    unborn, with more celestial fire."
                         Tasso's _Jerusalem Delivered_. ]

Some three years since, a large historical painting was exhibited
at the gallery of the Artists' Fund Association in the city of
New York. Its subject, as announced, was "Columbus before the
Council of Salamanca." The picture was said to be a work of
merit, and attracted much attention. It represented the great
discoverer standing in the large hall of a convent, surrounded by
monks and ecclesiastics, foremost among whom are three Dominican
friars, who, having apparently worked themselves into a paroxysm
of anger, face Columbus with gestures of violent denunciation.
Grave, dignified, and majestic stands the great Genoese
discoverer among them, apparently the only reasonable being in
that assemblage of ignorance and bigotry, whose victim he is
evidently about to become. The pictorial lesson sought to be
conveyed was, clearly, that here was another Galileo business, a
second _e pur si muove_ sensation, a repetition of the
favorite amusement of all churchmen, which every one knows to be
the persecution of discoverers and the crushing out of knowledge.
And the warrant for all this misrepresentation was said to be
found in the pages of Washington Irving's _History of
Columbus_.

Now, a perusal of those pages shows that, although Mr. Irving
committed a grave historical blunder in describing a "council of
Salamanca" that had no existence, he nevertheless expressly
excepts from any charge of ignorance and intolerance that may be
implied from his language these very Dominican monks who, in Mr.
Kauffman's historical picture, are made the foremost and most
violent in their denunciation of Columbus.

"When Columbus," says Irving, "began to state the grounds of his
belief, the friars of St. Stephen's (Dominicans) _alone paid
attention to him_, that convent being more learned in the
sciences than the rest of the university. The others appear to
have intrenched themselves behind one dogged proposition."

{434}

In the entire range of English art and literature so firmly have
some of the most offensive forms of anti-Catholic prejudice
become rooted, that, whenever any prominent historical character
or incident comes in contact with the Catholic Church the
occasion is seized, right or wrong, with or without authority,
and often in the very teeth of history, to exemplify some phase
of what people are pleased to call popish ignorance and
persecution. Under the dark pall of bigotry that has so long
overshadowed the genius of English literature, events which, in
honest truth, should and do redound to the honor of the Catholic
Church and its hierarchy as protectors of knowledge and promoters
of noble enterprises have been, by a species of literary
legerdemain, wrested into so many evidences of their intolerance.

More than any country, England has furnished astounding and
repulsive proofs of the truth of Count De Maistre's assertion
that "History is a vast conspiracy against truth." With uplifted
hands, dripping with the blood of the innocent, she accuses other
nations of murder. With a statute-book black with intolerance and
suppression of knowledge, she talks complacently of the rights of
conscience and the blessings of education.

In a lecture on Daniel O'Connell, delivered in Brooklyn on the
fifth of March last, the distinguished orator, Wendell Phillips,
of Boston, with all his eloquence, appeared almost at a loss
fittingly to qualify, by description and illustration, the
frightful tyranny of Protestant England against Catholic Ireland,
as exemplified in the diabolical ingenuity of the means by which
she sought to "stamp out" Irish nationality and annihilate
Catholicity. And, Mr. Phillips might have added, she was as
consistently bigoted at home as in Ireland. Here, the poor hedge
schoolmaster if a Catholic, who taught a child its a b c, was,
for the first offence, subject to banishment, and for the second,
_to be hanged as a felon_. There, when the University of
Oxford was asked to confer the honorary degree of A.M. on Alban
Francis, a learned Benedictine, he was rudely thrust back, solely
for the reason that he was a Catholic. And yet the same
university had shortly before conferred the same degree on--a
Mohammedan! The old distich is very trite, but on that occasion
it was very true:

  "Turk, Jew, or atheist may enter here,
      But not a papist."

It is a memorable fact that Sir Isaac Newton particularly
distinguished himself by active participation in this piece of
bigotry. He actually suspended the preparation for the press of
his _Principia_, and lent all the influence of his position
and his great name in order that an Englishman, distinguished for
his virtues and his learning, might not, because he was a
Catholic, receive the cheap recognition of the honorary degree of
a Protestant university. And Newton's English biographer coolly
states that "it was this circumstance, perhaps, as much as the
personal merit of Newton, that induced the university to select
him, the following year, to serve as their representative in
parliament."

But space fails us to dwell on this subject, and we desire merely
to note the fact that, so thoroughly has a spirit of intolerant
anti-Catholicity permeated English literature, that its
expression, in some shape, is constantly found at the points of
the pens of many who are personally unconscious of any such
inspiration.
{435}
The spirit we refer to so thoroughly pervades every department of
literature--history, biography, travels, poetry, philosophy--that
from youth to old age it is unconsciously infiltrated into the
mental processes of every one who uses the English language as a
means of acquiring or communicating knowledge. Even as we write,
an instance of this presents itself. Here is a passage from the
editorial columns of a leading daily, published in Brooklyn, the
third city of the Union:

  "----the church so long deemed the enemy of human freedom and
  intellectual progress, which imprisoned Galileo, and _tried
  to thwart Columbus_ in putting the girdle of her ancient
  faith around the world!"

And yet the article from which this extract is made is evidently
written in a spirit that its author honestly supposes to be one
of entire freedom from religious prejudice. The church tried to
thwart Columbus! That is the main idea of the passage quoted, as
it was also the inspiration of the Kauffman painting. Such ideas
and such inspiration are the result of general prejudice and a
foregone conclusion.

Of course we are aware of the accommodating pliability of the
term "the church," as used by writers who have anything
disagreeable or false to say of Catholicity. "The church" is, by
turns, a council, the pope, the cardinals, the inquisition, a
bishop or two, a knot of priests, sometimes only one, a king, a
viceroy, a barefooted friar, a dying nun, or even a simple
layman. It is really difficult and discouraging to deal with
people who either cannot or will not abide by some standard of
meaning for words whose proper acceptance is well defined and
recognized.

In the case of Columbus these misrepresentations are the more
remarkable for the reason that there is no history of the
discovery of America, no biography of Columbus, how ever
imperfect, however prejudiced it may be, from whose perusal the
student can arise with any other conviction than that Columbus,
so far from being thwarted, was, on the contrary, enabled to
succeed in obtaining from Spain the means to fit out his
expedition only, wholly, and solely by reason of the
encouragement and aid he received from friars, priests, bishops,
and cardinals!

From the moment he set foot on Spanish soil until he sailed from
Palos the generous sympathy and brave advocacy of churchmen never
forsook him. Never for a moment did they waver in their
appreciation of his noble nature, his sincere piety, and the
merit of his enterprise. From the Dominicans cloistered in St.
Stephens to Luis de St. Angel, high treasurer at the royal court;
from the saintly hermit of La Rabida to the grand Cardinal
Mendoza, ("a man of sound judgment, quick intellect, eloquent and
able," says Washington Irving,) in all are found the same
generous enthusiasm and unwavering boldness in their support of
the strange sailor's enterprise.

And now, should Mr. Kauffman, or any other artist, desirous of
painting a great picture without pandering to a taste as false in
art as in history, desire to select a striking incident from the
history of Columbus, we beg leave to suggest that, without flying
in the face of truth, he may find it among the following
historical incidents:

First. Pedro Gonzalez de Mendoza, in appearance lofty and
venerable, of generous and gentle deportment, pleading the cause
of Columbus before the queen.

Second. The friar Diego de Deza aiding Columbus in sore necessity
from his own scant purse.

{436}

Third. Juan Perez, prior of the convent of La Rabida,
remonstrating  with Columbus against abandoning his great
enterprise and quitting Spain.

Fourth. The same prior saddling a mule at midnight to confront
the dangers of mountain passes, and an enemy's country, in order
to intercede for Columbus with the queen at Santa Fé.

Fifth. The same noble monk pleading the cause of Columbus before
the queen with such chivalrous enthusiasm that "Isabella never
heard the proposition urged with such honest zeal and impassioned
eloquence."

Sixth. Another noble ecclesiastic, Luis de St. Angel, who,
rivalling Isabella's magnanimity, met the queen's noble offer to
pledge her crown jewels to raise the necessary funds for
Columbus's expedition with the assurance that she need not, for
he would advance the money.

But to return to the "council of Salamanca." The word council
presents the idea of a solemn ecclesiastical assemblage: not a
committee, not a board, not a junto; but something grand,
elevated in dignity and large in numbers. When you say "council,"
every one, instinctively, imagines a crowd of mitres and
episcopal croziers.

With that "fatal facility" which is the bane of historical
composition Irving has given us an entire chapter of nine pages
describing this famous "council," its debates, and its
proceedings, and from this chapter has gradually, although--we
must in justice to Mr. Irving say--unwarrantably, grown up a
story that, by dint of thirty years' repetition, has almost
acquired the dignity of an historical fact. That Prescott should
have followed Irving is not surprising. That Lamartine should
have disdained reference to historical sources and spoken of
Spain of the fifteenth century with that wonderful _sans
gêne_ that improvises both form and substance, that writes an
apotheosis of Robespierre and calls it a history of the
Girondins, in which there is, of course, a florid description of
"the last banquet," (which never took place,) is still less
surprising. But that a Spaniard and a serious historian, Don
Modesto Lafuente, should have written an important page in the
history of his country on the word of an entire stranger is
astounding.

The whole of chapter third and part of chapter fourth of Irving's
_Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus_ are devoted to
"the council." Irving represents Ferdinand "determined to take
the opinion of the most learned men in the kingdom, and be guided
by their decision." Ferdinand de Talavera, "one of the most
erudite men of Spain and high in the royal confidence," was
commanded to consult the most learned astronomers, etc. After
they had informed themselves fully on the subject, they were to
consult together and make a report to the sovereign of their
collective opinion. After a long disquisition on the condition of
learning and science at that time, Irving goes on to say: "Such
was the period when a council of clerical sages was convened in
the collegiate convent of St. Stephen to investigate the new
theory of Columbus. It was composed of professors of astronomy,
geography, mathematics and other branches of science, together
with various dignitaries of the church and learned friars. ...
Among the number who were convinced by the reasoning and warmed
by the eloquence of Columbus was Diego de Deza, a worthy and
learned friar of the order of St. Dominick. He obtained for
Columbus a dispassionate if not an unprejudiced hearing."
{437}
Irving speaks of the assembled body as "this learned junto," and
says that occasional conferences took place, but without
producing any decision.

"Talavera, to whom the matter was specially entrusted, had too
little esteem for it, and was too much occupied to press it to a
conclusion, and thus the inquiry experienced continual
procrastination and neglect."

So far the third chapter of Irving. It is a remarkable fact that,
for all the important statements concerning the "council," Irving
cites but one authority, Remesal, referring to book ii. chapter
27, and book xi. chapter 7. In an endeavor to verify these
citations we find that book ii. has but twenty-two chapters, and
the passage referred to in book xi. chapter 7 is not there, but
in book ii. chapter 7. But it is more than singular that Irving
should refer to Remesal at all on that subject. Remesal was a
learned Dominican monk and his work is a _History of the
Provinces of Chiapa and Guatemala_, (America.) His book was
completed in 1609, and first published in 1619. Personally, he
was separated from the events at Salamanca by a space of one
hundred and twenty years. He was not writing the history of Spain
in 1487, and what he says concerning Salamanca is merely
incidental, unquestionably correct though it be. Thus, he states
that, with the aid of the Dominicans, Columbus brought over the
most learned men of the university, and among the numerous claims
to greatness of the convent of St. Stephen was that of having
been the principal cause of the discovery of the Indies.
[Footnote 122]

    [Footnote 122: "Y con el favor des los Religiosos reduxo a su
    opinion los mayores Letrados de la escuela. ... Entre las
    muchas grundezas ... una es aver sido la principal ocasion
    del descubrimiento de las Indias."]

To return to Irving. He relates  in chapter 4 that the
"consultations of the board (first it was the council, then "this
learned junto") at Salamanca were interrupted by the Spanish
campaign against Malaga, before that learned body could come to a
decision, and for a long time Columbus was kept in suspense,
vainly awaiting the report that was to decide the fate of his
application." It thus appears that the opinion of the council was
not sufficiently adverse to Columbus to report at once and
unfavorably of his project. Then followed the spring campaign of
1487, the siege of Malaga, August, 1487. "In the spring of 1489,"
says Irving, "Columbus was summoned to attend a conference of
learned men to be held at the city of Seville."

But if a fresh conference is to decide, what then was the value
of the Salamanca council by whose decision, as Mr. Irving
informed us a few pages back, King Ferdinand had resolved to be
guided?

"In 1490, Ferdinand and Isabella entered Seville in triumph.
Spring and summer wore away. At court was Fernando de Talavera,
_the procrastinating arbiter of the pretensions of
Columbus_." So then the arbiter was Talavera, not the council,
which, so far from condemning, have not yet, at the end of four
years, given any decision concerning the affair of Columbus.

The higher we remount with the authorities toward the epoch of
"the council" the less do we find concerning it and concerning
Salamanca. The chroniclers of their Catholic majesties, Hernando
del Pulgar, Galindez, Carvajal, and others, make no mention of
it, and Peter Martyr, Lucio Siculo, Gonzalez de Oviedo, Lopez de
Gomara, and Sohs are equally silent on the subject.

{438}

It must be borne in mind, with regard to Columbus, that
historical certainty begins really with the siege of Granada, in
1492. Everything preceding that epoch is traditional, often vague
and uncertain, and seldom supported by documentary evidence. A
council at Salamranca held by royal order would have been
authorized by special edict or decree. There was none. Neither
was there any regular delegation to the university, no commission
officially installed, no interrogatories, nor registers, nor
records, followed by a definitive decree. The college and convent
of St. Stephen (Dominican) was only one college of the many at
Salamanca constituting the university. If such a council as
Irving describes had ever been held there, reference to recorded
proceedings, and a final decision in its archives, or in those of
St. Stephen, could long since have been made.

The truth is that the only authority for any statements
concerning a committee of cosmographers is a passage in the life
of the grand admiral, written by his son Fernando Columbus. As
already remarked, the nearer we approach the period of the
pretended "council" the less we hear about it. Herrera, whose
sagacity, impartiality, and fidelity are universally recognized,
thus relates the matter of the cosmographers, but not once does
he mention "council" or "Salamanca." He says (1st Dec. book i,
chap. vii.) "that Columbus's suit was so home pressed (y tanto se
porfiò en ello) that their Catholic majesties, giving some
attention to the affair, referred it to father Ferdinand de
Talavera. He (Talavera) held a meeting of cosmographers who
debated about it, (qui confirieron en ello,) but there being few
then of that profession in Castile, and those none of the best in
the world, and besides Columbus would not altogether explain
himself, lest he should be served as he had been in Portugal,
[Footnote 123] they came to a resolution nothing answerable to
what he had expected."

    [Footnote 123: During his negotiation at Lisbon with the king
    of Portugal, Columbus was requested to furnish for the
    consideration of the royal council a detailed plan of his
    proposed voyage, with charts and documents according to which
    he intended to shape his course. As soon as these were
    obtained, a well-manned vessel, under command of an able
    captain, was despatched with orders to sail west on the
    Atlantic according to the instructions of Columbus. Some few
    days out from the Cape Verd Islands, the crew became
    discouraged, and the vessel returned. The secret of its
    mission soon transpired, and Columbus, outraged at the
    treachery, left Portugal in disgust.]

Herrera follows Ferdinand Columbus very closely; adopting, in
many passages, his very words. Fernando makes no mention of
Salamanca, says expressly that the cosmographers were called
altogether by Talavera, and that Columbus held back his most
important proofs lest what had happened him in Portugal might
also happen him in Spain, (nè lo ammiraglio si volea lasciar
tanto intendere che gli avenisse quel, che in Portogallo gli
avvenne et gli urbassero la beniditione.)

Fernando Columbus was a man of learning and ability, and his
history is of great value. Unfortunately, the work, as he wrote
it, is lost. It was, of course, in the Spanish language. It is
said that a son of his brother Diego took the MS. to Genoa, where
it was translated into Italian. The version now used in Spain is
retranslated from the Italian, and abounds in errors. There is a
very good copy of the Italian edition (Venice, 1685) in the Astor
library.

Munoz, the Spanish national historian who followed Herrera and
precedes Navarette, was a scholar of great merits, talents, and
liberal acquisitions. He was indefatigable in research, and being
royal historiographer had free access to all the records of
Spain. He says that Talavera was commissioned to examine the
enterprise with cosmographers, and give their opinion.
{439}
As the court happened that winter to be at Salamanca, they met
there. It is to be regretted that no record exists of the
conferences that took place in the Dominican convent of St.
Stephen, from which to form an opinion of the condition of
mathematics and astronomy in the university so famous in the
fifteenth century. _It is clear, nevertheless, that Columbus
established his propositions, produced his proofs, and met every
objection_. [Footnote 124]

    [Footnote 124:  Talavera á quien los reyes encargaron la
    comision de juntar à los sujetis habiles in cosmografia, para
    examinar la empresa, y dar su pareceo. Formose la junta en
    Salamanca, quizá per el invierno estando alli la corte. Es
    lastima quo no hayan quidado documentis de las disputas que
    se tuvieron en el convento de los dominicanos de San Esteban
    para formar juicio del estado de las matematicas y astronomia
    en aquella universidad famosa en el siglo XV. Coustu que
    Colon sentaban sus proposisciones, exponfa sus fundamentos, y
    satisfaciá a' las dificultades.]

Munoz (_Historia del Nuevo Mundo_, pp. 57, 58, 59)
continues: "Los dominicanos poner entre sus glorias el haber
hospedado en San Esteban al descubridor de las Indias, dadole de
comer y otros auxilios para seguir sus pretensiones; y sobra todo
el haber estado por su opinion en equellas disputas, y atraido á
su partido los primeros hombres de la escuela. En lo qual
attribuyen la principal parte á Fray Diego Deza. ... cuyo
autoridad. ... contribuyó mucho para los creditos y acceptacion
de la empresa." [Footnote 125]

    [Footnote 125: The Dominicans are justly proud of the
    hospitality extended by them in their convents to the
    discoverer of America, entertaining him, and providing him
    with all things necessary to pursue his projects; and still
    more of having declared for him in the argument, drawing over
    to his side the first men of the university. In all which the
    great merit is due to Diego de Deza, whose influence
    contributed greatly to the appreciation and adoption of the
    enterprise.]

Only a few years since, in 1858, Don Domingo Doncel y Ordar, of
Salamanca, published a memoir in which he refutes the statements
of Irving.

A conference of cosmographers doubtless was held, but it was not
of the nature described by Irving and those who copy him, nor was
it a "council" with which the university of Salamanca had any
official connection whatever.

The archives, documents, and registers of the university have
been searched with the most thorough diligence, and not a trace
of the council is on record. The registers in particular,
admirably kept and carefully preserved, were commenced in 1464
and record incidents almost insignificant in interest, but make
no mention of such a meeting or council as Irving speaks of. In
this connection it is matter of surprise that such writers as
Rosselly De Lorgues and Cadoret should still be chasing the
phantom of this Salamanca council. The latter says that its
decree was rendered five years after its first meeting, and De
Lorgues supposes it probable that its records may yet be found in
the archives of Simancas. If there had been any decision against
Columbus by a body at all approaching the dignity and importance
of the university of Salamanca, he would have immediately quitted
Spain, never to return. But we find him leaving Salamanca strong
in the support of its first scholars, of the entire body of
Dominicans, and of the papal nuncio.

That King Ferdinand should have directed Talavera to take the
opinion of cosmographers is perfectly natural. This temporizing
and shuffling treatment of Columbus would lead him to do anything
that would gain time and put Columbus off. Even Isabella was
evidently desirous of procrastinating until a successful
termination of the siege of Granada should enable them to act in
the matter.

Reference to a committee or a board for the sake of delay
indefinite is not an invention of the nineteenth century. It is
as old as, if not older than, the period of Columbus.
{440}
That  Columbus should, as his son Fernando relates, have
hesitated to explain himself fully, was natural, and indeed
inevitable. And with that hesitation there must have been a shade
of disdain in his manner. It looks very much as though he had
reserved his best, most cogent reasons for the private ear of his
special friends the Dominicans, who were enthusiastically the
advocates of his enterprise.

We see Columbus leaving Salamanca not cast down and defeated, but
serene and with all the courage of confirmed conviction. The
noble Diego de Deza conducts him to the presence of Ferdinand and
Isabella, and we soon afterward hear the hum of preparation at
Palos.

The latest historian of Columbus, Mr. Arthur Helps, separated
from Washington Irving by a period of some forty years, is
credited with ability, and great industry and research. He
certainly has the advantage of extensive and successful
discoveries of documents concerning Columbus made in Spain within
that period. It would be but reasonable, therefore, to look for
the throwing of much additional light and interesting details on
so capital an incident as "the council of Salamanca." Here is the
account given of it by Mr. Helps in his _Life of Columbus_,
published since the commencement of the present year:

  "Amid the clang of arms and the bustle of warlike preparation,
  Columbus was not likely to obtain more than a slight and
  superficial attention to a matter which must have seemed remote
  and uncertain.

  "Indeed, when it is considered that the most pressing internal
  affairs of kingdoms are neglected by the wisest rulers in times
  of war, it is wonderful that he succeeded in obtaining any
  audience at all. However, he was fortunate enough to find at
  once a friend in the treasurer of the household, Alonzo de
  Quintilla, a man who, like himself, took delight in great
  things, and who obtained a hearing for him from the Spanish
  monarchs. Ferdinand and Isabella did not dismiss him abruptly.
  On the contrary, it is said they listened kindly; and the
  conference ended _by their referring the business to the
  queen's confessor, Fra Hernando de Talavera_, who was
  afterwards archbishop of Granada. This important functionary
  summoned a junta of cosmographers (not a promising assemblage!)
  to consult about the affair, and this junta was convened at
  Salamanca in the summer of the year 1487.

  "Here was a step gained; the cosmographers were to consider his
  scheme, and not merely to consider whether it was worth taking
  into consideration. But it was impossible for the jury to be
  unprejudiced. All inventors, to a certain extent, insult their
  contemporaries by accusing them of stupidity and ignorance. And
  the cosmographical pedants, accustomed to beaten tracks,
  resented the heresy by which this adventurer was attempting to
  overthrow the belief of centuries. They thought that so many
  persons, wise in nautical matters, as had preceded the Genoese
  mariner, never could have overlooked such an idea as this which
  had presented itself to his mind. Moreover, as the learning of
  the middle ages resided for the most part in the cloister, the
  members of the junta were principally clerical, and combined to
  crush Columbus with theological objections. ... Las Casas
  displays his usual acuteness when he says that the great
  difficulty of Columbus was not that of teaching, but that of
  unteaching; not of promulgating his own theory, but of
  eradicating the erroneous convictions of the judges before whom
  he had to plead his cause. In fine, the junta decided that the
  project was 'vain and impossible, and that it did not belong to
  the majesty of such great princes to determine anything upon
  such weak grounds of information.'"

Slender material, all this, for another Kauffman painting! Here
is our council sunk to a junta--a junta of cosmographers--not an
assemblage of theologians to decide what the church thought about
the project, but a junta of men supposed to know something of
geography and the conformation of the globe! The "theological
objections" referred to by Mr. Helps were precisely the
opportunity of Columbus's greatest triumph in giving him occasion
to reveal himself to friends and enemies in a capacity never
suspected to exist in him.
{441}
Among the many traditions in Spain concerning "l'almirante"
[Footnote 126] --traditions supported by his own writings and the
testimony of such men as Las Casas--none are so well established
as those that recount the eloquent inspiration of Columbus in
citing or commenting the Scriptures. His perfect familiarity with
them was not more admirable than his majesty of manner in
declaiming their grandest passages.

    [Footnote 126: Humboldt says that whenever a Spaniard
    mentions _L'Almirante_, he refers to but one, namely,
    Columbus. Just as the Mexicans, when they speak of El
    Marchese, mean Cortes, and the Florentines, when they name
    _Il Segretario_, mean Macchiavelli.]

Luther, as we learn from that remarkable book, _D'Aubigné's
History of the Reformation, discovered_, unexpectedly
discovered, to his great joy and surprise, a Bible chained to a
window in the conventual library! Could not some modern D'Aubigné
inform us how it was that an obscure Italian sailor could have
happened upon a Bible in such countries as Italy, Portugal, and
Spain, could have been permitted to read it--more than all that,
could have had the temerity to quote it to the very face of
monks, and priests, and, worse still, show them that he knew as
much about it as they did? We commend the subject to the
D'Aubigné editors.

In saying that, in our belief, the life of Columbus has yet to be
written, we express no new opinion.

In this connection it is well remarked by the Marquis De Belloy,
that the best history of Christopher Columbus would be the
collection of his own writings accompanied by commentaries.
Literary and bibliographical research and labor in Spain have
succeeded in collecting nearly everything that Columbus wrote
from the year 1492 up to the period of his death, and their
publication is needed to show this truly grand character in his
true light. Were Columbus simply a man of genius, an ordinary
history would suffice to recount his life. But his soul was as
great as his genius, and such a soul is its own best revelation.
Next to the accomplishments of his great project, the discovery
of a new world beyond the ocean, a world he distinctly saw, his
dominant thought was--with the wealth that must necessarily be
obtained from it--to reconquer and deliver from pagan hands the
sepulchre of our Saviour!

Profane history and modern impiety instinctively smile at such
simplicity. Mr. Rosselly De Lorgues is one of the very few who
have rendered justice to the religious phase of the character of
the great mariner, and he shows that in Columbus constancy,
perseverance, bravery, and honor were not more marked than
elevated Catholic piety.

To conclude with Salamanca, there is no more searching, truthful,
and eloquent commentary on its results than the language of
Columbus himself, for he has recorded it. We quote from Navarette
(Madrid edition) vol. 1. p. xcii.:

  "Diego de Deza"--the Dominican monk--"was his (Columbus's)
  special protector with Ferdinand and Isabella, and mainly
  contributed to the success of his enterprise; referring to
  this, Columbus himself said that from his coming into Castile
  that prelate (Deza) had protected him, had striven for his
  honor, and to him was it due that their majesties possessed the
  Indies." [Footnote 127]

    [Footnote 127: "Por lo cual decia el mismo Colon que
    _desde_ que vino á Castilla le habia favorecido aquel
    prelado y deseado su honora, y que el fue causa que SS. AA.
    tuviesen las Indias."]

For this passage Navarette quotes Remesal, _Historia di Chiapa
e Guatemala_. A very characteristic performance in Navarette!
It was impossible for him to avoid referring to what Columbus had
said, and he weakens the force of it by not crediting it at once
and directly to the proper authority, Las Casas--citing Las
Casas's own words.

{442}

For Remesal expressly says that he takes it from Las Casas, (lib.
i. al medio del cap. 29:) "Y assi (dize) en carta escrita de su
mano de Christobal Colon vide que dezia al Rey: Que el suso dicho
Maestro del Principe, Arcobispo de Sevilla D.F. _Diego Deza
avia fido causa que los Reyes abrassen las Indias_."

It is one thing to be told that Remesal uses the language cited
by Navarette, and quite another thing to learn from Las Casas
that he had seen _a letter written by Columbus himself, in
which he told the king of Spain that their majesties owed their
possession of the Indies to the Dominican monk Diego de Deza_.

Nothing, however, need surprise us from a historian who undertook
the desperate task of extenuating the notorious injustice of
Ferdinand toward Columbus. In its execution Navarette has
needlessly and shamefully outraged the truth of history and the
memory of the Great Discoverer.

----------

              Daybreak.


            Chapter VIII.


        The Lord Answered Job
         Out Of A Whirlwind.


Mr. Southard was perfectly confident in his expectation of being
able to convince Miss Hamilton of her mistake. He knew her well
enough to be sure that she would fearlessly acknowledge her error
as soon as it should be made plain to her; and he did not doubt
that the power to produce that conviction on her mind would be
given him.

He would not allow that first twinge of wounded personal pride
and dignity of office, with which he had seen how light she held
his authority in matters of religion, to stand in the way of his
endeavors. The first dignity of his office was to perform its
duties. Exacting respect was secondary.

Mr. Southard had one confident: his journal. The day the books
were left on his table he wrote in it: "Tonight I am to read
Milner's _End of Controversy_. O my God! may I read it by
the light of thy Gospel! May a ray of heavenly truth fall on each
page, expose its hidden falsehood, and teach me how best to prove
that falsehood to this stray lamb who has been lured from thy
fold into the den of the wolf."

Two or three days passed, the book was read, and read again; but
the refutation was not ready. Mr. Southard was too honest and too
manly to think that personal abuse was a proper answer to
theological argument. He remembered that when St. Michael set his
foot upon the neck of Satan, and chained him to the rock, he did
not use infernal weapons, or walk in loathsome ways; but his
sword was tempered in heaven, and there was no mire upon his
sandals.

{443}

"When I fight for the Lord," the minister said, "I will use the
weapons of the Lord."

He laid aside the first book, and took another. Again a few days,
and yet he was not prepared to undermine his adversary.

"I am astonished at the ingenuity and subtlety of these writers,"
was the record he made in those days. "All the resources of minds
richly dowered by nature, highly cultivated by education, and
inspired by some strange infatuation for what they call the
church, have been brought to bear upon this question of polemics.
How skilfully they mingle truth with falsehood! What beautiful,
what touching, what sublime sentiments they drop in places where
one would not go save so lured! It reminds me of my boyish days,
when the scarlet blossom of a cardinal-flower would entice me
down steep banks, and into dangerous waters, or some bloomy patch
of ripe berries would draw my feet into a treacherous swamp. I
begin to perceive the attraction which the Roman Church exercises
on the unwary."

It will be perceived that Mr. Southard had the rare courtesy not
to use the word "Romish." He was so much a gentleman that he
could not call nicknames, not even in theological controversy.

But as his days of study lengthened into weeks, a change came
over him. The obstacles in his way made him nervous, feverish,
and, it must be owned, rather ill-tempered. His political
opposition to Mr. Lewis was expressed with unusual asperity. He
was very haughty with Miss Hamilton. He entirely absented himself
from luncheon, and he sometimes dined out, rather than sit beside
that smiling papist who was doubtless triumphing over him in her
heart, taking his silence for defeat. He groaned as he heard her
light step pass his door every morning on her way to early mass.
That step was his _réveil_. Should he, the Gospel watchman,
sleep while the foe was awake and at work?

"Why cannot truth inspire as much ardor as error awakens?" he
wrote one morning. "Why cannot we bring back the old days of
faith, when God was to man a power, and not a name; when the
tables of the law were stone to the touch; when he who made
flood, and fire, and death was more terrible than flood, fire, or
death? The author of _Ecce Homo_ is right; no virtue is safe
that is not enthusiastic. A cold religion is a worthless
religion. O Lord! have mercy on Zion; for it is time to have
mercy on it."

But, angry as he was with her every morning, when Mr. Southard
met Margaret coming in again from mass, her face smiling, her
cheeks red from the cold, he could but forgive her. It is hard to
frown on a bright face, happiness looks so much like goodness.

Mr. Granger took notice of these early walks, Mr. Lewis
alternately scowled upon and laughed at them. Mrs. Lewis and
Aurelia exclaimed, How dared she go out alone before light!

The wicked people, if there were any, were all asleep, Miss
Hamilton said, sitting down to breakfast with a most unromantic
appetite, and a general preponderance of rose-color and sparkle
in her countenance. At six o'clock on winter mornings no one was
abroad but papists and policemen. It was the safest hour of the
twenty-four.

"My good angel and I just go about our business, and nobody
molests us," she said with a spice of mischief; for the mention
of anything peculiarly Catholic usually had the effect of
producing a blank silence, and a general elongation of visage.

{444}

"But such a magnificent spectacle as I saw this morning! I came
home round the Common. The sleet-storm of last evening had left
all the trees crusted with ice to the very tips of their twigs,
and set an ice-mitre on every individual arrow-head of the iron
fence. There were the ghosts of all the bishops from Peter down.
There wasn't any sky, but only a vast crystalline distance. I
took my stand on the Beacon and Charles street corner. Every
other person who was so happy as to be out looked also. Then the
sun came up. Park street steeple caught fire at the ball, and
flamed all the way down. There was a glimmer on the topmost
twigs, then the trees all over the Common were in an instant
transfigured into flashing diamonds. The malls were enough to put
your eyes out--nothing but glitter from end to end. It was a
grand display for the frost-people. The trees will talk about it
all next summer."

The winter slipped away; and Mr. Southard had not fulfilled his
promise to Miss Hamilton. Neither had he relinquished his
studies. Shut up with his books hour after hour and day after
day, in silence and solitude, he scarcely knew how the world
fared without. For him the war had suddenly dwindled. Through
long and weary vigils that wore his face thin and his eyes
hollow, he studied, and thought, and prayed, not the humble
petition of one who places himself before God, and passively
awaits an inspiration, but the impassioned and fiery petition of
one who will not doubt the justice of his cause, and will not be
denied. Then, leaning from the window to cool his heated eyes and
head in the fresh early dawning, a peace that was half exhaustion
would settle upon him. Sleep came pitifully in those hours, and
pressed on the throbbing brain too much expanded by thought, and
for a little while soothed the tormented heart.

His journal bore traces of the conflict.

"I will resist the seduction! This is my time of trial; but I
will conquer! In the name of God, I will yet confound the doctors
of the Roman Church. O God! who didst nerve the arm of David
against Goliath, strengthen thou me!"

At every step he was baffled. Catching at what appeared a mere
theological weed, thinking to fling it out of his way, he found
it rooted like an oak. Approaching dogmas with the expectation of
cutting them down like men of straw, he was confronted by mailed
giants.

He found himself among crowds and clouds of Catholic
saints--shadows, he called them--that would fly from his path
when he should hold up the torch of truth. But, looking in that
light, he saw steadfast eyes, and shining foreheads, and
palm-branches that brushed his shrinking, empty hands. And out
from among them, with a look of gentle humility that smote him
like a blow, and with a tremulous radiance gathering about her
pure forehead, came one whom he had frowned upon, and striven to
discrown. What was she saying? "All nations shall call me
blessed!" Not great, not glorious, not even lovely, but
_blessed_!

"Well--she--was blessed," admitted the minister.

The next moment he started out of his chair, muttered some kind
of exorcism, caught his hat, and went out for a walk. Though it
was mid-April, a north wind was blowing thank heaven for that!
Nothing murky about the north wind.
{445}
It would soon blow away all these pestilential vapors that came
up from the sun-steeped lowlands of his soul; pagan places where,
though his iconoclastic will had again and again gone about
breaking images, no sooner did it rest than there they were
again, Bacchus, and Hebe, and Diana, and the rest. Or from yet
more dangerous because more deceptive regions, wide, bright
solitudes of the soul, arid and dazzling, where the unobstructed
sky seemed to lean upon the earth--the region of mirages, of New
Jerusalems, that shone and crumbled--of sacred-seeming streams
that fled from thirsty lips--of cool shadows that never were
reached.

In one of these impetuous walks, Mr. Southard came across an old
minister, and went into his study with him, and told him
something of his difficulties. He was too well aware of his own
excitement to venture on a full explanation. Moreover, there was
something soothing and silencing in the look of this man, in his
tranquil, rather sad expression, his noble face, and snowy hair.

The old doctor leaned back in his chair, and calmly listened
while his younger brother spoke, smiling indulgently now and then
at some vivid turn of expression, some flash of the eyes, some
impatient gesture.

Elderly ministers were always pleased with Mr. Southard, who
would ask advice and instruction of them with a docility that was
almost childlike. Such respect was very pleasant to those who
seemed to have fallen upon evil days, who saw the prestige of the
ministry departing, to whom boys had ceased to take off their
caps, to whom even women did not look up as of yore.

"My dear brother," said the doctor gently when the other had
ceased speaking, "you have made a mistake in attempting this
work. I tell you frankly, we can never argue down the Catholic
Church. All the old theologians know that, and avoid the contest.
For perfect consistency with itself, and for wonderful complexity
yet harmony of structure, the world has not seen, and will not
again see its equal. It is the masterwork of the arch-enemy."

"So much the more reason why we should attack it with all our
might!" exclaimed the other.

"No," replied the doctor, "That does not follow. There are
dangers which must be shunned, not met; and this is one. As with
wine, so with Romanism, 'touch not, taste not, handle not!'"

"That might be said to the laity," Mr. Southard persisted. "But
for us who teach theology, we ought to search, we ought to
examine. It is essential that we know the weapons of our
adversary in order to destroy them."

"Truth has many phases, and so has belief," was the quiet reply.
"We begin by believing that the doctrines we hold are the truth,
the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, and that everything
else is unmitigated falsehood. But after a while, according to
the degree of candor of which we are capable, we begin to admit
that every religion on earth has something reasonable to say for
itself. There is a grain of good in Mohammedanism, in Brahminism,
in Buddhism. We are now credibly assured that the old story of
people throwing themselves under the wheels of Juggernaut is a
myth. Hindu converts say that there were sometimes accidents at
these religious celebrations, on account of the crowd, as we have
accidents on the fourth of July; but that Juggernaut was a
beneficent deity who took no pleasure in human pain, and whose
attributes were a dim reflection of Christianity.
{446}
I used to tell that story in perfect good faith whenever a
collection was wanted for the missionaries. I don't tell it now.
At last we learn to choose what seems to us best, to present its
advantages to others, but not to insist that all shall agree with
us under pain of eternal loss. When I hear a man crying out
violently against the purely religious opinions of others, I
always set him down as a man of narrow heart and narrower head.
The principal reason for my well-known hostility to Catholicism
is a political one.

"The fact is, brother, God's light falling on the mind of man, is
like sunlight falling on a prism. It is no longer the pure white,
but is shattered into colors which each one catches according to
his humor. We ministers are not like Moses coming from the
mountain with the whole law in his two hands, and a dazzling face
to testify for him that he had been with God, he alone. I wish we
were, brother! I wish we were!"

"But faith," exclaimed the other, "is there no faith?"

"We believe in the essentials; and they are few."

"How shall we prove them?"

"As the Catholic Church proves them. She holds the whole truth
tangled in the midst of her errors, like a fly in a spider's
web."

Mr. Southard sat a moment, looking steadily, almost sternly, at
his companion.

"Then you and I have no mission," he said. "We are not divinely
called."

"Whithersoever a man goes, there is he called," said the doctor,
sighing faintly. "We among the rest. We have a mission, too, and
a noble one. We make people keep the Sabbath, which, without us,
would fall into disuse; we remind them of their duties; we check
immorality; we keep before the eyes of worldlings the fact that
there is another world than this. In short, we spend our breath
in keeping alive the sacred fire on the desecrated altar of the
human soul. Is that nothing?"

In speaking, the doctor lifted his head, and drew up his stately
form. His voice trembled with feeling, and his eyes were full of
indignant tears. His look was proud, almost defiant; yet seemed
directed less against his companion, than combating some voice in
his own soul. All the enthusiastic dreams of his youth, though
they had long since been subdued, as he thought, by common sense
and necessity, stirred in their graves at sound of the imperious
questioning, at sight of the clear, searching eyes of this young
visionary who fancied that in the troubled spirit of man the full
orb of truth was to be reflected unblurred.

"In short," Mr. Southard said, rising to go, "you believe that
the spirit of evil can propose a problem which the Holy Spirit
cannot solve."

"Not so!" was the reply; "but the spirit of evil may propose a
problem which the Holy Spirit may not choose to solve for us till
the end of time."


                Chapter IX.

              Noblesse Oblige


On his way home that day, the minister met Mr. Granger, and the
two stopped to look at a Vermont regiment that was marching
through the city from the Maine depot to the New York depot. As
they stopped, the regiment also was stopped by some obstruction
in the street.

The attention of the gentlemen was presently attracted to a boy
in the rank nearest them, a bright, resolute-looking lad, with a
ruddy face and smiling lips.
{447}
But it needed not a very keen observer to see in that smile the
pathetic bravado of a boy who had just torn himself away from
home, and was struggling to hide the grief with which his heart
was swelling.

"What is a boy like you in the army for?" Mr. Granger asked.

The young soldier looked up, his bright eyes bold with
excitement. "When men won't go, the boys have got to go," he
answered. "Do you want to take my place?"

Mr. Granger said no more.

Beside this boy stood a middle aged man who had an uncommonly
good face. He was tall, somewhat awkward, and had that look of
unsophisticated manliness, honest candor, and plain common sense,
which is found only in the country. One could not fancy him a
dweller among masked city faces, breathing air pent in narrow
streets, walking daily on pavements, and knowing no shades but
those of brick and stone. His place was tramping through wild
forests, not with any romantic intent, but measuring with
practised eyes the trunk of some tree in which he saw what
woodsmen call a "good stick," and chopping steadily at it while
the chips flew about him, and above him the spreading branches
shivered at every stroke; or plodding slowly through still
country roads beside his slow oxen; or, in the sultry summer
days, swinging the scythe through thick grass and clover, mowing
them down ankle deep at his feet. He had the flavor of all that
about him. Now he had to wade through other than that fragrant
summer sacrifice, to break through other ranks than serried
clover and Mayweed, and those strong arms of his were to lay low
something greater than pine or cedar. You could see that this
thought was in his mind, that he never lost sight of it, but,
also, that he would not shrink. Such men have not much to say;
but in time of need they put into action the heroism which others
exhale in glowing language.

This man had been looking straight before him; but at the sound
of a childish voice he turned his head quickly. A little girl
leaning from the curbstone was admiring the bunch of flowers on
the soldier's bayonet, and stretching longing hands toward them.

The fixed look in the man's face broke up instantly. "Do you want
them, little dear?" he asked.

"Oh! yes."

He lowered his rifle, removed the flowers, and gave them to the
child, looking at her with a yearning, homesick smile that was
more pitiful than tears. At that moment the drums began to beat.
The soldier laid his bronzed hand on the happy little head, then,
with trembling lips and downcast eyes, marched on, and out of
sight for ever.

Mr. Granger turned abruptly away. "I feel as if I were a great
lazy coward!" he exclaimed. "I can't stand this any longer!"

The minister looked at him with a startled expression; but any
reply was prevented; for just then they met Mrs. Lewis coming out
of a flower-store, with her hands full of Mayflowers done up in
solid pink bunches, without a sign of green.

"Poor things!" she said. "The sight of them always reminds me of
the massacre of the Innocents. See! they look like so many pretty
little pink and white heads cut off. Massed so, without any
green, they are not at all like flowers. Are we going home to
dinner? My husband will be late, and we are not to wait for him.
He has gone to see who is drafted in our ward."

{448}

The family had nearly finished dinner when Mr. Lewis came in.
"Our house is favored," he said immediately. "Granger, both you
and I are drawn."

Mr. Granger looked up, but said nothing. "I got my substitute on
the spot," Mr. Lewis continued. "He is a decent fellow whom I can
depend on. I asked him if he knew of any one for you, and he
thought he could get somebody."

Mr. Granger made no reply, seemed to be occupied in waiting on
his little girl who sat beside him.

"How sober he is!" thought Miss Hamilton; but did not feel
troubled, his gravity was so gentle.

Dora looked up in her father's face, and laughed, half with love,
half with delight. "You nice papa!" she cried, and gave his arm
an enthusiastic hug. He laid his hand on those sunny curls, as he
had seen the soldier do in the street, but did not smile.

Glancing at Mr. Southard, Margaret met a look at once anxious and
searching. His eyes were instantly averted, but his expression
did not change. What could it mean? After dinner, he went
directly to his room.

Mr. Granger sat apart in the parlor with Dora, petting her, and
telling her stories. When her bed-time came, he went out with
her, and was gone longer than usual. The evening was cool, and
they had a fire in the grate. Mr. Lewis sat before it reading the
evening paper, and the three ladies gathered in one corner, and
talked in whispers.

"How sober and strange everything seems this evening!" Margaret
said, shivering. "I feel cold. It isn't like spring, but like
fall. Hold my hand, Aura dear. What does chill me so?"

"It is because Mr. Southard looked at you in such an odd way,"
Aurelia said gravely, holding Margaret's cold hand between her
warm ones.

"I know what ails me," Mrs. Lewis said, in a tone of vexation.
"It is that substitute. My husband will preach poverty for six
months to come. Charles," raising her voice, "does your
substitute look as if he had swallowed a new black silk dress
with little ruffles all over it?"

"He has very much that expression of countenance," growled Mr.
Lewis from behind his newspaper.

"O dear! And does he look as if Niagara Falls had disappeared
down his throat, and as if he were just chewing up a little trip
to the mountains?"

"You describe him perfectly," her husband replied with grim
courtesy.

Mr. Granger came in presently, and stood awhile by one of the
windows, looking out into the twilight. Then he took a seat by
the fire.

It was getting too dark to read without a light, and Mr. Lewis
laid his paper aside. "I will see about your substitute
to-morrow," he said, "and send him up to the bank, if you wish."

"Thank you," Mr. Granger replied. "And as soon as I get a
substitute, I shall immediately volunteer."

There was an exclamation from the ladies, and a sound as if one
caught her breath.

Mr. Lewis stared at the speaker, turned very red, then started
up, and went out of the room, banging the door behind him. A
minute later, he flung open the door of Mr. Southard's study, and
marched in without the least ceremony. "What is the meaning of
this nonsense of Mr. Granger's volunteering?" he demanded,
stammering with anger.

Mr. Southard had been sitting with a Bible open before him, and
his face bowed forward and resting on it. He rose with cold
stateliness at this abrupt invasion. "Will you sit, sir?" he
said, pointing to a chair.

{449}

"No, sir, I will not!" was the answer. "I want you to go down and
put a stop to his making a fool of himself. I won't say a word to
him; I haven't patience to."

"If Mr. Granger thinks it his duty to go, I shall not attempt to
dissuade him," said the minister calmly, reseating himself. "He
is his own master, and I am in no way responsible for his action
in the matter."

"When a man plants an acorn, we hold him responsible for the
oak," was the retort. "You have indirectly done all you could to
make him ashamed of staying at home, and to make him believe that
the more pieces a man gets cut into the more of a man he is. If
you don't prevent his going, I shall hold you responsible for
whatever may happen."

For a moment the minister's self-control deserted him, and a just
perceptible curl touched his lip with scorn. "Can you see no
nobler destiny for a man," he asked, "than to eat three meals a
day, make money, and keep a whole skin?"

Mr. Lewis's face had been red: now his very hands blushed with
anger. He opened the door to leave the room, and turned on the
threshold. "Yes, sir, I can!" he replied with emphasis. "But it
is not in staying at home and sending another man out to die,
especially when that man may be in your way!"

Banging the door behind him, Mr. Lewis ran against his niece who
was just coming up-stairs. She looked terrified. She had
overheard her uncle's parting speech.

"Oh! how could you!" she exclaimed. "Aunt was afraid that you
were going to say something to Mr. Southard, and she sent me to
beg you to come down. How could you, uncle?"

"I could a good deal easier than I couldn't," he replied. "Come
into the chamber here and talk to me. I don't want to be left
alone a minute. I shan't go down-stairs again to-night; and I
would advise you and your aunt to get out of the way, and give
Miss Hamilton a chance to talk or cry a little common sense into
Mr. Granger."

Meantime Mr. Granger had been explaining somewhat to the two
ladies left with him, and exonerating Mr. Southard from all
responsibility.

"I know that Mr. Lewis will blame him," he said; "but that is
unjust to both of us. It is paying me a very poor compliment to
say that in such a matter I would allow another person to think
for me."

"You must remember that my husband's excitement will be in
proportion to his regard for you," Mrs Lewis said, with tears in
her eyes. "He has a rough way of showing affection; but he is
fonder of you than of any other man in the world; and I'm sure we
all--" Here her voice failed.

Mr. Granger turned hastily toward her as she got up to go out. "I
don't forget that," he said. "I know he thinks a good deal of me,
and so do I of him. We shan't quarrel. Don't be afraid. I found
out long ago that he has a kind and true heart under that rough
manner."

"I'm going to bring him back," Mrs. Lewis said, and went out,
wiping her eyes.

Mr. Granger had not dared to look at Miss Hamilton, or address
her directly. After having spoken, the thought had first occurred
to him that he should have been less abrupt in announcing his
intention to her. She might be expected to feel his departure
more keenly than the others would. He waited a moment to see if
she would speak. She sat perfectly quiet in the dim light, her
cheek supported by her hand, her elbow on the arm of her chair,
and her eyes fixed on the fire.
{450}
There is an involuntary calmness with which we sometime receive
the most terrible news, and which even an acute observer would
take for perfect indifference, but which, though not assumed, is
utterly deceptive. Perhaps it is incredulity; perhaps the sudden
blow stuns. Whatever it may be, no human self-control can equal
it. Fortunately, this phenomenon worked now for Miss Hamilton.
She would scarcely have forgiven herself or Mr. Granger if she
had lost her self-possession.

"Nothing will be changed here," he said presently, slightly
embarrassed by the continued silence. "All will go on just as it
has. In case of any uncertainty, when it would take too long to
hear from me, you can consult Mr. Barton, who is my lawyer. He
knows all my wishes and intentions. Of course you have full
authority regarding Dora. I feel quite at ease in leaving her to
you."

So Mr. Barton had known all about it, and so had Mr. Southard,
and others, perhaps. Miss Hamilton recollected herself with an
effort. She was in Mr. Granger's employment; he was, in some
sort, her patron. She had made the mistake of thinking that they
were friends. But that is not friendship where the confidence is
all on one side.

"I shall try to do my duty by Dora," she said rather coldly. "But
what does 'full authority' mean?"

"She is too young to learn theology," he replied; "but everything
else is free. I spoke lest some one might interfere during my
absence, though that isn't likely."

Margaret waited a moment, then said, "Dora tells me that you hear
her say the Our Father every night and morning. Of course, I
shall hear it when you are gone. If you are willing, I would like
to teach her to bless herself before praying, and to say a little
prayer to the Mother of Christ for your safety. I won't make her
say 'Mother of God.'"

Mr. Granger was touched. "That cannot hurt her nor me," he said.
"Do as you please."

Presently he spoke again, "I received yesterday a letter which my
cousin Sinclair wrote me the day before he was killed. It was
given to a soldier who was taken prisoner, and is only just
exchanged. That letter surprised and affected me; and if I had a
lingering doubt as to my own course, it was dispelled then. He
was driving to the steamer, it seems, when he met the Seventh
Regiment marching through Broadway to take the cars south. As
they marched, they sang 'Glory Hallelujah' with a sound like a
torrent. He was electrified. There he was on the point of going
abroad for distraction when here at home was the centre toward
which the eyes of the whole civilized world were turned. He
blushed for the slothful ease and aimlessness of his life. Here
was manly employment. He took no thought for the causes of the
war, since he was not responsible for them; and circumstances had
decided which side he was to take. To him it was a great
gymnasium in which men enervated by wealth, or cramped by petty
aims, were to wake up their nobler powers, string anew their
courage, 'ventilate their souls,' as he expressed it, and,
finding what they were themselves capable of achieving, take back
thus their faith in others. When he saw those gallant fellows
march singing off to battle, the dusty, stale old life broke open
for him, and a new golden age bloomed out. He did not feel that
they were rejoicing over the shedding of blood, or the winning of
victories; but they sang their emancipation from littleness, they
sang because they caught breath of a higher air, they sang
because they had found out that their souls were greater than
their bodies.
{451}
Then first it seemed credible to him that the Son of God took
flesh and died for man; for then he first perceived that man at
his best is a glorious creature. 'I am happy,' he added. 'It is
like getting out of a close room into the fresh air. I am going
through a picture-gallery more magnificent than any in the old
world, and listening to strains of an epic grander than Homer's.
I feel as if I were just made new.'"

This recital was to Margaret like some reviving essence to a
fainting person. Her heart, drooping inward on itself, expanded
again.

"If I knew him now!" she said. "If he would-come to me now!"

"Here is something that will interest you," Mr. Granger added; "I
will read it from the letter."

He lighted the gas and read: "The last time I was in Washington,
I went to see Lieut. A----, who is laid up in one of the
hospitals in charge of the Sisters of Charity. Everything was
quiet and orderly. A. was enthusiastic about the sisters, calls
them doves of peace and charity, says their bonnets look like
wings of great white birds. I talked with one of them when I went
out.

"'How can you, who are the children of peace, bear to come among
us who are the sons of strife?' I asked.

"'Where can the children of peace more fitly go than among the
sons of strife?' she returned.

"'But we must seem to you cruel, and unworthy of gentle
ministrations,' I said. 'You must think that we deserve our
pains.'"

"A swift, almost childlike smile just touched her lips, 'We
cannot be everything,' she replied. 'Each has his place; and the
judgment-seat belongs to God. I am only the nurse.'

"'You must look upon war as the carnival of Satan,' I said.

"'God permits it,' she replied tranquilly. 'And the thought has
occurred to me that it may be some times a preparation for
religion. In the army men learn to suffer, and to sacrifice, and
to be patient and obedient--lessons which perhaps they would not
learn in any humbler school. And having acquired these virtues,
they may use them in nobler ways, perhaps in preventing war.
But,' she added hastily, 'it is not for me to explain the designs
of the Almighty. Here is my mission!'

"She bowed, and glided away. A minute later I saw her raising the
head of a dying soldier, and as his eyes grew dim, repeating for
him, 'Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!'

"As I went away, I said to myself, 'I have seen one wiser than
Solomon!'"

As Mr. Granger finished reading, the door opened, and Mr.
Southard came in, but stopped on seeing the two alone.

"I am glad you have, come," Miss Hamilton said quickly, "I want
you to assure Mr. Granger that, though we shall miss him, and be
anxious about him, we will not let our weakness stand in the way
of his strength."

No matter if she had been slighted! No matter if the confidence
had been all on one side!

"Will you not bid me also Godspeed?" Mr. Southard asked.

"You?"

"I have asked, and am likely to receive, a year's leave of
absence from my congregation," he said. "I do not know how it
will be; but I hope to go in the same regiment with Mr. Granger."

{452}

"Well," Margaret sighed as she climbed wearily up-stairs, "I have
had one happy year. But could I have dreamed that Maurice
Sinclair would be the one to reprove my weakness at such a
time?".


              Chapter X.

	   A Broken Circle.


Having made up his mind to go, Mr. Granger lost no time. He who
had been the most leisurely of men, whose composure and
deliberateness of manner had often given him the appearance of
haughtiness, was now possessed by a spirit of ceaseless activity.
His slow and dignified step became prompt, he spoke more quickly,
his misty eyes cleared up, and a color glowed in his swarthy
cheeks.

There was no more lounging on a sofa, and reading; no more
theatre nor concert; no more lingering in picture-galleries, and
looking about with that fastidious, dissatisfied expression of
his till his eyes lit sparkling on something that pleased him; no
more dreaming along, with a cigar in his mouth, under the trees
at twilight. He was busy, happy, and full of life.

It did not take long to complete his arrangements. Like Madame
Swetchine, he thought those obstacles trifling which were not
insurmountable.

The family found themselves infected by his cheerfulness. Mr.
Lewis's lugubrious visions of wooden arms and legs, and patches
over the eye, he swept away with a laugh. The wistful glances,
often dim with tears, with which the ladies looked at him,
following his every step, listening to his every word, he chid
more gently, and also more earnestly.

"How women can weaken men with a tear or a glance!" he said. "It
will be hard for me to leave you. I love you all. I have been
very happy here, and hope to be as happy here again. But I must
go. I can't see poor men leaving their families, and boys torn
away from their homes, and not go. I should never again respect
myself if I staid at home. But there is something else. The
feeling that draws me is something that I cannot explain. It is
irresistible. The breeze has caught me, and I must move. Margaret
has a smile for me, I know. It's in her. She comes of a Spartan
stock."

Could she disappoint his expectation? No. Henceforth, at whatever
cost to her, he should see no sign of weakness. But, oh! she
thought, sometimes those who stay at home fight harder battles
than those who go.

"And my little girl," said the father. "She wants me to have
beautiful gold straps on my shoulders, and splendid large gilt
buttons on my coat."

Dora was enchanted. Soldiers were to her the most magnificent of
beings. "Yes, papa! And little gold cuffs to your sleeves, and
stripes on your pantaloons."

"Precisely. And a sword, and a belt, and spurs at my heels, and a
feather in my hat. Papa will be as fine as a play-actor. And in
order to have all these things, my pet is willing that I should
go away awhile?"

The child said nothing, but looked steadily at her father. The
smile still lingered on her lips, but large, slow tears were
filling her eyes.

"Not for a very great while," he added. "You know we must pay in
some way for all we get. You pay money for your dresses, and
study for your education, and for these shoulder-straps of mine
you must pay by letting me go a little while."

{453}

The child struggled hard to keep down the swelling in her throat,
and dropped her eyes to hide the tears in them.

"I guess, papa," she said, nervously twisting his watch-chain as
she leaned against him, "I guess it's no matter about the
shoulder-straps. I'd rather have you without' em."

He tried to laugh. "And the feather, and the sash, and the sword,
and the spurs, do you forget them?"

She broke down completely at that. "I don't want 'em; I'd rather
have you than everything else in the world!"

"Even than stripes on my pantaloons?"

"O papa!" she sobbed, "what makes you laugh at me when I'm most
dead?"

"Margaret," exclaimed Mr. Granger, "don't let this child miss
me!"

"Not if I can help it," she replied.

He was to do staff duty till the bloom of his ignorance should be
rubbed off, Mr. Granger said. One whose sole idea of a
_wheel_ was that it was something round with spokes in it,
whose only _forward_ had been learned of the dancing-master,
and who knew no worse _charge_ than the grocer's--such a
person could scarcely be expected to lead men in battle array. He
was going down there to get some of the little boys to teach him
drill.

It was impossible to resist his delightful humor. Even Mr. Lewis
relented.

"If ever the doing of a thing could be forgiven for the sake of
the manner in which it is done," he said, "then I could forgive
you. But I can't promise to turn back all at once from
bonny-clabber to new milk."

"Oh! scold away," was the laughing reply. "I begin to think that
there is a certain pleasure in being abused in a discriminating
manner."

"Your going to Fortress Monroe helps to reconcile me," Mr. Lewis
continued. "It's a pleasant place, and a strong place. My wife
calls it Fortissimo. I supposed that you would insist on going
straight to the front to do picket-duty, or post yourself in a
tree as a sharpshooter. I'm glad to see that you've got a little
ballast left aboard. I wish that Mr. Southard were to be with
you, instead of going to New Orleans at this time of year. I
spent a year at New Orleans when I was a young man, and I know
all about it. It isn't a city, it's a deposit. You have to hold
on with hands and feet to keep from being melted away by the
heat, or washed away by the water."

"O the oleanders!" sighed Mrs. Lewis in an ecstasy.

Almost before they knew, Mr. Granger was gone. They had heard his
last pleasant word, met his last smile, and seen the carriage
that bore him away disappear down the street. Both Mr. Southard
and Mr. Lewis accompanied him as far as New York.

When they had seen him off, the three ladies returned to the
parlor, and the servants went sorrowfully back to their places.
The neighbors who waved him away left their windows, and the
friends grouped on the steps and the walk went each his way.

Dora, repulsed by Miss Hamilton, went to Aurelia for comfort.
Margaret walked uneasily about the room, putting books in their
places, pushing intrusive vine-leaves out the windows, arranging
and rearranging the curtains. Then she seated her self by a
table, and began cutting the leaves of a new magazine.

{454}

Presently Mrs. Lewis approached her, and after leaning on the arm
of her chair a moment without being noticed, touched her on the
shoulder.

"Margaret," she said, "why will you be so terribly proud? I think
you might be willing to shed tears when Aurelia and I do. Why
shouldn't you grieve over the absence of your friend? He is a
kind and true friend to you."

Aurelia rose quietly, and led Dora from the room.

Margaret persisted a moment longer in her silence and her
leaf-cutting. But the book and the knife shook in her hand, and
presently dropped from her grasp. Turning impulsively, she hid
her face in that kind bosom, and sobbed without control.

"He will soon come back, I am sure of it," Mrs. Lewis said
soothingly. "And you know we shall hear from him constantly. We
all feel bad. Mr. Lewis choked up whenever he thought of it, and
the only way he had of turning off his emotion was in scolding. I
dare say his last word to Mr. Granger will be an abusive one. And
you are almost as bad."

"I can't bear to be misunderstood, and watched, and commented
on," Margaret said, trying to control herself. "Most people seem
to think hate more respectable than affection, and if they see
that you care about a person, they sneer."

"I know all about it, dear," Mrs. Lewis said. "You can't tell me
anything new about meanness and malice. I have suffered too much
from them in my life. But we are friends, real friends, here. We
respect each other's reserve. But too much reserve is not good
nor wholesome."

Margaret looked up, and wiped her tears away. "How you help me!"
she said. "I don't feel very bad now," with a faint smile. "It is
suppression that kills me. If we could say just what we think and
feel, and act with perfect openness, how good it would be!
Looking back, my life seems to me a cemetery of stifled emotions.
My heart is full of their bones and ashes. It's an awful weight!
You are very good, Mrs. Lewis. You do beautiful things sometimes.
I grow fonder of you every day. By and by," smiling again, "I
shall not be able to do without you. And now, that poor child! I
must go to her. Wasn't I cruel to put her away? But it is very
hard to have to comfort others when you are yourself in need of
comfort."

The next day the two gentlemen came home with the last news of
Mr. Granger, and they spent the evening more cheerfully than they
could have expected. Mr. Lewis had apologized for his rudeness to
the minister, and had begun to perceive that Mr. Southard had, as
he said, some grit in him. So they were all harmonious enough.

"Mr. Granger's generosity of disposition would lead him to danger
unnecessarily, if he were not warned," Mr. Southard said, as they
sat together that evening. "I talked to him very plainly about
it. There is sometimes an unconscious selfishness under those
impulses. Exulting in the sense of their own fearlessness, men
put themselves in peril, without thinking what others may suffer
in their loss, and that the real good to be attained does not,
perhaps, counterbalance the evil done. All that is accomplished
is a generous deed."

"It is something to accomplish a generous deed," said Miss
Hamilton. "I own, I have not the highest admiration for that
'rascally virtue' of discretion."

"But when the real cost of that 'sublime indiscretion' falls on
some other than the hero, then I object to it," said the minister
firmly. "And Mr. Granger agreed with me."

{455}

There are times when to hear those dear to us praised is painful.
It oppresses the heart, by placing the beloved object too far
above us. But a gentle blame, which hints at no serious fault,
while it does not wound our feelings, soothes our sense of
unworthiness, and, without lowering the friend, brings him within
our reach. Listening to such gentle censure, we get a comfortable
human feeling toward one whom we were, perhaps, in danger of
apotheosizing.

Speaking of the much that they would hear from these soldier
friends of theirs, both Margaret and Mr. Southard urged Mrs.
Lewis to resume her long unused pen. It seemed that every one who
had the talent to do it ought to preserve thus some of the many
incidents of the war. But she was resolute in refusal.

"Of writing many books there is no end," she said. "And I have a
terrible vision of a coming deluge of war-literature. Everybody
will write, soldiers, nurses, chaplains, (all but you, Mr.
Southard!) philanthropists, novelists, rhymsters--all will write
without mercy. The dilemma of the old rhyme will seem to be on
the point of realization:

  'If all the earth were paper,
      And all the sea were ink,
   And all the trees were bread and cheese,
      What should we do for drink?'

"No, don't ask me to join in that rout. Besides, no one but a
scribbler knows a scribbler's afflictions. No 'Heavenly Goddess'
has yet sung those direful woes. First, there is the printer. You
spend all your powers on a certain passage which is to
immortalize you, and under his hands, by the addition, or the
abstraction, or the changing of a word, that passage has taken
the one step more which carries it from the sublime to the
ridiculous. Put in a fine bit of color; he changes your umber to
amber, and the picture is spoilt. Refer to the well-known fact
that Washington Allston put a great deal of character into the
hands and feet he painted, and this fell patriot drops the
Allston, and gives the credit to the father of his country. Then
there are your dear friends. They know all your virtues, so their
sole effort is now to find out your defects. It won't do to
praise you, lest you should become vain; so, with a noble regard
for your truest good, they dissect your writings before your
eyes, and prove clearly their utter worthlessness. Then, there
are your gushing acquaintances who want you to write about them,
and tell you their histories, insisting that they shall be put
into print. As if you should carry cherry-stones to a
cherry-tree, and say, Here, grow cherries round these! If you
should answer ever so humbly, Thank you! but I grow stones to my
own cherries, such as they are, people would be disgusted. Of
course, if I had a great genius, it would scorch up all these
little annoyances. But I have only a pretty talent. Perhaps the
worst is, that they will apply your characters. When I was a
girl, I wrote a rhymed story, and everybody pointed out the hero.
I stared, I bethought myself, I re-read my romance. Imagine my
horror when I found that the description fitted the man
perfectly, even to the wart on his nose. Then, not long ago, I
wrote a little idyl addressed to my first love, and my husband
came home with the face of an Othello. You know you did, Charles.
The fact was, I never had a first love!"

Mr. Lewis laughed. "And she twitted me with Diana. Diana was a
tall, superb, serene woman whom I got acquainted with in
Washington, before I was married. I admired her excessively. I
didn't know that she was a goose. I would talk, and she would
listen, and smile at all my jokes; and I thought that she was
very witty.
{456}
I spoke of books, and she smiled and said 'Yes!' and I was sure
that she was a well-read person. I ranted about music, and she
smiled and said 'Yes!' and I was positive that she was a fine
musician. Presently I began to grow bashful in the society of
such a superior woman. I couldn't talk, so she had to. Well, at
first I admired her simplicity, then I stared at her simplicity.
And at last I saw that there was

  'No end to all she didn't know.'

"One day I'd been there, up in the parlor, and when I left, she
went down to the door with me. There was a large hat on the
entry-table, and we heard a man's voice in the sitting-room.

"'Who's talking with pa?' she asked of a servant.

"'Daniel Webster, miss,' was the answer.

"Daniel Webster was my hero. If our hats had been of the same
size, I would have swapped fervently, though mine was new, and
Daniel's a little shabby. I remembered what somebody had said of
Samuel Johnson; and pointing to the table, I exclaimed with
enthusiasm, 'That hat covers a kingdom!'

"Diana looked at it with a mild, idiotic perplexity, and
stretched her long neck to see on the other side. 'Hat covers a
kingdom,' she repeated vaguely to herself, as if it were a
conundrum.

"'When it's on his head!' I cried out in a rage.

"'Oh!' she said, and smiled, but without a particle of
speculation in her eyes.

"I bounced out of the house, and I never went to see Diana again.
Shortly after, I met that little woman, and I married her because
she is smart."


              Chapter XI.

    The Mountains Whence Help Cometh.


Mr. Granger was one of those persons whom we miss more than we
expect to, their influence is so quiet, their stability has so
little of hardness. As has been beautifully said, such characters
are "like the water-lily, fixed yet floating." We do not know how
much we rest on them till the support is withdrawn.

They heard from him constantly, the letters being directed to Mr.
Lewis, but intended for all the family.

Evidently his good spirits had not deserted him. Never before had
he been so much alive, he wrote. The excitement, the uncertainty,
the very restraints which reminded of power, and of great
interests at stake, all kept his thoughts in a brisk circulation,
and threw the bile off his mind.

Miss Dora had, however, her separate correspondence, letters
directed to herself, which Miss Hamilton read to her, and
answered from her dictation.

In those days the child learned a new prayer: "O Mother in
heaven, take pity on me who have no mother on earth, and whose
father has gone to the wars. Watch over him, that I may not be
left an orphan. Pray for him, and for me, and for whoever loves
us best. Do not forget me, O Mother! for if you do, my heart will
break."

"Who is it that loves us best?" the child asked the first time
she said this prayer.

"I do not know," was the reply. "We can never be sure who loves
us best. But God knows, and the good Mother can find out."

"I thought it was you," said Dora. Margaret's voice sank to a
whisper. "Perhaps it is, dear."

{457}

In a few weeks Mr. Southard also left then, not cheerfully, but
with a gloom which he took no pains to conceal.

And the few weeks grew to many weeks, and months multiplied. The
summer was gone, and the autumn was gone, and winter melted like
a snow-flake on the mantle of time. When our eyes are fixed in
anxious longing on some future day, the intermediate days slip
through our fingers like sands through an hour-glass, and keep no
trace of their passage.

If, when the spring campaign opened, and both the absent ones
were in active service, our friends watched with some sinking of
the heart for news, it was no more than happened in tens of
thousands of other homes. Heart-sickness was by no means a rare
disease in those days.

The soldier in charge of the soldier's news-room on Kneeland
street became very much interested in one of the few visitors who
used to go there that summer. Nearly every say, surely every day
when there had been a battle, a pale-faced young lady would open
the door, enter quickly, and without looking to right or left go
directly to the frames that held the lists of killed and wounded,
and read them through from end to end. The soldier got to have an
anxious feeling about this lady. Unnoticed by her, he watched her
face while she read, and hushed his breath till he saw that
terrible look go out of her eyes. The lists finished, she would
pull her veil down, sigh wearily, and go out as quietly as she
had entered.

"When she finds the name she is looking for, I hall see her
drop," he thought.

But Margaret did not drop, though often enough she was in danger
of it, as her eyes fell on some blurred name, or some name very
like the one she dreaded to see.

It was too wearing. Both flesh and spirit were sinking under this
constant strain. Where was the help that religion was to give
her? Leave everything to God, trust all to him, she was told. But
how? Her thoughts were clenched in these interests; and, in spite
of faith, it seemed as though, if she should let go her hold,
they would fall. She found that her religion was only of the
surface. It had grown in the sunshine, and was not rooted against
the storm. She tried to put into practice the precepts she
listened to, but the daily distractions of life constantly
neutralized her efforts. There was but one way, and for the first
time Margaret made a retreat.

The place selected was a convent a little out of the city.

Here in this secluded asylum was all that her soul needed for its
restoring; quiet, leisure, the society of those whose lives are
devoted to God, and, to crown all, the presence of the blessed
sacrament of the altar.

One feels very near heaven when one hears only praying voices,
sees only happy, peaceful faces, is looked upon only by kind
eyes, and can at any hour go before the altar, alone, undisturbed
by those distractions which constantly environ our ordinary
worship. How still we become! In that presence how our little
troubles and sorrows exhale, as mists lift from the rivers at
sunrise, and leave all clear and bright! How cramped and feverish
all our past life has been! Everything settles into its true
place. Sorrow and death lose their sting. We are safe, for we
partake of the omnipotence of God. To think that the same roof
that shelters our heads when we lie down to sleep shelters also
the sacred head of the Son of God--that drives every other
thought from the mind.
{458}
It is marvellous, it seems incredible, and yet the wonder of it
is lost in the sweetness. The moonlight coming in at the window
lies white and silent on the bare white floor. You rise to kiss
that luminous spot, for just beneath is the altar. Peace rises to
exultation, for you perceive more and more that the Father holds
us all in his hands, those near and those afar, and that we have
but to lift our eyes, and we shall behold the mountains whence
help cometh. We want to run out and tell everybody. It seems as
if we have just discovered all this, and that no one ever knew it
before. We forget that we are sinners. It isn't much matter about
us any way. We will think of that afterward. We will make acts of
contrition when we get away from here. Now we can make only acts
of adoration and of joy.

The superior of the convent directed Margaret's retreat, and on
the last morning of it she and all the nuns received communion,
and there was the benediction after mass.

The others had gone out, but Margaret still lingered before the
altar. Out in the early sunshine, the trees rustled softly, and
the breeze waved the curtains of the chapel windows.
Occasionally, one of the nuns would come to the door, look in,
and go away again smiling, though Miss Hamilton's breakfast was
spoiling over the fire, and there was a gentleman waiting in the
parlor for her.

"She is in the chapel at her devotions," the sister had told him.

"Don't disturb her on any account," he had answered. "There is no
haste."

Margaret was not praying, was not thinking; her soul was silent,
lost in God, like a star in the day.

Presently she came out, and, meeting one of the nuns in the hall,
embraced her tenderly. "Sister," she said, "this is the most
beautiful world that ever was made."

The gentleman had been waiting some time when he heard a step,
and in the door there stood a slight, black-robed lady with a
veil thrown over her head, a bright face, and a smell of incense
lingering about her. She lifted both hands when she saw him.

"My cup runneth over!"

"You are not a nun?" asked Mr. Granger.

"You're not an apparition," she returned. "Oh! welcome!"

"And now," he said, delighted to see her so happy, "if you are
ready, we will go home. I have only a few days' furlough, and I
want to make the most of it."

Margaret went to take a hasty leave of the nuns, and also to step
into the chapel for one moment.

Then she went out from under that happy portal, and down the
steps to the carriage that was waiting for them. One of the
sisters stood in the door looking after her, and others here and
there in the grounds looked up with a pleasant word of farewell
as she passed. She stooped to gather from the lower terrace a
humble souvenir, two or three grass-blades and a clover-leaf,
then stepped into the carriage. As they drove slowly down the
avenue, she looked up into the overhanging branches and repeated:

  "'Above him the boughs of the hemlock trees
    Waved, and made the sign of the cross,
    And whispered their Benedicitis.'"

The family were in raptures over Mr. Granger's return. They could
not look at him enough, listen to him enough, do enough for him.
"And how nice you look in your uniform!" said Margaret, feeling
as if she were about six years old.

"And how nice you look in anything!" he retorted, at which they
all laughed. It took but little to make them laugh in those days.

{459}

Mr. Granger, on his part, was as merry as a boy. He was full of
adventures to tell them, glad to be at home, happy in their
confidence and affection, and hopeful of the future.

Margaret could scarcely believe her own happiness. She would turn
away, shut her eyes, and think, "I have imagined it all. He is
hundreds of miles away, I do not know whether he is sick or well.
He may be in peril. He may be dead. O my friend! come home, come
home! Are we never to see you again?"

Then, when she had succeeded in tormenting herself sufficiently,
when her heart was sinking, and her eyes overflowing with tears,
she would turn quickly, trembling between dream and reality, and
see him there alive and well, and at home.

"Oh! there he is, thank God!"

And so every day she renewed in her vivid imagination the pain of
his absence and the delight of his return, till too soon the day
came when she no longer dared to play such tricks with herself,
for he was again gone out of their sight. But the lessons of the
retreat were not forgotten, and every morning brought
refreshment.

               To Be Continued.

----------

                Sauntering.

  Saunterer, (from _saint terre_,)
  a pilgrim to holy lands or places.--_Thoreau_.


Would that I were, if not like the king of Ava--lord of the
twenty-four umbrellas--at least the owner of one, was my thought.
I was in Paris, that paradise of many good Americans who are
_not_ defunct. Three thousand and odd miles from home, in
the streets of a strange city, with an imperfect knowledge of any
foreign tongue, not daring to say _parapluie_ to the most
obsequious shopman, and the rain was pouring down like a douche.

I had no devotion to St. Swithin--not a particle. I respected him
in a vague way as a successor of the apostles, whose name is in
the calendar; but I was always inclined to mention him with a
smile on account of his hydropathic propensities. I am a perfect
Oriental as far as a warm bath is concerned, but I never could
endure the gentlest shower-bath, and the thought of St. Swithin,
in his wet grave under a waterspout, always made me shudder. This
peculiar sensitiveness always made me suspicious of the lightest
summer cloudlet, and led me to make for years a series of minute
observations on the weather, till I became deeply versed in
mackerel clouds, mare's tails, and such sinister prognostics. I
used to imagine myself so sensitive to the dryness and moisture
of the atmosphere, and to its density and rarity, that I was
quite above barometers. I was a barometer to myself. A
foreknowledge of the weather was my strong point, or one of my
strong points, when at home in the new world. There I had a full
view of the heavens that bend over us all, down to the very
horizon on every side. The rarity of the American atmosphere, its
lofty heavens, with its luminous spheres, are full of skyey
influences, which tell not only upon the very plants, if we
observe them, but upon ourselves, if we heed the silent lesson.
{460}
I always knew what those clouds meant, gathering over the far-off
north-wood hills at the west, and I felt the very mist as it
began to rise around Mount Agamenticus, in the east, like
sacrificial clouds around that altar of the renowned St.
Aspinquid. I seldom made a false prediction, and was consequently
approached with considerable deference by provident neighbors,
especially before a storm. But somehow, I lost this prestige as
soon as my foot was off my native heath. Here, in a compact city,
with the tall houses and narrow streets shutting the great blue
eye of heaven till it became a mere line, like a cat's eye at
mid-day, I felt myself utterly at the mercy of nature; I gave
myself humbly up to St. Swithin, to whom of old I was rather
defiant. A haughty spirit goes before a fall. Humiliations are
good for the soul. I think I must consider mine a case of special
providence; for there is nothing more soothing to mortified
vanity or spiritual pride, or even in dire calamity, than the
conviction that ours is an instance of special providence.

On one of those doubtful days in October, when the air is murky
and a light mist from the Seine pervades every part of the city,
but which were not always, as I had found, indicative of rain, I
sallied forth from the Hotel Meurice to wander around the French
capital with no special object in view. I discarded my
guide-book, tired of being the victim of square and compass. To
be told to admire, whether an object appealed to my peculiar
tastes or not, was quite opposed to my notions of American
independence, and sure to rouse a certain spirit of contradiction
in me--a bad trait, I fear, but a fault acknowledged is half
cured; so I make a clean breast of it to test the truth of the
old saying. I turned, therefore, a blind eye to all the palaces,
and gardens, and fountains, and went around feasting my eyes on
the forbidden vanities of the world which my god-parents had
renounced for me at baptism, but which were glittering
delightfully in the booths of this Vanity Fair; not that I cared
much for them, to tell the truth, but from a sheer feeling of
perversity. There must be some powerful charm in them, or they
would not be put down in every religious chart as quicksands to
be avoided. Perhaps I was in danger of being stranded among them,
and it was, after all, a case of special providence, when, as I
was pursuing my way, or rather any way in my ignorance of the
city, and moralizing on these things, or demoralizing, of a
sudden it began to pour. For an old weather-wise like me to be
thus caught, was very humiliating; and in my consternation, I
found myself enjoying one of the high and mighty prerogatives of
the king of Ava, as aforesaid. _Que faire?_ I should have
said, being in France. Looking around, I saw the open door of a
church, in which I gladly took refuge. In benighted, "popish"
lands, mother church often affords a place of bodily refuge, as
well as moral. It was the church of St. Germain l'Auxerrois, to
which I had wandered back, and which from this time became my
favorite church in spite of the bad repute of the bells. Passing
from the gay streets into these cool shades is like passing for a
moment, as it were, from time into eternity. All light and
frivolous thoughts--all vanity and littleness die away with the
noise of the world, at the very entrance. The mind is elevated.
We partake of the grandeur of the edifice, and, for a few moments
at least, our nature is ennobled.
{461}
Only great and lofty ideas should wander beneath such arches.
Only souls full of noble and magnificent ideas could have
designed them. There are truly sermons in these stones, of which
one never grows weary--sermons in the grand old _vitraux_,
rich with saintly forms, and in the gloom, inspiring sweet and
solemn reverie.

  "I love the gloom; I love the white-robed throng;
   I love the flood of most religious song
   That tosses all its choric waves afar
   To seek and search each quaint-carved crevice there.
   The music surges to each singing star,
   And bears the soul to heaven's own upper air,
   Sweet crushed to happy tears; but chiefly where
   Peace, dove-like, broods above clasped hands of prayer."

The Catholic is no longer in a foreign land when he enters a
church. The altar, the cross, the Madonna, above all, the
tabernacle, with it twinkling lamp of olive oil, are his old
familiar friends, and all there, and his heart is at home. He
feels a bond of universal brotherhood with all these worshippers
before the altar. And then the dear old Latin service! I never
thoroughly realized at home the advantage of a universal language
in which the whole church could lift up her voice, as with one
accord, throughout the world. That language--one of those which
were consecrated above the head of the dying Saviour--is
associated with all the holiest and tenderest memories of a
Catholic. He cannot remember when he first heard it from the lips
of holy mother church. It is one of his mother tongues. Each word
has a new significance in this foreign land, and the whole
service a new meaning. I have heard people exclaim at the
rapidity of the opening service of mass, not knowing its
significance. Every act and word in our sublime ritual has its
meaning to him that enters into its spirit. Dr. Newman says, in
his own beautiful way:

  "I declare nothing is so consoling, so piercing, so thrilling,
  so overcoming, as the mass, said as it is among us. I could
  attend masses for ever and not be tired. It is not a mere form
  of words; it is a great action, the greatest action there can
  be on earth. It is not the invocation, merely, but, if I dare
  use the word, the evocation, of the Eternal. He becomes present
  on the altar in flesh and blood, before whom angels bow and
  devils tremble. This is that awful event which is the end and
  is the interpretation of every part of the solemnity. Words are
  necessary, not as means, but as ends. They are not mere
  addresses to the throne of grace; they are instruments of what
  is far higher, of consecration, of sacrifice. They hurry on as
  if impatient to fulfil their mission. Quickly they go; the
  whole is quick, for they are all parts of one integral action.
  Quickly they go, for they are awful words of sacrifice; they
  are a work too great to delay upon, as when it was said in the
  beginning, 'What thou doest, do quickly.' Quickly they pass,
  for the Lord Jesus goes with them, as he passed along the lake
  in the days of his flesh, quickly calling first one and then
  another. Quickly they pass, because, as the lightning which
  shineth from one part of the heaven unto the other so is the
  coming of the Son of Man. Quickly they pass, for they are as
  the words of Moses, when the Lord came down in a cloud, calling
  on the name of the Lord as he passed by,  'The Lord, the Lord
  God, merciful and gracious, long-suffering and abundant in
  goodness and truth.'

  "And as Moses on the mountain, so do we too 'make haste and bow
  our heads to the earth and adore.' So we all around, each in
  his place, look out for the great advent, 'waiting for the
  moving of the water.' Each in his place, with his own heart,
  with his own wants, with his own thoughts, with his own
  intention, with his own prayers, separate but concordant,
  watching what is going on, watching its progress, uniting in
  its consummation; not painfully and hopelessly following a hard
  form of prayer from beginning to end, but, like a concert of
  musical instruments, each different, but concurring in a sweet
  harmony, we take our part with God's priest,
  supporting him, yet guided by him."

The words being, then, only used as means, as instruments of
consecration, it is not at all necessary for the people to follow
the words of the priest; but, entering into the spirit and
meaning of each part of the sacrifice, abandon themselves each
one to his own devotions.
{462}
While the church is exceedingly
particular about the exact following of the liturgy by the
clergy, it allows the greatest latitude to the devotions of
laymen. All the sects that have a form of prayer, or extempore
prayers, afford far less liberty to those who join therein than
the church. Their service is nothing to you unless you join in
its forms, which leave no liberty of soul. Whereas at mass, while
some use a prayer-book with a variety of beautiful and touching
devotions in harmony with the service going on at the altar,
others simply say the rosary, and others again use no form
whatever, but, following the celebrant in spirit, abandon their
hearts in holy meditation and mental prayer according to the
inspiration of the moment. Thus our holy services never become a
mere form. They are always new, new and varied as our daily
wants, as our fresh conceptions of what worship is due Almighty
God, and of the nature of the holy oblation in which we are
participating.

The church of St. Germain l'Auxerrois was once the frequent
recipient of royal munificence, being for a long time the royal
parish, and it was the most sumptuously adorned in Paris.
Sculptors and painters vied in filling it with the choicest works
of art. It was not much injured at the revolution, but narrowly
escaped destruction in 1831. The anniversary of the death of the
Duc de Berri was to be commemorated by services for the repose of
his soul; but a mob surrounded the church, and destroyed
everything in it. It was afterward closed till 1838, when it was
reopened for public worship.

It has some poetical associations as well as historical; for here
M. de Lamartine is said to have hung up the long locks that
Graziella had shorn from her beautiful head, and sent to be
suspended in one of the churches of his belle France. And perhaps
this was the one to which he referred in the following words:

  "When the last hour of the day has sounded from thy lofty
  towers, when the last beam has faded away from the dome, when
  the sigh of the distant organ dies away with the light, and the
  nave is deserted by all but the Levite attentive to the lamps
  of the holy place, then I come to glide under thy obscure
  arches, and to seek, while nature sleeps, Him who never
  slumbers! The air which the soul breathes in thy aisles is full
  of mystery and peace. Let love and anxious cares seek shade and
  solitude under the green shelter of groves to soothe their
  secret wounds. O darkness of the sanctuary! the eye of religion
  prefers thee to the wood which the breeze disturbs. Nothing
  disturbs thy foliage. Thy still shade is the image of eternal
  peace."

I loved to think the poet found here the source of the
inspirations which are embodied in his _Harmonies
Religieuses_ which are the delight of every tender and
religious soul.

There is in one of the transepts a beautiful font of pure white
marble, executed by M. Jouffroy from a model by Madame de
Lamartine and presented by her to this church. The basin is
surmounted by three expressive figures, Faith, Hope, and Charity,
supporting a cross.

This church with its perfumed air, its subdued light, and its
quiet recesses incentive to piety, so charmed me by its contrast
with the gay world without, and revived all the fervor of early
religious impressions, that I did not leave it till I had
resolved to commence each remaining day of my stay at Paris, by
going to a different church till I had visited them all, like
Horace Walpole. And should I even visit them like him as a mere
amateur of art, I could not fail to receive some inspiration that
would leave me better for the rest of the day.
{463}
The hours thus passed in the churches seemed to consecrate the
day, and left a perfume in my heart that nothing in the world
could wholly dissipate. They became the happiest and most
profitable of my life, both morally and intellectually.

  "For thou dost soothe the heart, thou Church of Rome,
      By thy unwearied watch, and varied round
   Of service, in thy Saviour's holy home.
      I cannot walk the city's sultry streets,
      But the wide porch invites to still retreats,
   Where passion's thirst is calmed, and care's unthankful gloom."

   "There, on a foreign shore,
      The homesick solitary finds a friend:
    Thoughts, prisoned long for lack of speech, outpour
      Their tears, and doubts in resignation end."

One morning I went to St. Merri's, where St. Edmund, Archbishop
of Canterbury, when a young student at Paris, used to go to
assist at the midnight office. A friend had given me his
practical little book entitled _The Mirror of the Church,
_and I took it with me to read in a place he had loved. In
reading it I was struck by what he says of the Lord's Prayer, the
great prayer of the middle ages, and the prominence he would have
us give it in our devotions. He says:

  "The Pater Noster surpasses all other prayers in excellence,
  dignity, and utility. It was made by God himself; hence the
  injury done to Jesus Christ the Son of God when curious or
  rhymed prayers are preferred to that composed by him who knows
  the will of the Father, and better than we what prayer is most
  acceptable to him, and what we most need. How many deceive
  themselves in multiplying the forms of prayer! They think they
  are devout, but they are only carnal in their affections, for
  every carnally-minded person naturally delights in the vain
  curiosity of words. Be then prudent and discreet in this
  respect. I know you will bring forward St. Augustin, St.
  Gregory, and other saints to oppose me, who prayed according to
  the affections of their hearts. I am certainly far from blaming
  them. I only blame the practice of those who, from a spirit of
  pride or curiosity abandon the prayer made by the Lord himself
  for those which the saints have composed. Our Lord himself
  says, And when you are praying, speak not much as the heathen
  do, for they think they are heard for their much speaking. You
  therefore shall pray in this manner, Our Father, etc."

We Catholics are often accused of elevating the creature above
the Creator, and reproached for saying ten Hail Marys to one Our
Father in the beautiful devotion of the Rosary, as if we had no
other. This extract from St. Edmund does not support the
accusation, and he was a prelate of the dark ages--the thirteenth
century. But then he was an Englishman, and we all know the
Anglo-Saxon race did not fall in Adam, and only a little way in
Peter!

In justice to St. Edmund I will add that he was so devout to Our
Lady that, early in life, he consecrated himself to her, and
wore, in memory of this consecration, a ring with Ave Maria upon
it. He related this on his death-bed, that his example might be
followed by others, and was buried with the ring on his finger.

There is an interesting chapel in St. Merri's Church, dedicated
to St. Mary of Egypt, which is beautifully frescoed by
Chasserian, depicting the touching old legend, with its deep
moral significance, of

  "That Egyptian penitent whose tears
   Fretted the rock, and moistened round her cave
   The thirsty desert."

The poet tells of a miraculous drop which fell in Egypt on St.
John's day, and was supposed to have the effect of stopping the
plague. Such a drop fell on the soul of this renowned penitent.

  "There's a drop, says the Peri, that down from the moon
   Falls through the withering airs of June
   Upon Egypt's land, of so healing a power,
   So balmy a virtue, that even in the hour
   That drop descends, contagion dies,
   And health reanimates earth and skies!
   Oh! is it not thus, thou man of sin,
     The precious tears of repentance fall.
   Though foul the fiery plagues within,
     One heavenly drop hath dispelled them all!"

{464}

St. Mary of Egypt is one of a long line of penitents who, after
the example of Magdalen, have given proofs of their repentance in
proportion to their sins and to the depth of their sorrow, and
thus rendered the very scars on their souls so many rays of
light.

Le Brun painted one whose frailties are "linked to fame" as
Magdalen, and at her own request. The universal interest felt in
her story, and the sympathy it always excites, induced me to
visit a place that cannot be disconnected from her memory--the
chapel of the Carmelites in the Rue d'Enfer, where she took the
veil. I refer to Madame de la Vallière, whom Madame de Sevigné
calls "la petite violette qui se cachait sous l'herbe."

A priest was just commencing mass when I entered the chapel. I
knelt down by the tomb of the Cardinal de Bérulle, who used to
come here to pray in the chapel of St. Magdalen, having a great
devotion to that saint. It was difficult to resist the
distractions that were inevitable in such a spot, but in which I
would not indulge till the holy sacrifice was over. The choir of
nuns was separated from the chancel by a grating which was
closely curtained. There is always a certain charm in everything
that savors of mystery. Whatever is hidden excites our curiosity
and interest. That forbidding grate, that curtain of appalling
blackness, were tantalizing. They concealed a world in which we
had no part. Behind them were hearts which had aims and
aspirations and holy ambitions, perhaps, we know not of. They led
a life which is almost inexplicable to the world--hidden indeed
in God. The chapel was so still, save the murmur of the
officiating priest, that you might have supposed no one else
there. But after the Agnus Dei, came out from that mysterious
recess a murmur from unseen lips like a voice from another world.
It was that of the nuns all saying the Confiteor together before
going to holy communion. That murmur of _mea culpâ, mea
culpâ_, seemed like the voice of penitence from La Sainte
Beaume, or the voice of past times repeating the accents of the
repentant La Vallière. There she lived and prayed and did penance
for thirty-six years, longer than Magdalen in her cave, "son
coeur ne respirant que du côté du ciel," thus displaying a
remarkable strength of volition, and therefore of character; for
"What is character but a perfectly formed will?" says Novalis.
Before that altar she used to come two hours before the rest of
the community to pray, and in cold weather she, that had been
brought up in luxury, was often found senseless on the pavement
of the choir when the rest of the nuns came to the chapel.

We read that the tears of Eve falling into the water brought
forth pearls, and we cannot doubt that the tears through which
our penitent viewed her past life helped obtain for her the pearl
of great price. One instance of her austerity is well known. One
Good-Friday, meditating in the refectory, during the meagre
repast of the day, on the vinegar and gall given to the dying
Saviour when he was athirst, she recalled the pleasures of her
past life and particularly of the time when, returning with the
court from the chase, being thirsty, she drank with pleasure of
some delicious beverage which was brought her. This
immortification, so in contrast with the vinegar and gall of the
Saviour, filled her with lively sentiments of repentance and
humiliation, and she resolved never to drink again.
{465}
For three weeks she did not taste even a drop of water, and for
three years she only drank half a glass day. This severe penance,
which was unsuspected, brought on a fit of illness and caused
violent spasms in the stomach, which reduced her to a state of
great feebleness. Besides that, she suffered greatly from
rheumatism, but she never ceased to share in the labors in the
community. She died in 1710, aged nearly sixty-six years, having
passed thirty-six years in the convent. Her life here was one
long Miserere which was surely heard in heaven. Her soul had to
pass through the deep waters; but she took fast hold of that
"last plank after shipwreck"--repentance. Everything went to feed
the stream of her sorrow. Every new grace gave her a new
conception of the guilt of sin and awoke new regrets for lost
glory. So she shut herself up in the garden of myrrh. She
sheltered herself in the _creux du rocher_ from the waves of
memory that swept over her soul. In that dark night of her soul
she looked tremblingly out over the wide sea of her sorrows with
a heart like the double-faced Janus, looking into the past and
toward the future, memory and hope struggling in her heart. Over
that dark sea rose the moonlight of Mary's face--our Lady of
Mount Carmel--a narrow crescent at first, but growing larger and
brighter every day. And the great luminous starry saints with
their different degrees of glory studded the heavens that opened
to her view. And so the morning came when the voice of Jesus
spoke: Many sins are forgiven her because she hath loved much.

There is an accent of sincerity, with no savor of cant, in the
well-known reply of Soeur Louise de la Misericorde when asked if
she was happy in the convent: "I am not happy, but I am
satisfied." How few in the world can even say with sincerity that
they are satisfied. Dr. Johnson said, "No one is happy," but
satisfaction is certainly reasonable happiness. Carlyle says,
"There is in man a higher than love of happiness. He can do
without happiness, and instead thereof find blessedness." That
happiness alone is real which does not depend on contingencies.
It is reasonably satisfied with the present, and has a constantly
increasing hope in the future. Such was the happiness Madame de
la Vallière found among the pale-eyed votaries of the cloister, a
satisfaction of the soul which became perfect happiness when
death came to her after so many years of dying.

I wonder if there was no perfume left in the dried rose leaves in
her heart causing it to faint ofttimes by the way. A person of so
much sensibility must have had a wonderful capacity for
suffering. That her memory was ever alive to the past is evident
from the unrelenting austerity of her life, from her well-known
reply when informed of the death of her son, and from her
requesting Le Brun to paint her as Magdalen.

Remembering so many proofs of her conversion, we, too, say,
Neither do I condemn thee. No stone will I cast on thy grave; no
reproach on thy memory: for repentance effaced every earthly
stain, and thou art now sharing the joy there is in heaven over
one sinner that repenteth. Tears of penitent love mingled with
those of virgin innocence at the foot of the cross. Let them
still mingle there; we will not regard them with distrust or
disdain. We too have need to cry:

  "Drop, drop, slow tears
     I And bathe those beauteous feet.
   Which brought from heaven
     The news and Prince of peace.
   Cease not, wet eyes,
     For mercy to entreat:

{466}

   To cry for vengeance
     Sin doth never cease.
   In your deep floods
     Drown all my faults and fears:
   Nor let his eye
     See sin but through my tears."

Every one who looks deeply into his own heart finds a motive of
charity for the faults of others. A monk of Cluny hung up in his
cell the picture of a famous debauchee under which he placed his
own name. The surprised abbot asked the reason. It was to remind
him what grace alone prevented him from becoming. We are all
miracles of grace. It may be restraining or transforming. We are
not the less in need of it than those who have apparently sunk to
lower depths.

All these things passed through my mind while lingering in the
chapel of the Carmelites. In that chapel had resounded the grand
tones of the great Bossuet at the profession of Madame de la
Vallière, with his usual refrain--the emptiness of all earthly
things. "Away, earthly honors!" he said on that occasion, "all
your splendor but ill conceals our weaknesses and our faults;
conceals them from ourselves, but reveals them to
others."--"There are two kinds of love," he added, "one is the
love of ourselves, which leads to the contempt of God--that is
the old life, the life of the world. The other is the love of
God, which leads to the contempt of ourselves, and is the new
life of Christianity, which, carried to perfection, constitutes
the religious life. The soul, detached from the body by
mortification, freed from the captivity of the senses, sees
itself as it is--the source of all evil. It therefore turns then
against itself. Having fallen through an ill use of liberty, it
would be restrained on every side, by frightful grates, a
profound solitude, an impenetrable cloister, perfect obedience, a
rule for every action, a motive for every step, and a hundred
observant eyes. Thus hemmed in on all sides, the soul can only
fly heavenward. _Elle ne peut plus respirer que du côté du
ciel_"--a beautiful expression, recalling the lines from an
old manuscript poem in the _Bibliothèque Royal:_

  "Li cuers doit estre
   Semblans à l'encensoir
   Tous clos envers la terre
   Et overs vers le ciel."

The heart should be like a censer, closed toward earth and open
toward heaven; and such is the heart of the real spouse of
Christ.

When Bossuet had finished his discourse and the black veil was
placed upon the head of La Vallière, the whole audience wept
aloud. The Duchess de la Vallière was now Louise de la
Miséricorde, vowed to the rigorous life of the Carmelites, to
fasts and vigils, to sackcloth and ashes.

Philosophers say no motion is ever lost, and that every act is
photographed somewhere in the universe. Think of swelling the
choral song that will go on vibrating in the air for ever; of
sighs of penitence that go on sighing through space for ever in
the ears of a merciful God; of attitudes of adoring praise and
love, which are somewhere imaged, to be revealed at the last day
as a page in the great book that will decide our eternal fate.
How much better to be thus perpetuated than idle words, vain
songs, and all the graces of fashion only intended to please the
eye of a fellow-mortal.

After all, there is something in such a life that appeals to the
instincts of our nature. Even those who condemn it cannot but
admire. At least, they find it poetical. Who does not feel an
increased sentiment of respect for Dr. Johnson as he stands with
bared head, in the rain, where his father's book-stall was, in
the market place at Uttoxeter, to expiate an act of early
disobedience to his father?
{467}
"The picture of Samuel Johnson," says Carlyle, "standing
bare-headed in the market-place is one of the grandest and
saddest we can paint. The memory of old Michael Johnson rising
from the far distance, sad, beckoning in the moonlight of memory.
Repentance! repentance! he proclaims as with passionate sobs--but
only to the ear of heaven, if heaven will give him audience."

  "O heavy laden soul! kneel down and hear
      Thy penance in calm fear;
   With thine own lips to sentence all thy sin;
      Then, by the judge within
   Absolved, in thankful sacrifice to part
      For ever with thy sullen heart!"

----------

      The Physical Basis Of Life.
      [Footnote 128]

      [Footnote 128: _New Theory of Life_. Identity of the
      Powers and Faculties of all Living Matter. A Lecture by
      Professor T. H. Huxley. _New York World_, Feb. 18th,
      1869.]


We know this rather remarkable discourse only as republished in
the columns of _The New York World_, where it had a
sensational title which we have abridged. Professor Huxley's name
stands high among English physicists or scientists, and his
discourse indicates considerable natural ability, and familiarity
with the modern school of science which seeks the explanation of
the universe and its phenomena without recognizing a creator, or
any existence but ordinary matter and its various combinations.
The immediate purpose of the professor is to prove the physical
or material basis of life, and that life in all organisms is
identical, originating in and depending on what he calls the
protoplasm.

The protoplasm is formed of ordinary matter; say, carbon,
hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen. These elements combined in some
unknown way give rise to protoplasm; the protoplasm gives rise to
the plant, and, through the plant, to the animal; and hence all
life, feeling, thought, and reason originate in the peculiar
combination of the molecules of ordinary, inorganic matter. The
plant differs from the animal, and the animal from man, only in
the different combinations of the molecules of the protoplasm. We
see nothing in this theory that is new, or not as old as the
physics of the ancient Ionian school.

The only novelty that can be pretended is the assumption that all
matter, even inorganic, is, in a certain sense, plastic, and
therefore, in a rudimentary way, living. The same law governs the
inorganic and the organic world. But even this is not new. Many
years ago, Ralph Waldo Emerson asserted the identity of
gravitation and purity of heart, and we ourselves are by no means
disposed to deny that there is more or less analogy between the
formation of the crystal or the diamond and the growth of the
plant. It is not, perhaps, too much to say that the law of
creation is one law, and we have never yet been convinced of the
existence of absolutely inert matter. Whatever exists is, in its
order and degree, a _vis activa_, or an active force.
Matter, as the _potentia nuda_ of the schoolmen, is simple
possibility, and no real existence at all.
{468}
There is and can be no pure passivity in nature, or purely
passive existences. We would not therefore deny a certain
rudimentary plasticity to minerals, or what is called brute
matter, though we are not prepared to accept the plastic soul,
asserted by Plato, and revived and explained in the posthumous
and unfinished works of Gioberti under the term _methexis_,
which is copied or imitated by the _mimesis_, or the
individual and the sensible. Yet since, as the professor tells
us, the animal can take the protoplasm only as prepared by the
plant, must there not be in inorganic matter a preparation or
elaboration of the protoplasm for the use of the plant?

The professor speaks of the difficulty of determining the line of
demarcation between the animal and the plant; but is it difficult
to draw the line between the mineral and the plant, or between
the plant and the inorganic matter from which it assimilates its
food or nourishment? Pope sings,

  "See through this air, this ocean, and this earth,
   All matter _quick_, and bursting into birth;"

but we would like to have the professor explain how ordinary
matter, even if _quick_, becomes protoplasm, and how the
protoplasm becomes the origin and basis of the life of the plant.
Every plant is an organism with its central life within. Virchow
and Cl. Bernard by their late discoveries have proved that every
organism proceeds from an organite, ovule, or central cell, which
produces, directs, and controls or governs the whole organism,
even in its abnormal developments. They have also proved that
this ovule or central cell exists only as generated by a
pre-existing organism, or parent, of the same kind. The later
physiologists are agreed that there is no well authenticated
instance of spontaneous generation. Now this organite must exist,
live, before it can avail itself of the protoplasm formed of
ordinary matter, which is exterior to it, not within it, and
cannot be its life, for that moves from within outward, from the
centre to the circumference. Concede, then, all the facts the
professor alleges, they only go to prove that the organism
already living sustains its life by assimilating fitting elements
from ordinary matter. But they do not show at all that it derives
its life from them; or that the so-called protoplasm is the
origin, source, basis, or matter of organic life; or that it
generates, produces, or gives rise to the organite or central
cell; nor that it has anything to do with vitalizing it. Hence
the professor fails to throw any light on the origin, matter, or
basis of life itself.

It may or it may not be difficult in the lower organisms to draw
the line between the plant and the animal, and we shall urge no
objections to what the professor says on that point; we will only
say here that the animal organism, like the vegetable, is
produced, directed, and controlled by the central cell, and that
this cell or ovule is generated by animal parents. There is no
spontaneous generation, and no well authenticated instance of
metagenesis. Like generates like, and even Darwin's doctrine of
natural selection confirms rather than denies it. It is certain
that the vegetable organism has never, as far as science goes,
generated an animal organism. Arguments based on our ignorance
prove nothing. The protoplasm can no more produce or vitalize the
central animal than it can the central vegetable cell, and,
indeed, still less; for the animal cannot, as the professor
himself asserts, sustain its life by the protoplastic elements
till they have been prepared by the vegetable organism.
{469}
Whence, then, the animal germ, organite, or ovule? What vitalizes
it and gives it the power of assimilating the protoplasm as its
food, without which the organism dies and disappears?

Giving the professor the fullest credit for exact science in all
his statements, he does not, as far as we can see, prove his
protoplasm is the physical basis of life, or that there is for
life any physical basis at all. He only proves that matter is so
far plastic as to afford sustenance to a generated organic life,
which every farmer who has ever manured a field of corn or grass,
or reared a flock of sheep or a herd of cattle, knows, and always
has known, as well as the illustrious professor.

We can find a clear statement of several of the conditions of
life, both vegetable and animal, but no demonstration of the
principle of life, in the professor's very elaborate discourse.
Indeed, if we examine it closely, we shall find that he does not
even pretend to demonstrate anything of the sort. He denies all
means of science except sensible experience, and maintains with
Hume that we have no sensible experience of causes or principles,
all science, he asserts, is restricted to empirical facts with
their law, which, in his system, is itself only a fact or a
classification of facts. The conditions of life, as we observe
them, are for him the essential principle of life in the only
sense in which the word _principle_ has, or can have, for
him, an intelligible meaning. He proves, then, the physical basis
of life, by denying that it has any intelligible basis at all. He
proves, indeed, that the protoplasm, which he shows, or endeavors
to show, is universal--one and the same, always and everywhere
--is present in the already existing life of both the plant and
the animal; but that, whatever it be, in the plant or animal,
which gives it the power to take up the protoplasm and assimilate
it to its own organism, which is properly the life or vital
power, he does not explain, account for, or even recognize. With
him, power is an empty word. He nowhere proves that life is
produced, furnished, or generated by the protoplasm, or has a
material origin. Hence, the protoplasm, by his own showing, is
simply no protoplasm at all. He proves, if anything, that in
inorganic matter there are elements which the living plant or
animal assimilates, and into which, when dead, it is resolved.
This is all he does, and in fact, all he professes to do.

The professor makes light of the very grave objection, that
chemical analysis can throw no light on the principle or basis of
life, because it is or can be made only on the dead subject. He
of course concedes that chemical analysis is not made on the
living subject; but this, he contends, amounts to nothing. We
think it amounts to a great deal. The very thing sought, to wit,
life, is wanting in the dead subject, and of course cannot by any
possible analysis be detected in it. If all that constituted the
living subject is present in the dead body, why is the body dead,
or why has it ceased to perform its vital functions? The
protoplasm, or what you so call, is as present in the corpse as
in the living organism. If it is the basis of life, why is the
organism no longer living? The fact is, that life, while it
continues, resists chemical action and death, by a higher and
subtler chemistry of its own, and it is only the dead body that
falls under the action of the ordinary chemical laws. There is,
then, no concluding the principle or basis of life from any
possible dissection of the dead body.

{470}

The professor's answer to the objection is far from being
satisfactory.

  "Objectors of this class," he says, "do not seem to reflect ...
  that we know nothing about the composition of any body as it
  is. The statement that a crystal of calcspar consists of
  carbonate of lime is quite true, if we only mean that, by
  appropriate processes, it may be resolved into carbonic acid
  and quicklime. If you pass the same carbonic acid over the very
  quicklime thus obtained, you will obtain carbonate of lime
  again; but it will not be calc-spar, nor anything like it. Can
  it therefore be said that chemical analysis teaches nothing
  about the chemical composition of calc-spar? Such a statement
  would be absurd; but it is hardly more so than the talk one
  occasionally hears about the uselessness of applying the
  results of chemical analysis to the living bodies which have
  yielded them. One fact, at any rate, is out of reach of such
  refinements and this is, that all the forms of protoplasm which
  have yet been examined contain the four elements, carbon,
  hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen, in very complex union, and that
  they behave similarly toward several reagents. To this complex
  combination, the nature of which has never been determined with
  exactness, the name of protein has been applied. And if we use
  this term with such caution as may properly arise out of
  comparative ignorance of the things for which it stands, it may
  be truly said that all protoplasm is proteinaceous; or, as the
  white, or albumen, of an egg is one of the commonest examples
  of a nearly pure proteine matter, we may say that all living
  matter is more or less albuminoid. Perhaps it would not yet be
  safe to say that all forms of protoplasm are affected by the
  direct action of electric shocks; and yet the number of cases
  in, which the contraction of protoplasm is shown to be effected
  by this agency increases every day. Nor can it be affirmed with
  perfect confidence that all forms of protoplasm are liable to
  undergo that peculiar coagulation at a temperature of 40
  degrees--50 degrees centigrade, which has been called
  "heat-stiffening," though Kuhne's beautiful researches have
  proved this occurrence to take place in so many and such
  diverse living beings, that it is hardly rash to expect that
  the law holds good for all."

This long extract proves admirably how long, how learnedly, how
scientifically, a great man can talk without saying anything. All
that is here said amounts only to this: the conclusions obtained
by the analysis of the dead body cannot be denied to be
applicable to the living body, because we know nothing of the
composition of any body organic or inorganic, as it is. Therefore
all life has a physical basis! Take the whole extract, and all it
tells you is, that we know nothing of the subject it professes to
treat. "All the forms of protoplasm, which have yet been examined
contain the four elements, carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen
in very complex union." When chemically resolved into these four
elements, is it protoplasm still? Can you by a chemical process
reconvert them into protoplasm? No. Then what does the analysis
show of the nature of your physical basis of life? "To this
complex union, the nature of which _has never yet been
determined_, the name of protein has been applied." Very
important to know that. Yet this name protein names not something
known, but something the nature of which is unknown. What then
does it tell us? "If we use this term [protein] with such caution
as may properly arise out of our comparative _ignorance_ of
the things for which it stands, it may truly be said that all
protoplasm is proteinaceous." Be it so, what advance in
knowledge, since we are ignorant of what protein is? It is
wonderful what a magnificent structure our scientists are able to
erect on ignorance as the foundation.

The professor, after having confessed his ignorance of what the
alleged protoplasm really is, continues:

  "Enough has, perhaps, been said to prove the existence of a
  general uniformity in the character of the protoplasm, or
  physical basis of life, in whatever group of living beings it
  may be studied. But it will be understood that this general
  uniformity by no means excludes any amount of special
  modifications of the fundamental substance. The mineral,
  carbonate of lime, assumes an immense diversity of characters,
  though
{471}
  no one doubts that under all these protean changes it is one
  and the same thing. And now, what is the ultimate fate, and
  what the origin, of the matter of life? Is it, as some of the
  older naturalists supposed, diffused throughout the universe in
  molecules, which are indestructible and unchangeable in
  themselves; but, in endless transmigration, unite in
  innumerable permutations, into the diversified forms of life we
  know? Or is the matter of life composed of ordinary matter,
  differing from it only in the manner in which its atoms are
  aggregated. Is it built up of ordinary matter, and again
  resolved into ordinary matter when its work is done? Modern
  science does not hesitate a moment between these alternatives.
  Physiology writes over the portals of life,

    'Debemur morti nos nostraque,'

  with a profounder meaning than the Roman poet attached to that
  melancholy line. Under whatever disguise it takes refuge,
  whether fungus or oak, worm or man, the living protoplasm not
  only ultimately dies and is resolved into its mineral and
  lifeless constituents, but is always dying, and, strange as the
  paradox may sound, could not live unless it died."

Suppose all this to be precisely as asserted, it only proves that
there is diffused through the whole material world elements which
in certain unknown and inexplicable combinations, afford
sustenance to plants, and through plants to animals, or from
which the living organism repairs its waste and sustains its
life. It does not tell us how carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and
nitrogen are or must be combined to form the alleged protoplasm,
whence is the living organism, nor the origin or principle of its
life. It, in fact, shows us neither the origin nor the matter of
life, for it is only an actually living organism that uses or
assimilates the alleged protoplasm. There is evidently at work in
the organism a vital force that is distinguishable from the
irritability or contractility of the protoplasm, and not derived
from or originated by it. Undoubtedly, every organism that falls
under our observation, whether vegetable or animal, has its
physical conditions, and lives by virtue of a physical law; but
this, even when we have determined the law and ascertained the
conditions, throws no light on the life itself. The life escapes
all observation, and science is impotent, if it leaves out the
creative act of God, to explain it, or to bring us a step nearer
its secret. Professor Huxley tells us no more, with all his
science and hard words, than any cultivator of the soil, any
shepherd or herdsman, can tell us, and knows as well as he, as we
have already said.

In the last extract, the professor evidently prefers, of the two
alternatives he suggests, the one that asserts that "the matter
of life [protoplasm] is composed of ordinary matter, is built up
of ordinary matter, and resolved again into ordinary matter when
its work is done." This the professor applies to man as well as
to plants and animals. Hence, he cites the Roman poet,

  "Debemur morti nos nostraque."

But we have conceded the professor more than he asks. We have
conceded that all matter is, in a certain sense, plastic, and
living, in the sense of being active, not passive. But the
professor does not ask so much. We inferred from some things in
the beginning of his discourse that he intended to maintain that
his protoplasm is itself elemental, and pervading all nature. But
this is not the case; he merely holds it to be a chemical
compound formed by the peculiar chemical combination of lifeless
components. Thus he says:

{472}

  "But it will be observed that the existence of the matter of
  life depends on the pre-existence of certain compounds, namely,
  carbonic acid, water, and ammonia. Withdraw any one of these
  three from the world, and all vital phenomena come to an end.
  They are related to the protoplasm of the plant, as the
  protoplasm of the plant is to that of the animal. Carbon,
  hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen are all lifeless bodies. Of
  these, carbon and oxygen unite in certain proportions and under
  certain conditions, to give rise to carbonic acid; hydrogen and
  oxygen produce water; nitrogen and hydrogen give rise to
  ammonia. These new compounds, like the elementary bodies of
  which they are composed, are lifeless. But when they are
  brought together, under certain conditions they give rise to
  the still more complex body, protoplasm, and this protoplasm
  exhibits the phenomena of life. I see no break in this series
  of steps in my secular complication, and I am unable to
  understand why the language which is applicable to any one term
  of the series may not be used to any of the others."

But here is a break or a bold leap from a lifeless to a living
compound. No matter how different are the several chemical
compounds known from the simple components, the new compound is
always, as far as known, as lifeless as were the several
components themselves. Hydrogen and oxygen compounded give rise
to water, but water is lifeless. Hydrogen and nitrogen, brought
together in certain proportions, give rise to ammonia, still a
lifeless compound. No chemist has yet, by any combination of the
minerals, carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen, the
constituents of protoplasm, been able to produce a living plant
or a living organism of any sort. How then conclude that their
combination produces the matter of life, or gives rise to the
living organism? There seems to us to be a great gulf between the
premises and the conclusion. Certain combinations of carbon,
hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen produce certain lifeless compounds
different from themselves, _therefore_ a certain other
combination of these same elements produces the living organism,
plant, or animal, or originates the matter, and forms the
physical basis of life. If the professor had in his school days
reasoned in this way, his logic-master, we suspect, would have
set a black mark against his name, or, more likely, have rapped
him over the knuckles, if not over his head, and told him that an
argument that has no middle term, is no argument at all, and that
"Transitio a genere ad genus," as from the lifeless to the
living, is a sophism.

The professor is misled by his supposing that what is true of the
dead body must be true of the living. Because chemical analysis
resolves the dead body into certain lifeless elements, he
concludes that the living body is, while living, only a compound
of these same lifeless elements. That is, from what is true of
death, he concludes what must be true of life. But for this
fallacy, he could never have fallen into the other fallacy of
concluding life is only the result of a certain aggregate or
amalgam of lifeless minerals. Our scientists are seldom good
logicians, and we have rarely found them able, when leaving
traditional science, to draw even a logical induction from the
facts before them. This is wherefore they receive so little
respect from philosophers and theologians, who are always ready
to accept their facts, but, for the most part, unable to accept
their inductions. The professor has given us some valuable facts,
though very well known before; but his logical ineptness is the
best argument he has as yet offered in support of his favorite
theory that man is only a monkey developed.

In the extract next before the last, the professor revives an old
doctrine long since abandoned, that life is generated from
corruption. "Under whatever disguise it takes refuge, whether
fungus or oak, worm or man, the living protoplasm not only
ultimately dies and is resolved into its mineral and lifeless
constituents, but is _always dying, and, strange as the paradox
may sound, could not live unless it died._"
{473}
We know that some physiologists regard the waste of the body,
which in life is constantly going on, and which is repaired by
the food we take, as incipient death; but this is only because
they confound the particles or molecules of matter of which the
body is externally built up, and which change many times during
an ordinary life, with the body itself, and suppose the life of
the body is simply the resultant of the aggregation of these
innumerable molecules or particles. But the life of the organism,
we have seen, is within it, and its action from the centre, and
it is only its life, not its death, that throws off or exudes as
well as assimilates the material particles. The exudation as well
as the assimilation is interrupted by death. Why the protoplasm
could not live unless it died is what we do not understand.

The professor, of course, not only denies the immortality of the
soul, but the existence of soul itself. There is for him no soul
but the protoplasm formed of ordinary matter. All this we
understand very well. We understand, too, that on his theory the
protoplasm assimilated by the organism to repair its waste,
renews literally, not figuratively, the life of the organism. But
how he extracts life from death, and concludes that the
protoplasm must die, as the condition of living, passeth our
comprehension. We suppose, however, the professor found it
necessary to assert it in order to be able to reason from the
dead subject to the living. If the protoplasm were not dead, he
could not by chemical analysis determine its constituents; and if
the death of the protoplasm were not essential to its life, he
could not conclude the constituents of the living protoplasm from
what he finds to be the constituents of the dead protoplasm. But
this does not help him. In the first place, the waste of the
living organism is not death nor dying, though death may result
from it. And the supply of protoplasm in the shape of food does
not originate new life, nor replenish a life that is gone, but
supplies what is needed to sustain and invigorate a life that is
already life. In the second place, the vital force is not built
up by protoplastic accretions, but operates from within the
organism, from the organite or central cell, without which there
could be no accretions or secretions. The food does not give
life; it only ministers sustenance to an organism already living.
No chemical analysis of the food can disclose or throw any light
on the origin, nature, or constitution of the organic life
itself.

It is this fact that prevents us from having much confidence in
chemical physiology, which is still insisted on by our most
eminent physiologists. In every organism there is something that
transcends the reach of chemical analysis, and which no chemical
synthesis can reproduce. Take the professor's protoplasm itself.
He resolves it into the minerals, carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and
nitrogen: but no chemist can by any possible recombination of
them reproduce protoplasm. How then can one say that these
minerals are its sole constituents, or that there are not other
elements entering it which escape all chemical tests and, indeed,
are not subject to chemical laws? Chemistry is limited, and
cannot penetrate the essence of the material substance any more
than the eye can. It never does and never can go beyond the
sensible properties of matter. Life has its own laws, and every
physiologist knows that he meets in the living organism phenomena
or facts which it is impossible to reduce to any of the laws
which are obtainable from the analysis of inorganic or lifeless
matter.
{474}
It is necessary then to conclude that there is in the living
organism present and active some element which, though using
lifeless matter, cannot be derived from it, or explained by
physical laws, be they mechanical, chemical, or electrical. The
law of life is a law _sui generis_, and not resolvable into
any other. We must even go beyond the physical laws themselves,
if we would find their principle.

As far as human science goes, there is, where the nucleus of life
is wanting, no conversion of lifeless matter into living matter.
The attempt to prove that living organisms, plants, animals, or
man are developed from inorganic and lifeless matter, though made
as long ago as Leucippus and Democritus, systematized by
Epicurus, sung in rich Latin verse by Lucretius, and defended by
the ablest of modern British physico-philosophers, Mr. Herbert
Spencer, in his _Biology_, has by the sane part of the human
race in all times and everywhere been held to be foolish and
absurd. It has no scientific basis, is supported by no known
facts, and is simply an unfounded, at least, an unsupported
hypothesis. Life to the scientist is an insolvable mystery. We
know no explanation of this mystery or of anything else in the
universe, unless we accept the creative act of God; for the
origin and cause of nature are not in nature herself. We have no
other explanation of the origin of living organisms or of the
matter of life. God created plants, animals, and man, created
them living organisms, male and female created he them, and thus
gave them the power to propagate and multiply each its own kind,
by natural generation. The scientist will of course smile
superciliously at this old solution, insisted on by priests and
accepted by the vulgar; but though not a scientist, we know
enough of science to say from even a scientific point of view
that there is no alternative: either this or no solution at all.
The ablest men of ancient or modern times, when they reject it,
only fall into endless sophisms and self-contradictions.

Professor Huxley admits none but material existences, concedes
that the terms of his proposition are unquestionably
materialistic, and yet denies that he is individually a
materialist.

  "It may seem a small thing to admit that the dull vital actions
  of a fungus, or a foraminifer, are the properties of their
  protoplasm, and are the direct results of the nature of the
  matter of which they are composed. But if, as I have endeavored
  to prove to you, their protoplasm is essentially identical
  with, and most readily converted into, that of any animal, I
  can discover no logical halting place between the admission
  that such is the case, and the further concession that all
  vital action may, with equal propriety, be said to be the
  result of the molecular forces of the protoplasm which displays
  it. And if so, it must be true, in the same sense and to the
  same extent, that the thoughts to which I am now giving
  utterance, and your thoughts regarding them, are the expression
  of molecular changes in the matter of life which is the source
  of other vital phenomena. Past experience leads me to be
  tolerably certain that, when the propositions I have just
  placed before you are accessible to public comment and
  criticism, they will be condemned by many zealous persons, and
  perhaps by some of the wise and thoughtful. I should not wonder
  if 'gross and brutal materialism' were the mildest phrase
  applied to them in certain quarters. And most undoubtedly the
  terms of the propositions are distinctly materialistic.
  Nevertheless, two things are certain: the one, that I hold the
  statement to be substantially true; the other, that I,
  individually, am no materialist, but on the contrary believe
  materialism to involve grave philosophical error."

{475}

If what he has been from the first endeavoring to prove, and here
distinctly asserts, is not materialism and consequently by his
own confession, "a grave philosophical error," we know not what
would be. "This union of materialistic terminology with the
repudiation of the materialistic philosophy," he says, further
on, "I share with some of the most thoughtful men with whom I am
acquainted." His terminology is, then, better fitted to conceal
his thought than to express it. He may repudiate this or that
materialistic system; he may repudiate all philosophy, which he,
of course does, yet not his terminology only, but his thought, as
far as thought he has, is materialistic. Nothing can be more
materialistic than the conception of life, sense, sentiment,
affection, thought, reasoning, all the sensible, intellectual,
and moral phenomena we are conscious of, as the product of the
peculiar arrangement or combination of the molecules of the
protoplasm, itself resolvable into the minerals, carbon,
hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen.

The scientific professor defends himself from materialism, by
asserting that both materialism and spiritualism lie without the
limits of human science, and by denying the necessity of a
substance, whether spirit or matter, to underlie and sustain--we
should say, produce--the phenomena, and the necessary relation of
cause and effect, or that we do or can know things under any
relation but that of juxtaposition in space and time. He falls
back on the skepticism of Hume, and takes refuge behind his
ignorance. He is too ignorant either to assert or to deny the
existence of spirit, and though he may not be able to prove the
phenomena in question are the product of material forces, nobody
knows enough of the nature and essence of matter to say that they
are not; and in fine, he in the first part of his discourse is
only stating the direction in which physiology has for some time
been moving. After all, what is the difference, or rather, what
matters "the difference between the conception of life as the
product of a certain disposition of material molecules, and the
old notion of an Archaeus governing and directing blind matter
within each living body?"

But if matter lies out of the limits of science, and the
professor is unable to say whether it exists or not, what right
has he to call anything material, to speak of a material basis of
life, or to represent life and its phenomena as the product of "a
certain disposition of material molecules"? What, indeed, has he
been laboring to prove through his whole discourse, but that the
phenomena of life are the product of ordinary matter? After this,
it will hardly answer to plead ignorance of the existence and
properties of matter. If matter be relegated to the region of the
unknowable, his whole thesis, terminology and all, must be
banished with it, for it retains, and can retain, no meaning.

Nor will it answer for the professor to take refuge in Hume's
skepticism, and say he is not a materialist, because he admits no
necessary relation between cause and effect, or that there is
within the limits of science, any power or force, or _vis
activa_, which men in their ignorance call "cause," actually
producing something which men call "effect." If he says this,
what becomes of his thesis, that life and even mind are the
_product_ of a certain disposition of material molecules, or
of "the peculiar combination of the molecules of the protoplasm"?
If he denies the existence, or even the knowledge of causative,
that is, productive force, his thesis has no meaning, and all his
alleged proofs of a physical basis of the vital and mental
phenomena must count for nothing.
{476}
Every proof, every argument, presupposes the relation of cause
and effect. When that relation is denied, and the two things are
assumed to have with each other only the relation of
juxtaposition, no proposition can be either proved or disproved.
The professor, after having asserted and attempted to prove his
materialistic thesis, cannot, without gross self-contradiction,
plead the skepticism of Hume in his defence. If he holds with
Hume, he should have kept his mouth shut, and never stated or
attempted to prove his thesis.

Whether we are or are not able to prove that life, sense, and
reason do not originate in the peculiar "combination of the
molecules of the protoplasm," is nothing to the purpose. It is
for the professor to prove that they do. He must not base his
science on our ignorance, any more than on his own.

But our space is exhausted and we must close. Taken, as we have
taken him, on what he must concede to be purely scientific
ground, and brought to a strictly scientific test, the
professor's thesis must be declared not proven, and to be
destitute of all scientific value. We have met him on his own
ground, and have urged no arguments against him drawn from
religion or metaphysics; we have simply corrected one or two
mistakes in his science, and assailed his inductions with pure
logic. If he has not reasoned logically, that is his fault, not
ours, and neither he nor his friends have any right to complain
of us for showing that his inductions are illogical, and
therefore unscientific. Yet we are bound to say that the
professor reasons as well as any of his class of scientists that
we have met with. No man can reason logically who rejects the
[Greek text], that is, logic itself, and nothing better than
Professor Huxley's discourse can be expected from a scientist who
discards all causes and seeks to explain the existence and
phenomena or facts of the universe, without rising from second
causes to the first and final cause of all.

Two questions are raised by this discourse, of great and vital
importance. The one as to the _nexus_ between cause and
effect, in answer to Hume's skepticism, and the other as to
spirit and matter, and their reciprocal relation. We have not
attempted the discussion of either in this article; but should a
favorable occasion offer, we may hereafter treat them both at
some length.

----------

{477}

            Two Months In Spain
         During The Late Revolution.


  Gibraltar.
  October 7.

At an early hour yesterday we left Cadiz, which did indeed look
like a "silver cup floating on the water," as the Spaniards say
of it. As the steamer bore us away, the rising sun upon its white
towers and cathedral dome, the belvideres which adorn the roof of
every house, (making each look like a church,) the lovely green
alameda, the distant mountains, the pretty white towns on the
shore, the hundreds of vessels in the sparkling bay, all made an
enchanting scene, from which we were recalled to the miseries of
sea-sickness! From time to time, we crept upon deck to see the
fine sea view, and when we came to Tarifa, near the straits, the
scene was magnificent. On one side, the mountains of Africa,
Tangier in the distance; on the other, the mountains of Spain and
the Moorish-looking town of Tarifa, with an island on which is
the lighthouse and defences standing directly in the mouth of the
straits; so that it seemed as if a long line of vessels with
their white sails spread were encompassing the island. In sight,
at one time, were eighty sail. Every nation under the sun seemed
represented, as they saluted one another with their flags. Among
the rest, Sweden and Norway. We landed at Gibraltar under a
glorious sunset. The farewell beams lighted the mountains with a
tint of gilded bronze. Gibraltar, opposite these, was like a huge
gray mountain, and behind it the sky was of the palest rose
color, melting into blue where it touched the water. The town is
on the side and at the foot of the "Rock," (a place of sixteen or
twenty thousand inhabitants,) and above it are the famous
galleries cut through the rock, from which we could see the noses
of the great guns peeping from the port-holes, range after range,
one above another, till the top is reached, where is the Signal.

The Rock of Gibraltar is 1430 feet high, and about three miles
long--a great gray sphinx jutting into the water. It is joined to
the mainland by a narrow slip of sand, capable of being submerged
if necessary. Upon this neck of land is the "neutral ground," (a
narrow strip,) where, side by side, the fair British sentinel and
the sunburned Spaniard keep their "lonely round." We mount upon
donkeys to ascend the "Rock," passing through the wonderful
"galleries" which, at an immense expense, have been cut into the
solid rock, where, with the guns, are depositories for powder,
balls, etc. Some of these galleries are over a mile and a quarter
long, lighted by the port-holes, which, in passing, gave us
glimpses of the loveliest of landscapes. Leaving the galleries,
we ascend by zigzag paths to the Signal; at every turn feasting
our eyes upon the wonderful panorama spread out below us, which
is seen in perfection from the summit. Here we looked down upon
two seas, the Atlantic and the Mediterranean, and two worlds,
Europe and Africa! Spain on one side, with the snowy heights of
the Alpujarras and Sierra Nevada; at our feet, the town of
Gibraltar, with the lovely  alameda, its green trees and bright
gardens, the glorious bay crowded with shipping--men-of-war,
school ships, steamers, and every small craft; and, seemingly,
but a stone's throw across lay Ceuta, at the foot of that other
"Pillar of Hercules" which rises 2200 feet, and looks like a
mountain of bronze, while Gibraltar is of gray granite.
{478}
These two great pillars were considered in the olden time the end
of the world--the Tarshish of the Bible; the Calpe of the
Phoenicians, who erected here Calpe (carved mountain) and Abyla.

Tarik, the one-eyed Berber chief, took Gibraltar in 711, and
called it after his own name, Ghebal Tarik, from whence comes
Gibraltar.

While upon the "Signal," we signalize the event by taking a lunch
of delicious English cheese, bread and butter, (the first butter
we have had in Spain,) and such ale! And while thus agreeably
engaged, we hear that an American man-of-war is coming into port,
which proves to be the flagship of Admiral Farragut; so we repair
to the rampart to see the ship saluted by the town, and then by
the British frigate Bristol, to both of which the Yankee replied
in gallant style. It was a fine sight, and, altogether, the scene
a most remarkable one. Down by the neutral ground, some English
officers playing cricket looked like ants in the sunshine; the
blue guard-tents of the English sentinels, and the white ones of
the Spaniards, were little specks, and the Christian and Jewish
cemeteries were like checker work on the greensward.

How longingly we looked toward the purple mountains of Africa,
and that beautiful city of Tangier which we had hoped to visit!
but the quarantine, still in force, obliged us to abandon the
idea. It would have been _something_ to set foot in another
continent! Ceuta, which belongs to Spain, and is but a
prison-house, could not tempt us. Tearing ourselves from this
wonderful scene, we descended by the other side of the mountain
and entered the city by beautiful gardens near the alameda,
seeing below us the government houses, store-houses, magazines,
and many fine residences embowered in gardens of tropical trees
and plants; whole hedges of geraniums and cactus lined the
roadside, and almond trees, dates, and oranges. We passed a
convent-school with beautiful and extensive gardens. In the
evening there is music on the alameda, where are trees and
statues, and marble benches, on which sit the motley population
of this strange place; Moors in turbans, bare-legged Highlanders,
officers in scarlet, Andalusians in the red faja, Irishmen fresh
from their native isle, ladies in French bonnets and English
round hats next the Spanish mantilla and ever-moving fan.
Gibraltar is a free port, and every people and kindred meet here
for trade. The garrison is very large, about three thousand men
in time of peace; for the Spaniards see the occupation of this
important point in their country with great jealousy, and would
gladly seek occasion to win it back. And every now and then the
subject is mooted in the English parliament of giving it up, as
it is a most expensive appendage to the English people, and can
bring little benefit save to their pride.

{479}

      Malaga Hotel Alameda.

October 8.

Leaving Gibraltar at an early hour, and passing the forest of
ships in the bay, we soon see the last of the pillars of Hercules
and the African coast. The sea is calm, and the coast of Spain
along which we come is most beautiful. There is something
peculiarly interesting in the mountains of Spain; they seem to
rise hill upon hill till they grow to be mountains, and instead
of the blue of most southern countries they are of a mulberry
hue--seldom with trees, and reminding one of the purple moors of
Scotland. The steamer is crowded with families returning from
Gibraltar, whither they had fled to get out of the way of the
revolution.

We find a busy, crowded city, a lovely bay with mountains in the
background, an old Moorish castle overlooking the city, and a
beautiful alameda, with trees, and statues, and marble seats,
upon which we look from the windows of our delightful hotel.


October 9.

The first thing to-day is to drive to a lovely villa, (that of
the Marquis de Casa Loring,) in whose garden we see every fruit
and flower and tree of the tropics. Bananas and mangoes, the
coffee-tree, the magnolia and India-rubber trees, and among all
these we found, and ate, ripe persimmons!--that homely fruit of
old Virginia, found amidst all these oriental splendors; and
sweeter were they than even the oranges which we gathered from
their overladen trees. Returning, we paused to see another villa,
from whence is a more extensive and beautiful view of the
mountains, the city and the sea, and the fertile plateau upon
which Malaga lies, and which is said to rival even the famous
huertas of Valencia and Murcia in variety and luxuriance of
vegetation. The cemetery gives another favorite point of view,
and the old Moorish castle (Gibralfaro) has even a finer one; but
the day is too warm to attempt the ascent. The castle dates from
1279, and the lower portion, (the Alcazaba,) which is connected
with it, is supposed to be of Phoenician origin; Malaga having
been first a Phoenician colony, and afterwards Roman. Of the
remains of the Roman period, we saw two interesting bronze slabs
in a pavilion of the Villa Loring this morning, one of them
containing the municipal laws of Malaga under Domitian, and the
other those of a city (Salpense) now unknown.

The interior of the cathedral, which rises upon the site of an
ancient mosque, is not at all remarkable. It was begun in 1528.
The church of "El Cristo del Victoria" is interesting, from the
circumstance of its being built on the spot where stood the tents
of the Catholic kings during the siege of 1487. On the right of
the altar hangs the royal standard of Ferdinand, and on the left
the one taken from the Moors. When the city surrendered, the
former was hoisted on the castle, or alcazaba. Opposite this
church is a small church, San Roque, the first Christian edifice
built here by Ferdinand and Isabella. The crucifix which was
formerly here was the one brought by their majesties, is highly
revered, and is now over the high altar of Santa Victoria.

Malaga is famed for its climate, the best in Spain. It is
considered drier, warmer, and more equable than that of Rome,
Pau, Naples, or Nice, even superior to Madeira. Invalids flock
here, and it will soon be as crowded as Nice. The extreme dryness
of the air is its marked feature, and it is said that there are
not ten days in the whole year when an invalid may not take
out-door exercise. The evaporation is so great, the rain has no
influence on the air. During nine years, it has rained only two
hundred and sixty times. The "oldest inhabitant" does not
remember to have seen snow, and the cold winds from the Sierra
Nevada are kept off by the mountains immediately surrounding the
city.
{480}
To show the longevity of the inhabitants, in the year 1860,
twenty-nine out of five thousand deaths were of people who had
lived to the ages of _ninety or a hundred_.


                 Granada.

October 10

This morning we leave Malaga at an early hour by rail, the road
being cut through extraordinary mountain passes to Antiquera, an
old Roman and Moorish town; from thence by diligence to Loja,
where we again take the railway. The journey is altogether
delightful, the day being cool and bright, and the mountain
scenery on either side grand and beautiful. Loja is in a narrow
valley, through which runs the Genil river, on one side the
Periquete Hills (Sierra Ronda) and the Hacho. The Manzanil unites
here with the Genil, both rapid and clear mountain streams
fertilizing a lovely valley. Soon after leaving Loja, we reach
Santa Fé, (Holy Faith,) built by Queen Isabella to shelter her
army in winter during the siege of Granada in 1492, and called
"Santa Fé" because she looked upon the war as a struggle for the
faith, and believed piously in its happy issue. This little town
has been the scene of many important operations and political
acts. It witnessed the signing of the capitulation of Granada,
and it was to this town that Columbus was recalled by Isabella
when he had already reached the bridge of Piños, behind the
mountains, determining to ask aid elsewhere for his great
undertaking.

Darkness now fell upon us, and except one exquisite view which
the setting sun gave of the snow mountains over Granada, we saw
nothing till we reached this last stronghold of the Moors in
Spain, and found lodgings inside the Alhambra grounds in the
Hotel Washington Irving.


October 11.

We go first to the Cathedral, to hear the high mass, and pay our
respects to the remains of Ferdinand and Isabella, which rest
there. Driving through beautiful ornamental grounds out of the
Alhambra gate, down a steep hill in the old Moorish looking city,
we find the cathedral, like that of Malaga, greatly ornamented,
(in the Greco-Roman style,) built in 1529. Within the sanctuary
are eleven pictures by Alonzo Caño, and two of his most
celebrated pieces of sculpture--the heads of Adam and Eve carved
in cork. Caño was a native of Granada, and is buried in the
Cathedral Bocanegra. Another of the celebrated artists of Spain
was also a native here, and the cathedral has several of his
pictures. But everything connected with the church sinks into
insignificance when one enters into the royal chapel, where all
that can perish of the great Ferdinand and Isabella lies (a small
space for so much greatness, as Charles V. said.) In a crypt,
below the chapel, in plain leaden coffins, with but the simple
initial of each king and queen upon them, are the coffins of
Ferdinand and Isabella and their daughter Joanna, with her
husband Philip I. (the handsome)--the last--that very coffin
which the poor crazed Joanna carried about with her for
forty-seven years, embraced with such frantic grief, and would
never be parted from. Nothing was so affecting as the sight of
this--not even the remembrance of all Isabella's glories and
goodness! So does an instance of heart devotion touch one more
than even the sight of greatness. Above the vault are the four
beautiful alabaster monuments, made by order of Charles V. to the
memory of his father and mother and his grandparents.
{481}
Ferdinand and Isabella, with their statues, lie side by side; and
poor Joanne la Folle looks lovely and placid (all her jealousies
over) beside the husband she adored, as if at last sure that she
could not be divided from him. Isabella died at Medina del Campo,
(near Segovia, about thirty miles from Madrid,) but desired to be
buried here in the bright jewel which she had won as well for her
crown as for her God. Her body was taken to Granada in December,
journeying over trackless moors amidst storms and torrents, of
which the faithful and learned Peter Martyr gives account, who
accompanied his beloved mistress to her last home.

The inscription which runs around the cornice tells: "This chapel
was founded by their most Catholic Majesties, Don Fernando and
Doña Isabel, king and queen of las Españas of Naples, of
Sicily--of Jerusalem--who conquered this kingdom, and brought it
back to our faith; who acquired the Canary Islands and Indies, as
well as the cities of Oran, Tripoli, and Bugia; who crushed
heresy, expelled the Moors and Jews from their realms, and
reformed religion. The queen died Tuesday, November 26, 1504; the
king died January 23, 1516. The building was completed in 1517."

The _bassi relievi_ on the altar in this chapel are very
interesting, from the scenes they represent--Ferdinand and
Isabella receiving the keys of Granada from Boabdil, etc. At each
end of the altar are figures of the king and queen in the costume
of the day, the banner of Castile behind the king. In the
sacristy is the crown of Isabella, the sword of Ferdinand, the
casket in which she gave the jewels to Columbus, some vestments
embroidered by her own hand, and the tabernacle used on the altar
where they heard mass, on which is a picture of the adoration of
the Magi, by that wonderful old painter Hemling of Bruges. Lord
Bacon has said of Isabella: "In all her relations of queen or
woman, she was an honor to her sex, and the corner-stone of the
greatness of Spain--one of the most faultless characters in
history--the purest sovereign by whom the female sceptre was ever
wielded."

We hear mass in the chapel of the Sagrario, a beautiful church in
itself. It was on one of its three doors that the Spanish knight
Hernan Perez del Pulgar (during the siege of Granada) nailed the
words, "Ave Maria;" to accomplish which feat, he entered the town
at dusk, and left it unharmed--nay, even amidst the plaudits of
the Arabs, who appreciated the deed. He is buried in one of the
chapels called "Del Pulgar."

From the Cathedral we visit the "Cartuja," once a wealthy
Carthusian convent, built upon grounds given to the monks by
Gonzales de Cordova--"El gran Capitan." In the refectory is shown
a cross, painted on the wall by Cotan, which so well imitates
wood that the very birds fly to it, and try to perch there. The
church has a beautiful statue of St. Bruno upon the altar; and a
larger one in the chapel of the Sagrario, by Alonzo Caño, is
especially fine. The sacristy is rich in marbles from the Sierra
Nevada, and the doors and other wood-work of the church and
chapel are made of the most curious and beautiful inlaid
work--tortoise-shell, ebony, silver, and mother of pearl--all
done by one monk, who took forty-two years to accomplish it; and
after so adorning this chapel, behold! the monks are driven from
it.

In the church are several lovely pictures--a head of our Lord by
Murillo; a copy, by Alonzo Caño, of the Viergo del Rosario in the
Madrid gallery, and a copy of one of the "Conceptions" of Murillo
--that one with the fair flowing hair, so very lovely.

{482}

Returning home, we have our first view of the snow mountains,
(Sierra Nevada.) How strange and how charming to be beneath a
tropical sun, and with all the beautiful vegetation of Africa and
the Indies, with people all eastern in dress and manners, and see
above one snow-capped mountains like the glaciers of Switzerland!
Owing to the proximity of these glaciers, the heat is never
intolerable here, and yet the winters are so mild they seldom
need fire in their sitting-rooms or parlors.

October 12.

To-day is made memorable by our first visit to the Alhambra.
Situated on a high hill, on either side of which flows the Darro
and the Genil, this space, which occupies several hundred acres,
was formerly surrounded by walls and towers, and contained within
it the palaces and villas of the Kalifs of Granada; and so
numerous were these that it was called a city, Medina Alhambra.
Of all these, there now remains but that portion of the Alhambra
known as the summer-palace, (the winter-palace having been torn
down by Charles V. to make room for a palace which he never
finished.) Besides this summer-palace, there is the "Generalife,"
(a summer-palace built--later than the Alhambra--in 1319;) the
remains of the Alcazabar, (fortress,) the Torre de la Vega, where
the bell strikes the hours in the same manner as in the Moorish
days, to signify upon whom devolves the duty of irrigating the
"vega," the beautiful and fertile plain below; the tower of the
captive; tower of the princesses; the tower of the "Siete
Suetos," (seven stories;) and the Torres Bermujas, (Red Towers.)
The last named are outside the Alhambra walls, but are on the
same hill, and claim to belong to an older date than even the
Moors or the Goths--supposed to be of Phoenician origin. The
walls are entered by several gates, some Arabic, and others more
modern. From these gates, you wander among stately avenues of
trees, with flowers and shrubs and charming paths, through which
now and then is seen a glimpse of the yellow towers, or some
picturesque ruin, altogether a scene of enchanting beauty. And
when upon one of the "miradors" (look-outs) or terraces which
crown these towers and palaces, there lies the Moorish city at
your feet, the grand snow mountains on the east, the beautiful
vega stretching to the mountains on the west, down which marched
the conquering Christians; and on the south lies that mountain so
poetically called "the last sigh of the Moor," from which Boabdil
looked his last upon the kingdom he was leaving for ever, and
where his mother made him the famous reproach which has passed
into history, that he did well to weep as a woman over that
kingdom he could not defend as a man.

And how venture to describe the Alhambra, which has been written
of by such men as Prescott and Irving! how give to any one an
idea of that which is unique in the world, of the grace and
beauty and wonderful variety of its adornments--the carvings like
lace, the bright colored mosaics and azuelos, (tiles,) the
transparent stucco work and filagree, the inlaid cedar-wood
roofs, the pillars, the domes and fountains, the courts, the
beautiful arches! We enter first the Court of the Myrtles, in
which a large square pool, filled by a fountain at either end, is
surrounded by a hedge of fragrant myrtle, and this in turn by a
marble colonnade, over which is a second gallery, with jalousies,
through which we could imagine the dark eyed beauties to have
peeped.
{483}
The roofs of these galleries are of cedar-wood inlaid, and the
arches and sides of exquisite wreaths and vines in stucco, with
shields of the Moorish kings, mottoes and verses from the Koran,
etc. This court was a place of ablutions for the kalifs.

From the Court of the Myrtles, one sees the Tower of Comares,
(called from the name of its Persian architect;) and within this
tower, opening from the Court of Myrtles, and preceded by its
"antesala" is the Hall of the Ambassadors, the largest, highest,
and most beautifully adorned of all the Alhambra. Here was the
sultan's throne and reception room. On three sides, arched
windows look down into the deep ravine from which the tower
rises; and, beyond, upon an enchanting prospect, the old Moorish
city and the verdant hills and mountains. The roof of this hall
is a sort of imitation of the vault of heaven, and that of the
"antesala" (called "La Barca," from being shaped like a boat) is
also very elegant.

On another side the Court of Myrtles is the famous Court of the
Lions, with its one hundred and thirty-six pillars of white
marble, its twelve lions in the centre, supporting an alabaster
basin, (a fountain.) At each end, a pavilion projects into the
court, with arabesque patterns so light and graceful that the
very daylight is seen through the stucco.

Opening from the Court of the Lions is the Hall of the
Abencerrages, deriving its name from the legend according to
which Boabdil invited the chiefs of the illustrious family of
that name to a feast, and had them taken out one by one and
beheaded. Others assert that they were murdered in this hall, and
show the stains of blood in the marble of the fountain. As they
had been mainly instrumental in placing him upon the throne, this
act of ingratitude helped to his ruin. This story is generally
believed, but Washington Irving has rescued the name of this
"unlucky" one (_el chico_) from this unjust aspersion. His
investigations prove that the crimes laid to the charge of
Boabdil were in reality committed by his father, Aben Hassin. He
it was who murdered the thirty-six Abencerrages upon suspicion of
having conspired against him, and it was he who confined his
queen in the "tower of the captive," etc.

On the east side of the Court of the Lions is the "Sale del
Tribunal," (the hall of justice,) where the kalifs gave audience
on state affairs. Three arches in the centre and two at either
end lead into this hall, which is ninety feet long by sixteen
wide, with a dome thirty-eight feet high. This is divided by
arches into seven rooms, all profusely ornamented, and in the
ceilings of several recesses are paintings of Moors, with
cimeters, castles, etc. In one of these rooms is the famous
Alhambra vase of porcelain, four feet three inches high, which
was found full of gold. In another small room are three
tombstones, one of Mohammed II., and one of Yusef III., found in
the tomb-house of the Moorish kings, near the Court of the Lions,
in 1574. They have long and elaborate inscriptions, one of which
reads thus:

  "In the name of God, the most merciful and clement!

  "May God's blessing for ever rest with this our king!

  "Health and peace!

  "Gentle showers from heaven come down on this tomb, and give it
  freshness, and the orchard spread its perfume upon it. What
  this tomb contains is wine without admixture, and myrtles.
  Reward and pardon be granted to him who lies within.

  "It was God's pleasure that he should dwell amid the garden of
  delights.

  "Those that inhabit those happy regions come forth to meet him
  with palms in their hands.

{484}

  "If thou wouldst know the story of him who lies in the tomb,
  listen. He was a prince above all in excellence. May God give
  him sanctity!

  "He was cut down into the dust. Yet the Pleiades themselves are
  not his equals.

  "Unavoidable fate took up arms, and aimed at the very throne of
  the empire.

  "Oh! how great was his fame. His excellence, how high! and
  unbounded his virtues!

  "For Abul Hadjaj was like the moon that points out the road to
  take, and when the sun went down its brightness beamed no less
  from his eyes.

  "Abul Hadjaj showered down tokens of his liberality. But
  drought is come; his liberality has ceased; his crops are
  gathered.

  "His generosity is forgotten; his halls are lonesome; his
  ministers silent, and his rooms deserted.

  "But it was God's pleasure, the merciful one, (may he be
  glorified,) to take him into the eternal dwelling when he
  deprived him of life.

  "Here lies he softly, within this narrow tomb, but his real
  dwelling is the heart of every man.

  "Why should I not pray God that the rain should moisten his
  tomb with its abundant dew? for the rain of his liberality
  showered down upon all without ceasing.

  "Was he not filled with the fear of God, with gentleness and
  wisdom? Amongst his qualities, were not virtue, liberality, and
  magnificence one part?

  "Was he not the only one that with his science cleared up all
  doubts?

  "Was not poetry one of his attributes, and did he not deck his
  throne with verses like strings of pearl?

  "Was he not always stout, and held his ground in the
  battle-field?

  "How many enemies his sword repelled!

  "But Ebn Nasr, his successor, is certainly the greatest among
  all monarchs of the earth.

  "May God protect him!

  "For he is most generous and victorious; besides, he
  distributes rewards generously. He has saved the kingdom from
  ruin, and restored it to its former greatness."

The Hall of the Two Sisters takes its name from two white slabs
of equal size in the pavement. Here are beautiful arches, windows
with painted jalousies, a fountain, and a wonderful roof,
composed of three thousand pieces in little miniature domes and
vaults, all colored in delicate blue and red with white and gold.
From this hall, indeed quite from the Court of the Lions, one
sees through a series of arched entrances into the "Corredor de
Lindaraja," in which room are thirteen little cupolas, and the
Mirador de Lindaraja (a boudoir of the sultana) looks upon the
garden of Lindaraja, with flowers, and fountains, and
orange-trees.

On the opposite of this lovely garden, and looking into it, are
the rooms occupied by Washington Irving, those built by Philip V.
for his beautiful queen, Elizabeth of Parma, whom the Spanish
call "Isabel Farnese." Several corridors here lead to modernized
parts of the building--" the queen's boudoir," a chapel made by
Charles V. out of the mosque, and a lofty tower, used by the
Arabs as an oratory for the evening prayer, and from which the
view is superb--the "Generalife" with its white towers, the woods
of the Alhambra, the Darro far below in the deep gorge, and,
beyond and above all, the snow-capped Sierra Nevada.

The "Patio de la Mosquita" (the court of the mosque) has only the
remains of its beautiful roof.

From this to the baths is a long corridor leading to the Chamber
of Rest, which has just been restored by Sig. Contreras, the able
architect who is repairing the whole building, by order of the
queen. This has a fountain in the centre, marble pillars all
round, a gallery above, where the musicians played and sung while
the bather inclined upon the cushions below; within were the
marble baths of the sultan, the sultana, etc.

{485}

"Generalife" means garden of pleasure, and here garden above
garden rises upon the mountain side, through which the Darro
rushes noisily, being brought by a little canal quite through the
mountain. In one of the rooms are some interesting portraits of
the kings and queens of Spain. Ferdinand and Isabella, Philip the
handsome, Jeanne la Folle, Charles V. and Isabella, Don John of
Austria, etc.; and in a second room a series of portraits of the
Dukes of Granada, whose descendant, now married to an Italian
nobleman of Genoa, owns this lovely place. The founder of this
house was a converted Moor, and to his descendants (the houses of
Venegas and Granada) Philip IV. made this a perpetual grant. In
one of the many gardens are some cypress-trees planted by the
Moors, seven hundred years old. Under one of these, a love story
is said to have been enacted, of which the beautiful Sultana
Zorayda is the heroine. Amongst the portraits in the picture
gallery is one of Boabdil, fair and handsome, with yellow hair,
and a gentle, amiable look. He may not have had the qualities
fitted to the terrible emergency in which he was placed, when
domestic contention and misrule had so weakened his empire as to
make it difficult to struggle against the growing greatness of
Ferdinand and Isabella; but he must have possessed qualities
which won for him the love of his people, for many years after
his time, the Moors who still lingered about Granada sung the
plaintive song said to have been composed by Boabdil himself,
relating his misfortunes and his sorrows, spoke of him
reverently, and lamented his fate.

It is said he lived to see his children begging their bread at
the door of the mosques in Fez. He was killed in Africa, fighting
the battles of the prince who gave him shelter.

We hasten from the Generalife to see the sunset from the Torre de
la Vega, which is the finest view we have had of the city--the
Vega with the lovely rivers winding through it, and the grand
mountains beyond. As the sun declined, from the many church bells
came the "Ave Maria," soft and musical from the great distance
below.

The guide points out the hospital founded by St. John of God, (a
Portuguese saint,) the founder of the brothers of charity now
spread all over Europe. According to the guide, the saint asked
the king for as much land, on which to build this hospital, as he
could enclose in a certain number of hours. Of course he was
miraculously assisted; and by working all night, he took in so
great a space that the king became alarmed. Here he built this
hospital and the church in which he is buried. He lost his life
rescuing a drowning man, and died blessing Granada.


Tuesday.

Spent the whole morning in the Alhambra, wandering amid its
beauties, feasting upon its romantic memories, and reading at
intervals the charming legends connected with every spot so
delightfully told by Washington Irving. In the hall of the
tribunal, we read his account of the entrance of the triumphant
Ferdinand and Isabella, and fancy the scene when Cardinal Mendoza
celebrated the first mass here.

Seated in the Court of the Lions, we meditate upon the cruel
death of the noble Abencerrages, and lean from the window of the
Tower of Comares, down which the good Ayesha let her infant son
Boabdil escape, to save him from the jealous fury of her rival
Zorayda.

{486}

And then, in the later days of the beautiful Elizabetta of Parma,
we recall the scene where the hypochondriac Philip persists in
being laid out for dead, and can only be brought to life by the
voice and lute of the fair maiden, "the Rose of the Alhambra."

In contrast to the Alhambra are the remains of the palace begun
with such magnificence by Charles V., of which only the walls
remain. Within their vast area and amongst its marble pillars,
muleteers were depositing their billets of wood, and burdens of
dirt and ashes! _Sic transit gloria mundi_.

We go to look at that which has lasted longer, the church built
by him near by, and called Sta. Maria del Alhambra. Wandering on,
we find ourselves amongst the ruins of the Franciscan convent
(still within the Alhambra walls) which was destroyed by the
French in 1809-11, when so much of the Alhambra was injured.

Led by a little boy, and following the wall, we come upon a
plantation of cactus, with its red and yellow fruit, which a man
is gathering with great scissors, to prevent its prickings. A
woman politely cuts and pares some for us to taste. It is sweet
and juicy; is much eaten by the poor, who call it "Tuños." They
also make from it a palatable drink--a sort of beer. Hans
Andersen has written a pretty sonnet to the cactus, which seems
especially applicable to this time and occasion.

  "Yes, yellow and red are the colors of Spain;
     In banners and flags they are waving on high;
   And the cactus flower has adopted them too,
     In the warm sunshine to dazzle the eye.
   Thou symbol of Spain, thou flower of the sun,
     When the Moors of old were driven away,
   Thou didst not, like them, abandon thy home.
     But stayed with thy fruit and thy flowers so gay.
   The thousand daggers that hide in thy leaves
     Cannot rescue thee from the love of gain;
   Too often it is thy fate to be sold,
     Thou sunny fruit with the colors of Spain."

Here we find ourselves at the tower of the "Siete Suelos,"
through which Boabdil passed when he left the Alhambra for ever.
It is said that he asked of Isabella that the door might be
walled up, so that no one should ever pass through it after him,
and his conquerors acceded to his request. Returning through one
of the many beautiful paths leading to our hotel, we diverge to
look at a view which presented itself, and find we are near the
villa of Señora Calderon. Here, terrace above terrace rises in
view of the mountains, and on the summit is an artificial lake,
with bridges and boats, and winding walks, and flowers and
fruits, and statues and fountains--everything to make a perfect
paradise.

At night, we have a gypsy-dance. The chief of his troop is the
finest guitar player in Spain--there can be no better in the
world--a tall, dark, grave man, who received our plaudits with
kingly grace; he looked as if in sorrow over the degradation of
his people, who are here in great numbers, living in wretched
quarters on a hillside, in holes or caves in the ground.

The dancers were four lovely, graceful girls, modestly dressed,
and several men, all dark, with large, soft eyes and white teeth.
A youth in short jacket, with broad red faja (sash) and the
peculiar Andalusian hat, danced a solo of strange fashion, with
many movements of the body, and the extraordinary gestures which
belong to all. The feet move in short steps--a sort of "heel and
toe"--while the body sways to and fro, and the hands and arms
move gracefully and expressively. The men had tambourines and the
women castanets, and the wild airs to which they danced were
accompanied with their voices. The variety of dances and songs
was curious and interesting, and often descriptive. At the end of
each dance, the girls came round and saluted all, gentlemen and
ladies, by passing one arm over the neck.

{487}

Wednesday.

Drive about the city, the public squares, etc., and visit the
remains of the old Moorish bazaar which occupies a square
intersected by narrow lanes, every one of which is beautifully
ornamented with pillars and arabesque work.

The alameda, planted in long avenues of trees which meet
overhead, beyond which one catches a view of the Snow mountains,
and beside which flows the Genil river, can not be excelled in
beauty.

The church and hospital of St. John of God is most interesting.
Over the door are these words of the saint, "Labor, without
intermission, to do all the good works in your power while time
is allowed you." The hospital is built round a large court, with
fountains and gardens, and a double row of corridors in which sat
the sick poor, clean and comfortable. It communicates with the
church, which has several good pictures, and a head of St. John
the Baptist, carved by Caño.

In a richly ornamented chapel behind the great altar is the body
of the saint in a silver casket. The remains of St. Feliciana are
also here, as well as many other relics. In an adjoining room is
seen the identical basket in which the saint carried provisions
to the poor.

The church was built by contributions sent by one of the order
from South America. The cedar-wood doors are said to be made from
the logs in which the concealed treasures were brought over.

We climb to the top of the "Torres Bermujas," outside the
Alhambra walls, from whence is another splendid view--a curious
old ruin, dating from the time of the Phoenicians. It is said to
have been a stronghold of the Jews, who made a colony here during
their persecutions by the Romans; and being treated with equal
cruelty by their Gothic conquerors, they invited in the Moors,
betrayed the city to them, made terms for themselves, and thus
brought upon themselves the eternal enmity of the Spaniards, who
treated them with great rigor after the conquest, and finally
banished them. In the story of the three beautiful princesses,
this tower plays an important _rôle;_ here were confined the
captive Spanish knights who eloped with the Infantas, (daughters
of Mohammed the left-handed,) and beyond, rising above the deep,
romantic ravine, is the Tower of the Princesses, beneath which
the knights sang their tales of love.


  Madrid, Hotel De Paris.

  Friday, October 16.

Yesterday (my feast) and the feast of the great Spanish Saint
Teresa was celebrated by our most sorrowful departure from
Grenada! At three o'clock in the morning, we descend the hill of
the Alhambra, and ruefully mount to the top of a Spanish
diligence, and squeeze into what they call the "coupe"--an
exalted place behind the coach-box, from whence one looks down
upon the ten mules who drag this lumbering vehicle, see all their
antics, observe the rash manner in which they tear down
precipitous heights, and mount steep ascents, having the
comfortable certainty that in no event of danger could we
possibly descend from this lofty perch and save ourselves!

A "special providence," however, guards the Spanish diligence, to
say nothing of the three "conductors"--the postillion who rides
in front, the individual who sits on the box with gold lace and
red on his cap, and who smokes leisurely, let what will happen,
only occasionally speaking to the mules, calling them by name,
and urging them on with a sound like "ayah!" and the boy who runs
alongside shouting, screaming, and plying the whip, now jumping
on the front of the diligence to rest a moment, now hanging on by
one hand to the side doors or behind; active as a cat he springs
up and down while the vehicle is at full speed, keeping one all
the while in terror for his safety.

{488}

Such is the Spanish diligence from the "coupé." In the interior,
shut out from the front view, one only hears the united voices of
the "conductors," and it is less exciting. We who are above,
however, have the advantage of a fine view of the mountains, (the
Sierra Morena,) over which we pass by a smooth and beautiful
road.

Jaen is the only place of importance which we see, an old Moorish
town with histories and legends, a fine cathedral, and a Moorish
castle on the height above. From this, a few hours brings us to
Menjibar, where we take the railway at six P.M., and reach Madrid
about eight the next morning. At Menjibar, we bid adieu to our
young American friend, who had journeyed with us since leaving
Cordova, and parted with the Scotch and German ladies whom we had
encountered at various points.

Madrid is filled with people. General Prim is in this hotel, is
modestly refusing to be made dictator, and proposing that Spain
shall have, as heretofore, a king. We shall see how long it will
be before (like Caesar) he is overpersuaded, and reluctantly
assumes power.

Topete (the admiral who, at Cadiz, brought over the fleet) is
also in Madrid; and Serrano, the prince of the traitors, is
president of the provisional government. The table d'hôte is
crowded with men of the press, (letter-writers of all nations,)
giving their several impressions of matters to the gullible
"public," and interpreting events to suit the taste of their
readers. We ask one of these (a witty Frenchman) if he writes for
_Le Monde_. "Oui, Madame, pour tout le monde." Amongst the
motley crowd, we distinguish the letter-writer of the _London
Times_, and him of the New York _Times_, with whom we
make acquaintance, and who having lived a long time in France,
and being of Irish extraction, is very little of an American in
appearance and manner.


  Saturday, October 17.

Madrid is a modern city with fine buildings and shops, many
handsome streets and squares, and a beautiful promenade, called
the Prado, (meadow.) The principal of these squares is the
"Puerta del Sol," upon which this hotel opens, and which is
always thronged with people, and is all life and bustle. This
being the head and front of the revolution, and General Prim
being in the house, the doors are besieged by beggars and
revolutionists. As we walk the streets, in many shop-windows are
vulgar caricatures of the queen and the priests. This is adding
insult to injury, and the very essence of meanness--to take away
her throne, and then aim at her character as a woman. It is
refreshing to find that the best people we see--the best born,
the best bred, and the best educated--defend her from these
aspersions, and are loyal to her, and to the throne.


  Sunday, October 18.

We hear high mass in the church of the "Calatrava," (an ancient
order of knighthood,) where are crowds of pious looking men.
Certainly it will be difficult for the revolution to rob these
people of their religion. For a time they may be intoxicated with
the excitement of the change, but the reaction must come, when
the sober second thought will bring them back to their true
friends.
{489}
Now, the banishment of the Jesuits, the best and most learned
teachers, the confiscation of church property, and the
destruction of churches initiates the new order of things.
Yesterday, an English gentleman (one of the noisiest supporters
of the revolution) told us how the junta had given two places of
great trust and importance into the hands of two of the lowest
and most vulgar and ignorant of the bull fighters; and thus this
class of people who have helped on the revolution must be
rewarded. We hear, to-day, that General Prim has offered to
promote, one grade, every officer of the army lately opposed to
him. To their honor be it spoken, every one refused such
promotion.

           To Be Continued

----------

        Translated From The French.

         Sister Aloyse's Bequest.

                  I.

How delightful it is to sit under the grand old trees of the
courtyard on this charming mid-summer evening! The light breeze
is redolent with the fragrance of the new-mown hay, and the
leaves seem to quiver with joy in an atmosphere heavy with
sunshine. The swallows pursue each other in play with short, wild
cries, and in the foliage of the linden-tree that brown bird, the
nightingale, tries her brilliant cadences, drowned at times by
the shouts of the children at their sports answering her in the
silences, whom without doubt they understood and admired. The
children, happy as the birds, dance and whirl about, just like
those motes one frequently sees rising up in a sunbeam. The nuns,
sombre and silent figures, watch them, contemplating life in its
flower and carelessness. This court-yard where the children play
and the birds sing belonged formerly to a monastery of the order
of St. Benoit; but now to a cloister built out of its ruins,
where the virtues of ancient days flourish under the shelter of
modern walls, which are hallowed by the memories of the past.

Some young girls, no less pleased with the gambols of the
children, were walking in groups to and fro under the vaulted
arches which encircled the court, talking and laughing merrily;
but whenever they approached a nun reclining in an easy chair, by
an involuntary impulse they lowered their voices. She was a poor
invalid, who had been brought out to enjoy the sweet odors and
the pleasant warmth of the evening. She appeared to be nearing
the end of life, though still young. For the paleness of her
cheeks, the emaciation of her body, and the transparent whiteness
of her hands, all proclaimed the ravages of a long and incurable
illness. There was no more sand in the hourglass, no more oil in
the lamp, and her heart--like a timepiece about to stop--was
slacking its pulsations. One could not help but see that Sister
Aloyse retained a very powerful fascination in the beauty which
her terrible illness had not been able to efface. Her dark blue
eyes had not lost their almond-shape or sapphire hue.
{490}
Her figure was still elegant, seen under the loose robe which
wrapped her like a winding-sheet; and her voice was as sweet and
agreeable as in former days.

At first she felt a little better upon being brought into the
garden; but she still suffered, and neither the pure air nor the
mildness of the beautiful evening had revived her. She sat in
silence, absorbed, perhaps, in those last thoughts, which she did
not confide even to herself, and which, to one who is about
departing, seem to give a glimpse of those unknown shores which
are yet so near to her who waits them.

What is she thinking of? Of her past without remorse; of her
future without terror? Does she regret anything which she has
renounced for her God? Does one last thread hold captive this
celestial bird? I cannot say. She appears sad; yet her
companions, always so affectionately attentive, do not seem to be
surprised. For Sister Aloyse had always been characterized, even
in the more beautiful days of her youth, by a kind of melancholy.
She resembled an angel of peace, but yet an angel who weeps.

One young girl, who was walking under the arches, regarded her
with great interest; and finally, leaving the group by whom she
was surrounded, approached the nun, dropped on her knees in the
grass before her, and, looking in her face, said earnestly:

"Well, my sister, are you better this evening?"

Sister Aloyse blushed slightly, just as porcelain is tinged with
a faint rose-color when a flame is passed behind it, and answered
in a voice sweet and low:

"Thank you, Camille, I am not well, and I shall never be any
better till I come into the presence of our Lord. Look! does it
not seem indeed as if the gates of heaven were opening yonder?"

She pointed to the west, then filled with the glory and splendor
of purple and gold and flame colors.

"Yet one cannot go there," answered Camille in a caressing tone.

"Oh! yes; provided the great God will receive us. And something
warns me that I shall shortly go to him."

Both now became silent, Camille sadly regarding her companion.
Educated in this convent, she had always been accustomed to see
Sister Aloyse there, where she was much beloved. She would like
to have given her some pleasure, but what could she give, or what
could she say, to a person so detached from earthly things, and
whose aspirations were fixed on joys eternal?

The nun was still thinking, praying perhaps; and after a long
silence she said,

"Camille, you must come and see me some time before I go away
from here. But now good-night, dear!"

Two nuns now came forward to help the sister into the house,
while Camille, who had gathered some white roses, carried them to
Aloyse, saying,

"They are from my own little garden, my sister; therefore take
them, I pray you."

"Willingly," said Aloyse, "and I will offer them to the Holy
Virgin. And, Camille, do not forget to remember me in your
prayers tonight."


                  II.

"Go, my child," said the old abbess to Camille, "go to the
infirmary and see Sister Aloyse; she has something to say to
you."

"Is she going to die?" asked Camille with tears in her eyes.

{491}

"She will go to her eternal home soon, but not to-day. Have no
fear, child, but go and listen carefully to what she tells you."

Camille with agitated heart (for this poor heart is so quickly
stirred at sixteen years!) ascended the staircase which led to
the cells of the nuns. She passed through a long corridor out of
which opened the little doors, all of which, instead of a number
or design, bore some holy image or pious inscription. At the end
of this corridor she found the infirmary, a large room, quiet and
retired, whose windows opened upon the court and garden below. At
this moment it was almost vacant; she found only one bed
occupied, that of Sister Aloyse, who, as she had no fever, had
been left by the infirmarian while she attended vespers in the
chapel. Camille noiselessly approached the bed, the curtains of
which were half drawn so that Aloyse could see out. She was
sitting up supported by her pillows, and her hands were joined
before her on the cross of her rosary. She smiled on the young
girl, who timidly embraced her; and then Camille very earnestly
asked her why she had sent for her to come to her bedside instead
of any other of the girls, or her friends or companions; for she
was afraid, as one naturally dreads what is unknown. The nun
fixed upon her those searching eyes which seemed to look through
and beyond anything present, and said with much sweetness,

"Sit down, Camille; I have something to say to you." She
hesitated, but finally said, "You have never heard any one of
your family speak of me?"

"Never," answered the child, somewhat surprised. "I have known
something of your family--your father," she said with an effort.
"But it was a long time ago, a very long time--before you were
born. I was related to your grandmother, Madame Reville."

"I never saw her, but I have seen her great portrait," said
Camille.

"Yes, it hangs in the red drawing-room, does it not?" asked
Sister Aloyse with a sad smile. "Ah! well. Madame Reville
received me into her family as a lady's companion--a reader--for
I was poor, and needed some home. Your father did not live at
home with his mother, but he came there very frequently."

Here she paused, breathing with difficulty, but continued:

"He wished to marry me; Madame Reville was opposed to it; he
insisted. I saw he would disobey his mother; I was afraid for
him; I was afraid for myself. So I prayed to the good God. He did
not reject my afflicted and desolate heart, but he--the Divine
Consoler--called me into this home, and placed this holy veil as
a barrier between the world and myself. Here I found peace,
purchased sometimes with bitter suffering, but real; for it
filled the depths of my heart; it was the price of my sacrifice.
And I was able to see, in the clear light which streamed from the
cross, how all joy is deceitful, and all pleasure empty and
false. After two years had passed, I came to consecrate myself
with irrevocable vows to God's service, when the friends who now
and then came to see me, and public report, which in our day
finds its way even into the cloister, told me of the only thing
which had still power to afflict me. For, Camille, your
father--but what can I say to you who bear his name! M. Reville,
angry at my departure, and grieving for the loss of the poor
creature that I am, sought forgetfulness in dissipation.
Undoubtedly, he forgot me--I trust and hope he did--but he also
forgot his God!
{492}
Your father is not a Christian; nay, he is an enemy to
Christianity! Ah! since the day when I first knew that our
prayers did not meet in the pathway to heaven, how have I wept,
how have I prayed, how have I done penance! Alas! my tears, my
blood, my vigils, my sufferings--all have not prevailed, and I am
pierced to the depths of my heart with the terrible reflection."

She was unable to continue; her voice died upon her lips, while
tears, clear and burning, rolled down her cheeks. Camille,
kneeling by her bedside, wept too; for she began to see what this
self-denying heart had suffered.

"My child," finally said the sister after a long silence, "I
shall soon die, and there will then be no one to pray for him,
since your mother, who ought especially so to do, is dead. You
love your father, don't you?"

"Yes, with all my heart!"

"Well, then, promise me that you will unceasingly pray for his
conversion--that you will offer for him your every action and
your every pain; promise me that there shall always be a
suppliant voice to take the place of poor Aloyse's, which will
soon be hushed in death--to cry 'mercy!' Think of what it is to
have a soul and an eternity, and that soul your father's!"

She had seized the hands of the child in both her own, and fixed
upon her a look in which the last forces of her life were
concentrated. "Promise!" said she. Camille thought a moment--her
young face wore a grave and stern expression. Finally, raising
one arm toward the crucifix, she said in a distinct voice: "I
solemnly promise you, my sister, I will continue what you have
commenced. I will pray, I will labor all my life for his
conversion." A ray of heavenly light illumined Sister Aloyse's
countenance, and she sank back upon her pillows, murmuring, "I
can die now."

Two days later she passed away, with a peace and serenity worthy
of the blamelessness of her whole life, though in breathing her
last she cried, "Have mercy!"

Was it of herself she thought?


                 III.

Many years have passed away. The grass grows thick and green upon
the bed of clay where sleeps Aloyse. Camille, grown into a fine
young woman, keeps house for her father. She has travelled with
him, she has seen the world, its balls and its routs, but she has
never forgotten the promise made to Sister Aloyse. This promise
has banished the strength of her limbs and of her youth. She has
become serious all at once. She has given to her life but one
aim, and that sublime and difficult, and from that moment when
the struggle which had animated the life of Aloyse passed into
her own all her actions, all her thoughts, had been devoted to
the redemption of one soul. At first overflowing with the
thoughtless and enthusiastic zeal of youth, she would talk to him
of that religion whose arguments her heart found so natural, and
which seemed to her so irresistible. Her father would laugh at
her, and she would cry; she would persist, however, until he
became so angry that she was frightened. Finally she decided to
be more quiet in the future, and to leave to God the conduct of
her cause. But with what vigils, with what prayers, what sighs,
what agony of heart, and with what fervent desire did she ask God
for that precious soul! And what vows did she make to the Blessed
Mother! What flowers she offered upon her altar!
{493}
What prayers, in which she thanked God for the kindness that had
given mortals this all-powerful Mediatrix! Her father's guardian
angel, what careful conversation did she hold with him! How she
labored and prayed for that of which he never thought!

As years pass, Camille's piety becomes more rigid; self-denial
joins itself to acts of earnest charity, in their turn
supplemented by generous alms!

One would naturally ask why Camille, rich and young, charming and
admired, should rise so early in the morning, should spend so
many hours upon her knees in church? Why she went with the
Sisters of Charity to visit the sick, why her attire was so plain
and simple, why her room was so little ornamented, why she
labored without any relaxation, and finally, why with so
interesting an appearance and conversation she preferred so
severe a life? No one upon earth could answer these questions
except the guardian angel who writes down these noble acts to the
account of their forgetful subject, her unrepentant father.

But she accomplished nothing, although the rigors were not for
herself, though she maintained, for her father, this piety united
with a tenderness which only made her more sweet and
affectionate. His hard heart did not open to the rays of divine
grace, nor to the timid smiles of his child. The taste for
amusement, born of a desire for forgetfulness, had chased from
his heart, at the same time with a pure love, the belief in holy
things. The heavenly flame had been quickly extinguished beneath
the ashes of pleasure; and, like many other children of his age,
he had neglected to believe through fear of being compelled to be
good. Bad society and bad literature had completed the work of
headlong dissipation; and neither marriage nor paternity had
reclaimed him. His birth, fortune, and indisputable talents
raised him to public offices. And, to be consistent with his
principles, and congenial to his friends, he had to be inimical
to all religion. The seminaries; the Brothers of the Christian
Doctrine; the Sisters, hospitallers or teachers; the free
establishments; the Carmelites, who ask nothing of a person; the
Clarisses, who ask only a piece of bread; the Little Sisters of
the Poor, who gathered food for their old men; the foreign
missions; the sermons in Lent in the parish; the general
indulgences granted by the pope; the cardinals in the senate; and
the Capuchins who went barefooted--were all equally the objects
of his strong aversion. He read continually the _Journal des
Débats_, the _Revue des Deux Mondes_, and the liberal
journal of his department--of that department in which he played
a prominent part. Shall we say, in excuse for him, that his
impiety had never been tried by adversity; and that he had found
the world so delightful that he had wished to live for ever in
it? In youth he had lived in the midst of noisy pleasures. In
more advanced life he lived for comfort, for his house--cool in
summer, warm in winter, splendid at all times--for his grand
dinners, his good wine, his fine horses and elegant equipages. He
enjoyed exquisitely those excellent things which the public
generally esteem, but in which divine grace does not much appear.
The memories of youth he did not often recall. He now scarcely
recollected the name of that poor cousin whom he had once loved
so passionately, but who had never forgotten him, who, even in
the arms of death, had displayed an angelic love. One day Camille
spoke of Sister Aloyse, and added,

{494}

"Was she not related to us, father?"

"Yes, yes--a romantic affair! She threw herself into a convent;
she became weary even there!"

He took several turns through the room with a preoccupied air,
and finally stopping before the great picture of his mother--a
withered and haughty figure--he said,

"My mother did not love this poor Aloyse much! Poor girl! What a
charming voice she had! A voice which ought to astonish the
convent when she chants the _Miserere!_ She will sing no
more; she has a pain in her chest. Zounds! The discipline of the
convent! What a pity for this pretty Aloyse to be buried alive!
On the stage she would equal Malibran!"

And this was all! The remembrance of Aloyse was only that of a
young girl who could sing charmingly, and who, perhaps, might
have commanded a situation in a theatre!

He loved his daughter; but, for all that, she troubled him, and
he was anxious that she should marry, so that he might be
relieved from the care and responsibility. She did not oppose his
wishes, for she did not feel that God appointed her to lead the
life of a nun; but she wished her husband to be a Christian, and
said so to her father. He only shrugged his shoulders and cried,

"Still these absurd ideas!"

The Christian, however, presented himself, and at twenty-two
Camille Reville became Madame de Laval.


                  IV.

Camille is now no longer twenty. Her youth has passed on swift
wings, and white is beginning to streak her dark hair; but her
pleasant face preserves the repose of former days. She has been
blessed with mixed and imperfect happiness, such as every one
tastes in this world. For in this life the black squares are
never far distant from the white ones; and in its tangled skein
the dark threads are woven in by the side of brighter colors. She
had lived most happily with her husband. Together they had
laughed over their little children's gambols, and together wept
over them in sickness. They had brought them up with the labor
and care which, in our day especially, accompanies all true
Christian education. Their eldest daughter, Amelia, had been
married about a year; and they were now very happy in expectation
of her approaching maternity. The second daughter was finishing
her education in the same convent of Benedictines where her
mother had been in her youthful days. Their son André was in a
polytechnic school, and their youngest, Maurice, was pursuing his
Latin studies in his native village.

Through the disappointments and joy of her life, through days of
rain and days of sunshine, Camille had pursued one thought
faithfully--the grand aim which she had proposed to herself in
early life, her father's conversion. As a young wife she had
prayed with her husband, for his heart beat in unison with hers.
As a young mother, she had taught her children to pray with her.
And now, having reached the autumn of life, she still
prayed--prayed constantly; but as yet her prayers had received no
answer.

The old man lived with her; and every moment she surrounded him
with care and tenderness. She watched him and brooded over him
more like a mother than like a daughter. And it was hard indeed
for her, that this old man of sixty-six years would not listen to
any serious conversation, would only rail at holy things, and
would learn no lesson from either life or death. And she was ever
obliged to turn his words from their real meaning, and interpret
his jeers and sarcasms so that they would not shock her innocent
little children.
{495}
At this moment we find Camille in the drawing-room with her
father, who is half asleep before a great fire, with the
_Débats_ at his feet. She is sewing on some linen for the
coming baby; but twice stops to read two short letters received
that morning from two of her absent children. After a thousand
details about boarding, upon the compositions in history, upon
the new piece of tapestry which Clotilde had just begun, upon the
sermons delivered by a new father whose name she did not know,
she went on to say: "I never forget, dear mother, to pray with
you--you know why! It seems to me that the moment is approaching
when the gentle God will answer us--as if grandpapa was going to
be astonished that he had been able to live so long without
thinking of God!"

The second letter was from André, and would have been
unintelligible to any one who did not possess the key to a
school-boy's language. But at the end there was a passage which
Camille kissed again and again: "Dear mamma, I love you, and I
always pray with you, just like you." A stick of wood which just
now rolled down with a great noise awoke M. Reville, who, after
rubbing his eyes, asked his daughter, "Where is Maurice?"

"He is skating. Do you wish me to take his place, and do anything
to amuse you?"

"No, thank you. But stop, you may read instead; read this
discussion in the Chambers upon the military law."

Camille took the paper and read slowly; and the old man's eyes
were still closed when the violent ringing of the door-bell woke
him up completely, and made Madame de Laval start.

"What is the matter with you?" asked her father.

"I do not know; only the sudden ringing frightened me."

She jumped up and ran into the hall, and at the same instant her
husband entered from the street. She moved toward him, but
suddenly stopped, frozen with an inexplicable horror. M. de
Laval's face was of an ashy paleness; he tried to speak, he
stammered--the words died upon his lips, and his wife, in one of
those quick transitions which thought makes, believed he was
going to fall dead at her feet.

"What ails you?" she cried, reaching out her arms toward him. "Do
not be frightened, Camille," said he; "but Maurice--"

He was unable to finish.

"Maurice!" she echoed. "Where is he? Why does he not come home? O
great God! he is dead. He is drowned!"

M. de Laval had now somewhat recovered himself, and he explained:
"He rescued a child who was drowning, and was wounded in the
head. They are bringing him home. My dear Camille, keep up heart!
He lives! God will restore him to us!"

She staggered and looked at her husband with fixed eyes.

"Have courage," he cried.

The servants, already called together by the sad news, had opened
the gates to the relatives and the friends who were coming in
every direction, and also to those who were bringing Maurice.
They bore him on a litter, covered with a mattress, and his head,
all bloody, with eyes wide open, rested upon a pillow made of the
coats of the brave men; while behind the litter walked a man all
covered with blood. He was the father of the child whom Maurice
had saved at the price of his own life.

{496}

The boy was quickly placed upon the bed, and the physicians were
soon by his side, followed by the parish priest. Camille,
kneeling beside him, saw, as in an evil dream, the surgeon dress
the wound which Maurice had in the temple, and afterward talk in
a serious manner to the other physicians behind the curtain. She
saw the priest go up to Maurice, and, after talking to him in a
low voice, bend over him and raise his hands in the benediction
of the dying, and immediately after give him the holy oils. As in
a dream she heard her husband's voice saying, "Dear wife, the
good God wants him! Look at our Maurice."

She then looked at him. Maurice, aroused by the words of the
priest, had regained complete consciousness, and knew that he was
dying. He seemed more than tranquil--happy; and, looking around
on all present, said,

"Good-by, papa; I only did what you taught me."

He then discovered the father of the rescued child, who had
concealed himself behind M. de Laval. "Give my love to your
little boy," said he.

His eyes then sought for his mother. She got up, and, bending
over him, took him in her arms. "Dear mamma, make me an offering
for dear grandpapa's conversion. Say to him--" He stopped. His
mother saw the light fade from his eyes, and knew that his breath
was hushed in death. For a long time she remained holding him in
her arms, like that more desolate of mothers, bathing him with
her tears, and unable to listen to the comforting words of either
husband or father, both of whom were overwhelmed with grief. At
last, her piety, those religious sentiments which had always
animated her life, prevailed, and she said aloud,

"Yes, my God! I accept the sacrifice, and I sacrifice him for my
father. Save him, Lord, save him!"

Two days later they buried poor Maurice, the whole village
attending his funeral.

The same evening the priest, who had been with him in his last
moments, presented himself to Madame de Laval, and said:

"You are afflicted, but your prayers are heard. Divine grace has
pursued your father, and this very morning, when the body of your
child was yet in the house, he called me to him and made his
confession. He could hold out no longer, he said to me. Rejoice
then, madam, in the midst of your grief."

She did indeed rejoice, though she still wept.

"O Aloyse," said she, "and my dear Maurice! They are then taken
away, but at what a price!" "Thank God!" cried the priest. "He
separates a family here only to reunite them in eternity!"

-------

{497}

       From Les Etudes Religieuses

  The Second Plenary Council Of Baltimore,
  And Ecclesiastical Discipline
  In The United States.  [Footnote 129]

  [Footnote 129: _Concilii Plenarii Baltimorensis II. Acta et
  Decreta. Baltimorae_, 1868.]

[Introductory Note--The periodical from which the following
article has been translated is one of the highest character,
published at Paris under the editorial supervision of the Jesuit
fathers. The account which it renders of the late Council of
Baltimore is made doubly valuable from the fact that it is the
work of a foreign, and therefore an impartial, judge. We have
been obliged to make a few corrections in the article. Several of
these were suggested by the Most Rev. President of the Council,
and the rest were required by obvious and quite natural
inaccuracies of a writer living in a foreign country.]



The superior of the Grand Seminary of Baltimore has recently done
us the honor of transmitting, in the name of his archbishop,
[Footnote 130] a copy of the _Acts of the Council_ held in
that city in 1866. He asks us to make known the contents to the
readers of the _Etudes_. It gives us pleasure to accede to
this request.

    [Footnote 130: Mgr. Spalding, Archbishop of Baltimore, is the
    author of several interesting publications on the religious
    history of the United States. He has published two essays
    concerning the legislation of the early Protestant colonies
    respecting divine worship. In their legislation is to be
    found intolerance running to the most cruel extremes, and
    this almost until the Revolution of 1776. Besides these, he
    is the author of _Evidences of Catholicity, Sketches of
    Early Catholic Missions in Kentucky,_ and _Spalding's
    Miscellanea_.]

On the eve of the great event which the Catholic world expects at
the close of this year, it seems to us that there are few
subjects more interesting, or more worthy to be treated of, than
the present. The very organization of the present council, at
which forty-six bishops were present, will give us a fair idea of
what is to be done when all the prelates of all countries and
churches are convened. Moreover, the decisions made in such an
imposing assembly will not fail to clear for us some obscure
points. But, better than all, the collection of decrees will make
us comprehend the situation of Catholicity in the immense
territories of the new world, where it is called to such a lofty
destiny.

On the 19th of March, 1866, the Feast of St. Joseph, Mgr.
Spalding, using the powers received for this purpose from the
sovereign pontiff, convoked at Baltimore a Plenary Council,
[Footnote 131] to be opened on the second Sunday of October, in
the same year.

    [Footnote 131: A council is called plenary at which the
    bishops of several provinces are assembled. After a general
    or oecumenical council there is nothing more solemn. The
    present is the second of this character which has been held
    at Baltimore. The first took place in 1852.]

If any bishops were prevented from appearing personally, they
were to be represented by proxies furnished with authentic
powers. The day having come, after a preliminary congregation,
held the evening before to clear up certain details, the council
opened with a grand, solemn, and public procession; in which
figured forty-four archbishops and bishops, one administrator
apostolic, two mitred abbots, together with the most
distinguished of the American clergy. It was a spectacle alike
new and imposing for that great city. More than forty thousand
people met to witness it.
{498}
In the streets through which the procession passed, there was
scarcely a house which was not decorated. This was undoubtedly
one of the grandest and most beautiful Catholic demonstrations
which has yet been seen in that land of liberty, where all sects
and communions find a rendezvous. The council furnished one of
those striking lessons which the good sense of Americans does not
forget, and which by little and little will lead them to
understand that where there is unity there is also life.

Every deliberative assembly has need of order; the fathers began
by tracing a plan for themselves; these are its principal
dispositions.

Every day the particular congregations of theologians were to
meet together. These were to discuss among themselves and judge,
in a preliminary manner, the measures proposed. The result of
their deliberations, gathered by a notary, with the votes and
motives alleged for or against, in case of a disagreement, was
then to be transmitted to the bishops. These, again, held private
congregations where they occupied themselves solely with
questions already debated by the theologians. _A procès
verbal_ was made, by the secretaries, of what passed in these
meetings. A new examination and judgment was made in this second
instance; yet these preliminary discussions decided nothing; all
was to be referred to the general congregations, and, finally, to
the sessions of the council, where the decrees received their
last form, and the sanction which makes them obligatory.

As to the order which was to reign in their deliberations, the
bishops found nothing better fitted to their purpose than a small
portion, clearly stated, and well defined, of the rules called
parliamentary, and consecrated under that name in the public
assemblies of their land. Each had the right of proposing
whatever he would, provided he did so by writing and in the Latin
tongue; but a motion made by a member could not become a matter
of deliberation, unless another prelate joined the first in
making the demand. None was at liberty to depart from the
prearranged schedule, nor from the title which formed the object
of present discussion. As to the rest, the greatest liberty of
opinion was not only accorded, but counselled, as long as the
orators confined themselves to the limits of propriety. If any
one transgressed these, or prolonged his discourse uselessly, any
member could demand a call to order; the _promotor_ was
charged with executing the laws of order, but, in cases of doubt,
final decision belonged to the president.

Before publication in the sessions, the decrees were submitted to
general congregations; when not only the bishops but also the
theologians might set forth their opinions, with only this
provision, namely, that those should be first heard who formed
the commission on which had previously devolved the consideration
of the subject then under discussion. Such are the simple and
precise dispositions which served to maintain order in so great
an assembly.

The apostolic delegate had by right four theologians; the
archbishops, three; the bishops, two; some, however, contented
themselves with only one. They were divided into seven
congregations or bureaux, among which was divided the matter
which was to occupy the attention of the council. [Footnote 132]

    [Footnote 132: This matter comprised the following subjects.
      _1. _De Fide Orthodoxa, deque erroribus
      serpentibus;_
      2. _De Hierarchia et regimine Ecclesiae;_
      3. _De Personis Ecclesiasticis;_
      4. _De Ecclesiis bonisque ecclesiasticis tenendis
      tutandisque;_
      5. _De Sacranentis;_
      6. _De Cultu Divino;_
      7. _De Disciplinae
      uniformitate promovenda;_
      8. De Regularibus et monialibus;
      9. De Juventute instituenda pieque erudienda;
      10. De Salute animarum
      efficacitis promovenda;
      11. De Libris et ephemeribus;
      12. De Societatibus Secretis._

    Several congregations occupied themselves with two of these
    subjects at once because of their connection. In the council
    were added a thirteenth congregation, on the creation of new
    bishoprics, and a fourteenth, on the execution of the
    decrees.]

{499}

Each congregation was presided over by a bishop; it had, besides,
a vice-president and an ecclesiastical notary, charged, as we
have seen, with the care of transmitting to the prelates the
result of these deliberations. For the council itself were chosen
a chancellor archdeacon, a secretary with assistants, a notary,
who was to assist those who discharged the same function in the
particular congregations; two _promotors_, one a bishop, the
other a priest, charged with maintaining order and observance of
rule in the sessions and public meetings; finally, judges, who
were to pronounce on motions of absence, or on differences which
might arise. Severe penalties were laid on all who should leave
before the work of the council should be finished.

This rapid glance at the organization of this assembly and at its
plan of operations seems to us necessary, in order to understand
the labor accomplished by it.

The chief task of the council was to fix, I had almost said to
create, [Footnote 133] ecclesiastical discipline throughout the
entire extent of the United States.

    [Footnote 133: If the writer had said this, he would have
    made a great mistake. While the United States formed one
    province, many provincial councils were held at Baltimore;
    and since the creation of the other provinces they have been
    regularly held in each one, and the principal points of
    discipline have thus been long since effectually
    settled.--ED. C.W.]

Amid a population so diverse in origin, manners, character; amid
the manifold influences produced by the heterogeneous mixture of
conflicting sects in which each Catholic congregation is obliged
to live, it would seem difficult to establish uniformity.
Moreover, the spirit of modern times is in every respect so
different from that of bygone ages, private and public
institutions have undergone such modifications, that the
application of the canon law meets on all sides obstacles
apparently insurmountable. The prelates of North America have
legislated with such prudence, with such a perfect union of ideas
and sentiments, that their churches will hereafter possess in the
collection of their decrees a complete code of laws. [Footnote
134] These "acts," printed in a convenient form, are to be used
as a text-book in all the seminaries, and this text, with the
comments of the professor will, we are assured, suffice for the
entire course of canon law. Apart from some inconsiderable
differences regarding days of fasting and feasts of obligation,
[Footnote 135] all the churches will hereafter have a common law
and the same customs. Assuredly, one can scarcely comprehend the
vastness of this result, and we are undoubtedly convinced that
the Second Plenary Council of Baltimore is destined to a
memorable place in the history of Catholicity in the United
States.

    [Footnote 134: The present council had at heart to re-collect
    in its acts the legislation fixed by preceding councils. The
    decrees taken from these are recognized by a different style
    of print. An appendix gives _in extenso_ all the
    important portions, above all, those which have come from
    Rome. Thus all the ecclesiastical legislation of the United
    States is to be found in a single volume.]

    [Footnote 135: The prelates had addressed a petition to Rome
    that uniformity on this point might be established. The
    answer which had been returned was, that it was better to
    respect the existing customs of each diocese, and that, if
    modifications were to be made therein, each bishop might have
    separate recourse to the holy see. But the feast of the
    Immaculate Conception was declared a feast of patronage and
    obligation throughout the whole of the United States.]

The dogmatic part of the acts has not and could not have the same
importance, since a national council, however numerous, generally
does naught but state the faith already defined; nevertheless, on
this very ground, we find declarations very interesting, and
which deserve to command the attention of the Christians of
Europe.

It is to the united fathers, and, after them, to the assisting
theologians, that the merit of this great work is due.
{500}
Still, we cannot refrain from noticing Mgr. Spalding, Archbishop
of Baltimore and apostolic delegate. Called to the presidency of
the council by a special brief of the pope, dated February 16th,
1866, instructed, moreover, by the Propaganda, which recommended
to his zeal several important points, he it is who has prepared
the matter of the decrees, and has brought together in advance
all the elements which have entered into this vast construction.
Under his wise and prudent direction, his brethren in the
episcopate have made their choice. With the assistance of the
secretaries and other officers of the council the edifice rises,
to which Rome gives the finishing touch, changing a small number
of the materials, and consecrating it with her supreme authority.

Into this sanctuary, built with so much care, I invite the
readers of the _Etudes_ to enter, persuaded that we shall
find therein much to admire and at the same time much to learn.


                  I.

The first chapter is consecrated to dogma. It treats of the faith
and of the errors which are contemporaneously opposed to it. The
prelates here recall the precept, imposed on all, of embracing
the truth, and entering the haven of the true church. No safety
is to be hoped for outside of this ark which God guards and
conducts. However, they add, as to those who are plunged
invincibly in error, and who have not been able to see the light,
that the Supreme Judge, who condemns no man, save for his own
faults, will assuredly use mercy toward them, if, although
strangers to the body of the church, they have, nevertheless,
with the assistance of grace, fulfilled the divine commandments,
and professed those Christian truths which they were able to
know. [Footnote 136]

    [Footnote 136: Tit. i. p. 6.]

Such is the Catholic doctrine and the just principle to which all
our pretended intolerance is reduced. The council recognizes the
rights of reason as well as those of sound faith. It inserts at
length in its decrees the four propositions formulated in 1855 by
the Congregation of the Index, against traditionalism. At the
same time it restates the condemnation pronounced by Gregory IX.
against the system of Raymond Lulle, which expresses a thought
too common in our day, namely, that faith is necessary to the
masses, to vulgar and unlettered people, but that reason suffices
for the intelligent man of study, and constitutes true
Christianity.

We notice in this chapter the solicitude of the bishops to place
in the hands of the faithful a version of the Bible in the vulgar
tongue. To this end they recommend the Douay translation, already
approved and circulated by their predecessors. Far from opposing
these efforts, the Congregation of the Propaganda, in the
response addressed to the Archbishop of Baltimore with the
revision of the acts of the council, lays great stress on the
necessity of doing this. The congregation directs the prelate to
compare anew the different English editions, to avail himself of
other Catholic translations, if there be any, in order that we
may have in English a faithful and irreproachable text of all our
sacred books, and that this version may be spread throughout all
the dioceses of America. Here we have a peremptory answer to
those Protestants who, at this late hour, reproach Catholics with
interdicting the reading of the Holy Scriptures.

{501}

On the question of future life, the fathers declared against
those who deny the eternal duration of punishment, or so mitigate
its severity that there remains no longer any proportion between
the chastisement and the gravity of the offence. Then they
rapidly review that multitude of religious sects and errors,
which are nowhere so numerous or so different as in that classic
land of free thought. Indifferentism, which considers all
religions as equal; Unitarianism, which rejects the divinity of
our Lord Jesus Christ; Universalism, which denies the eternity of
punishment after death; finally, pantheism and transcendentalism,
which destroy the personality of God, such are the latest forms
and last consequences of free inquiry. What a contrast to these
is the spectacle which Catholic truth affords; that full,
complete, and unchanging Christianity, affirming itself, with
full consciousness of its truth, in the face of a thousand
systems which cannot withstand it and a thousand communions that
fail to comprehend what it really is! All serious hearts in
America must be stuck by such a difference. The Council of
Baltimore has again made manifest where lies the strength that
will triumph over all, and what is to be the "church of the
future." The excesses of "Magnetism" and "Spiritism" have been
carried beyond what the fathers consider the limits of morality.
With regard to the first, they undertake to promulgate the
well-known decisions of the sacred congregation of the council.
[Footnote 137]

    [Footnote 137: Encycl ad omnes episcopos contra magnetismi
    abusus. August 4th, 1856. Decisions of July 28th, 1847.]

As to the second, not finding any explicit precedent in acts
emanating from Rome, they express their own thought and doctrine
thus: "It seems certain," they say, "that many of the astonishing
phenomena which are said to be produced in the spiritual meetings
are inventions; that others are the result of fraud, or are to be
attributed to the imagination of the mediums and their
assistants, or, possibly, to slight of hand. Nevertheless," they
add, "it can scarcely be doubted that some of these facts imply a
satanic interference; since it is almost impossible to explain
them in any other way." Then, after a magnificent exposition of
the action of good and bad angels, the prelates remark that, in a
society of which so large a portion remains unbaptized, it is not
surprising if the demon regains in part his ancient empire. They
severely censure those Catholics who take part even indirectly in
the spiritual "circles." Such is the decision of the council;
and, for our part, we are happy to see what we have written on
this subject [Footnote 138] fully confirmed by so imposing an
authority.

    [Footnote 138: _Les Morts el les Vivants_. Paris, Le
    Clere. _Etudes_ 1862, p. 41.]

                 II.

The second chapter treats of the hierarchy and government of the
church. The fathers begin with a profession of filial loyalty to
the holy see, whose privileges they recognize and enumerate with
St. Irenaeus, St. Jerome, and St. Leo the Great. They protest
with what respect and love they receive all the apostolical
constitutions, likewise the instructions and decisions of the
Roman congregations, given for the universal church or for their
own special provinces. After Pius IX. they rebuke the manner of
thought and action of those who count for nothing all that has
not been expressly defined as of Catholic faith, and who,
embracing opinions contrary to the common sentiment of
Christians, fear not to shock their ears with scandalous
propositions. The temporal power of the pope, its necessity under
the present circumstances, in order to assure the independence of
the head of the church, is also the subject of a solemn
declaration.

{502}

Passing then to the bishops, the council affirms their double
right of teaching and governing Christendom in union with the
Roman pontiff, the successor of St. Peter and the vicar of Jesus
Christ. According to the advice of the fathers of Trent,
provincial councils are to be held every three years throughout
the whole extent of the United States; for the bishops are
persuaded that in these reunions are to be found the most
efficacious remedies for the evils which afflict all parts of the
church, when the pastors of dioceses, after having invoked the
Holy Spirit, unite their wisdom to take measures most fitting to
procure the salvation of souls. Accidental forms are ever
changing. Formerly, the "synodal witnesses" [Footnote 139] were
everywhere in use.

    [Footnote 139: Ecclesiastics chosen in the provincial
    councils to observe the state of persons and things in their
    dioceses, and to make a report to the metropolitan.]

After the time of Benedict XIV. this function fell into disuse
and was supplied by something else. The grave and learned pontiff
makes use of these remarkable words, which the council has
thought proper to reproduce:

  "The customs of men are modified and circumstances are
  continually changing; that which is useful at one period may
  cease so to be, and may become even pernicious in another age.
  The duty of a prudent pastor, unless otherwise obliged by a
  higher law, is to accommodate himself to times and places, to
  lay aside many ancient usages, when by his judgment and the
  light of God he deems this to be for the greater good of the
  diocese with which he is entrusted." [Footnote 140]

    [Footnote 140:  De Synod. Dioec. L. V. c. iii. n. 7.]

As a natural corollary to provincial councils, the prelates
recommend frequent holding of diocesan synods. If the extent of
the diocese will not permit the priests who obey the same bishop
to unite yearly, the bishop should at least convoke a synod after
each provincial or plenary council, to promulgate the decrees and
provide for their observance. In the meantime, ecclesiastical
conferences, organized in districts, can supply, at least partly,
the place of the synod. The fathers express a wish that such
conferences should meet quarterly in cities, and at least yearly
in rural districts, where pastors cannot easily assemble.

I pass hastily over some details to arrive immediately at a
matter at once very delicate and important, that of
ecclesiastical judgments. It is well known that the form required
by canon law has become very difficult of application throughout
the greater part of Christendom. The Council of Baltimore does
not innovate. After an experience of ten years it feels bound to
renew a decree made in the Council of St. Louis in 1855.
[Footnote 141]

    [Footnote 141: That is to say, the Plenary Council, by its
    enactment, extended this decree of the Provincial Council of
    St. Louis to the other provinces.--ED. C. W.]

  "Priests suspended by sentence of the ordinary have no right to
  demand sustenance from him, since by their own fault they have
  been rendered incapable of exercising their ministry. But, in
  order to cut short all complaints, the fathers are of the
  opinion that it is more expedient, in the cases of priests and
  clerics, to adopt a form of trial approaching as nearly as
  possible the requirements of the Council of Trent. The
  bishop--or his vicar-general, by his order--shall choose in the
  episcopal council two members--not always the same--who shall
  serve him as counsellors, when the accused shall be called to
  answer before him and his secretary.

{503}

  "Together, these assistants shall have but one voice, but
  either can range himself on the side of the prelate against his
  colleague. If, however, both are of a different mind from that
  of the bishop or his vicar, the latter may take into his
  counsel a third, and that judgment shall be rendered to which
  he shall incline. If it happen that all the consultors named by
  the ordinary hold an opinion contrary to his, the case is to be
  transferred to the tribunal of the metropolitan, who shall
  weigh the motives for and against, and himself deliver
  sentence. And if the process refers to a subject of the
  metropolitan, and all his assistants are opposed to him, the
  cause shall be evoked before the oldest bishop of the province,
  and he shall have the right to decide, saving always the
  privileges and authority of the Holy See."

Here we see reappearing the jurisdiction of metropolitans, which
in many other churches is little exercised at the present day. On
the question of their authority the council furnishes another
subject worthy of remark.

In enumerating the rights of archbishops in reference to their
ecclesiastical provinces, the fathers have designated but three:

1. To make known to the holy see such of their suffragans as do
not observe the laws of residence.

2. To call the said suffragans to a provincial council, at least
every three years.

3. To have their cross borne before them in their province, and
to wear the pallium therein on the days when they can wear it in
their metropolitan church.

The letter written from Rome for the correction of the acts
orders two other privileges of metropolitans to be
re-established:

1. To supply what is negligently omitted by their suffragans in
the cases determined by law; and

2. to receive appeals from the sentence of their suffragans
according to the canonical rules.

If we do not deceive ourselves, there is in this correction a
significant tendency.


                  III.

The manner of the election of bishops had already been determined
by an instruction emanating from the Propaganda, dated March
18th, 1834. Since that time, at the desire of councils, several
changes and modifications had been made. This is the practice
consecrated and universally established since 1861: Every three
years, each bishop sends to his metropolitan and the congregation
of the Propaganda the list of subjects whom he judges worthy of
the episcopate, with detailed information of the qualities which
distinguish them.

A see becomes vacant, the bishops of the province meet in synod,
or any other way, and discuss the aptitude of the candidates
presented by each of them. After a secret examination, three
names are sent to Rome with the _procès verbal_ of this
election. On the representation thus made, the sovereign pontiff
designates the one to be promoted to the episcopal dignity.

This portion of Christendom, still so new, has not yet had time
to settle itself into regularly divided parishes. If our memory
is faithful, we think there is no such thing as a parish,
properly so called, in the whole United States. The prelates of
the council express a desire to establish some, especially in the
great cities; but they add that, in conferring them on the
priests who administer them, they would not exempt the latter
from removal; this never having, been the custom in America.

Many of the dioceses have no seminaries. The fathers wish that,
if they cannot be everywhere established, each province, at
least, should have its own, for the formation of which the
bishops will unite their resources. Following the custom adopted
in France, they separate the Little Seminary, where boys who
present the conditions required by the Council of Trent are
received, from the Grand Seminary, where clerics study dogmatic
and moral theology, canon law, hermeneutics, and sacred
eloquence.
{504}
The council orders the greatest efforts to be made in order to
secure eminent professors. If there is an establishment common to
an entire province, it should not be confined to teaching the
mere elementary ecclesiastical studies, but a thorough course of
exegesis and oriental languages should be commenced; and the
modern systems of philosophy should be explained in such a manner
that graduates should be able to resolve all the difficulties and
objections of the day.

  "We have now to contend," say the fathers, "no longer with the
  often refuted heresies and errors of a bygone age, but with new
  adversaries, unbelievers of a pagan rather than a Christian
  character, with men who count as naught God and his divine
  promises--and yet are not thereby prevented from having
  cultivated minds. According to them, the things of heaven and
  earth have no other meaning or value than that which reason
  alone assigns them. Thus, they flatter pride, so deeply rooted
  in our nature, and seduce those who are not on their guard. If
  truth cannot persuade them, since they do not care to hear, it
  must, at least, close their mouths, lest their vain discourse
  and sounding words delude the simple." [Footnote 142]

    [Footnote 142: Act. tit. iii. p. 108.]

Do not these sage reflections disclose the true plan for renewing
ecclesiastical studies?

We will not enter on the details of the rules established for the
general life and manners of the clergy, according to their
different functions. We confine ourselves to remarking that the
chapter on preaching alone contains a complete little treatise on
the proper manner of announcing the word of God in our times.


                  IV.

Questions relating to church property attract the attention of
the council. In order to comprehend the arrangements determined
on in regard to this matter, we must form a correct idea of the
situation in which the different Christian communions stand
before the American civil law.

It is well known that the legislation of most of the States is
willing to accord legal personality to associations, commercial
or religious. A religious society represented by trustees easily
obtains incorporation; that is to say, is recognized as a person
having the right to own property, to receive gifts and legacies,
to a certain amount, generally far superior to what is necessary.
If this sum is ever exceeded, it is easy to fulfil the
requirements of the law by creating a new centre, building a new
church.

Nothing then would seem more favorable than these arrangements of
American law. But, as they were conceived from a Protestant point
of view, they recognize the parish only, and not the diocese,
which is, nevertheless, the Catholic unit. Moreover, the
trustees, invested with church property, have on several
occasions made outrageous and extravagant pretensions. More than
once, they have believed that they possessed the right of
choosing their pastors, and dismissing them, if they did not
suit; they have held that they at least have the right of
presenting to the bishop a priest of their own choice, and thus
forcing his consent. Hence, the frequent conflicts between the
parochial element and the episcopal administration. The first
Council of Baltimore formerly protested against this lay
interference, which it declared contrary to the teaching of the
church and the discipline of every age; it decided that the
compensation assigned to members of the clergy, to be provided
from the funds of the parish, or by the alms of the faithful,
conferred on none the right of patronage.
{505}
Subsequent councils return incessantly to the same question; and
it has even appeared before the civil tribunals. In the diocese
of New York, particularly, the disputes between the Catholic
trustees and the bishop were prolonged with various results, but
without interruption, from 1840 to 1863. Finally, an arrangement
was concluded, and on this model the prelates wish to organize
all ecclesiastical property.

  "Since, in the United States, it is permitted to every citizen
  and foreigner to live freely and without molestation, according
  to the precepts of the religion which he professes--for the
  laws recognize and proclaim this right--nothing seems to hinder
  us from observing, in all their rigor, the rules established by
  councils and the sovereign pontiffs for the acquisition and
  preservation of church property. The fathers, therefore, desire
  to expose and set clearly before the eyes of the state the true
  rights of the church with regard to accepting, possessing, and
  defending sacred property, as, for example the land on which a
  church is built, or presbyteries, schools, cemeteries, and
  other establishments, in order that it may be legally permitted
  to Catholic citizens to follow exactly the laws and
  requirements of their church." [Footnote 143]

    [Footnote 143: Act. tit. iv. p. 117.]

Hence, one of the principal dispositions of this legislation is,
that the administrators of ecclesiastical property in parishes
shall do nothing without the consent of the bishop. In order that
this law may be observed, and that nothing more may be feared
from the intervention of the secular tribunals, there is no other
plan than for the bishop to place himself before the civil power,
as having the right to the full administration of all property
belonging to his church as a corporation sole. Some of the states
have recognized this right for the future. In others it is not
yet recognized. Hence they provide the best means for avoiding,
or, at least, diminishing the inconvenience resulting from this
state of things.

This requires that mutual securities be taken on the part of the
bishop and the trustees. As soon as appointed, the prelate will
make a will, and place a duplicate in the hands of his
metropolitan. Besides the property of which he is sole
proprietor, he will be _ex-officio_ president of all boards
of trustees, who possess, in the eyes of the law, the parochial
properties. Rules are established for the purpose of ensuring a
conscientious choice of these, in order that they may not
infringe on the rights of the parish priest, nor take any profit
from the revenues of the church. Such are the principal measures
relative to this important matter.


                  V.

In the chapter entitled _De Sacramentis_ we notice the
prudence which the council wishes to be used in administering
baptism to Protestants returning to the Catholic Church. Although
the greater portion of the sects regard what transpires at the
baptismal font as a mere ceremony, and frequently, through
carelessness, baptize invalidly, nevertheless the priest must not
proceed hap-hazard, nor decide on general principles, but must in
each case examine carefully into particulars. Only when certain
of the nullity or probable invalidity of the baptism, can he
confer the sacrament, either absolutely or conditionally.

In France, discussions have lately arisen as to the proper age
for administering the holy communion. Although the American child
is much earlier developed than the European, the fathers of
Baltimore establish as a rule that he shall not be urged at too
early an age to present himself at the holy table.
{506}
Ten and fourteen years are the two extreme limits to which one
must ordinarily be confined. Nevertheless, this rule leaves room
for all legitimate exceptions, and particularly, in case of
danger of death, it would be a grave fault in the pastor who
would not administer the eucharist to a child capable of
discerning the grace which it contains.

As their country is not a vine-growing land, and one can nowhere
be fully certain of the purity of wines imported from Europe, the
fathers express a desire to establish in Florida a community
which shall be especially charged with the care of preparing the
matter for the administration of the different sacraments, wine,
oil, etc. This community can also keep swarms of bees, and
furnish the different dioceses with pure waxen tapers. Meanwhile
they caution priests to beware of using for the holy sacrifice
the wines which are commonly sold under the names of port,
sherry, Madeira, Malaga, and to choose, rather, Bordeaux,
Sauterne, and others less subject to adulteration or fraudulent
imitation. Moreover, as the culture of the vine progresses, it
will be inexcusable to neglect having recourse to the products of
the soil, or at least, not to have a moral certainty of the
purity of the wines which are used.

In districts where a few Catholic families find themselves, as it
were, lost in the midst of Protestants, the scarcity of priests
causes many children to remain unbaptized [Footnote 144] until
after marriage; an _impedimentun dirimens_ which renders the
marriage null in the eyes of God and the church.

    [Footnote 144: The council referred not to unbaptized
    children of Catholics, for such are not to be found among us,
    but to unbaptized Protestants, or rather pagans, with whom
    Catholics have contracted a civil marriage.--ED. C. W.]

They live together in good faith, notwithstanding, and when the
priest, discovering the radical fault, speaks to them of renewing
their agreement, it frequently happens that the unbaptized party
refuses to do it. The fathers unite in requesting from the holy
see power to communicate to missionaries dispensations _in
radice_, of which they can make use to rehabilitate such
marriages.

As preceding councils have remarked, it is certain that, in most
of the provinces of the United States, the decree of the Council
of Trent regarding clandestine marriages has not yet been
promulgated. In some districts its promulgation is doubtful.
Besides, to require the presence of a certain priest for the
validity of a marriage appears to the fathers a measure attended
with great inconvenience. They demand, therefore, in order to
reassure consciences, and establish uniformity, to return
everywhere, except in the province of New Orleans, to the ancient
discipline, already universally in force. But the holy see has
not seen fit to accede to this request, as appears from the
answer addressed by the Propaganda to the _postulata_ of the
council.

On other points uniformity is supremely desirable. For instance,
the bishops earnestly desire it in that which pertains to
Christian instruction and in prayer-books. A catechism is to be
composed after that of Cardinal Bellarmine, adapted to the
peculiar situation of Catholics in the United States. When this
catechism has been approved by the holy see, it will be adopted
in all the dioceses.

As to prayer-books which do not bear the express approbation of
the ordinary, they ought not to be found in the hands of the
faithful.

{507}

The solicitude of the council here extends to various classes of
people. Following the example of the apostle, they recommend to
God those who govern; but the formulas of the church are alone to
be employed in these prayers, and no one is to imitate certain
sects and temples, wherein political passions and partisan rancor
utter accents which dishonor God rather than contribute to his
worship.

No one will neglect any precaution to free Catholic soldiers and
sailors from being obliged, against their conscience, to assist
at the rites of dissenting sects. The orphans are an object of
special solicitude. They must be gathered into the Catholic
asylums which already exist or are yet to be built. This
necessity is most pressing, and appeals to the charity of all who
can provide against it.


                  VI.

An entire chapter is consecrated to regular orders of men and
women. After recalling the immense advantages which their
churches have derived from the labor of religious, the fathers
state certain precautions which ought to be taken in order that
foundations may be stable and not precarious. Circumstances do
not always permit canonical erection or establishment in a
permanent manner; hence, in the agreement made between the bishop
and the religious community, this clause must hereafter be added,
to wit, that the latter will not quit the parish, school,
college, or congregation with which it is charged, without
notifying the ordinary at least six months in advance. This
relates only to diocesan work, properly so called, and not to
that which the religious may take up of their own accord, without
any obligation to continue.

Bishops shall conform to the canonical laws, defending the rights
and privileges of the religious whom they find in the territory
submitted to their jurisdiction, and they will avoid giving them
subjects of complaint, or motives for going elsewhere. Regulars
and seculars work toward the same ends namely, the glory of God
and the salvation of souls; hence, no dissension ought ever to
arise between them, but harmony, unity, and fraternal love should
ever reign supreme.

The council passes a magnificent eulogium on those "sisters" who
preserve, in their schools, the innocence of so many young
virgins, and who, during the late war, have known how to turn
public calamity to the glory of God and the advantage of
religion.

Who of the dissenting sects has not admired their zeal, charity,
and patience in the hospitals, and may not say, "the finger of
God is here"?

Various measures were adopted to assure the observance of the
rules of the church on the part of the religious. The fathers
have heretofore consulted as to the nature of their sacred
engagements. The answers received from Rome state that, in
several specially designated monasteries of the Visitantines, the
vows are solemn. [Footnote 145]

    [Footnote 145: These are the monasteries of Georgetown,
    Mobile, Kaskaskia, St. Aloysius, and Baltimore. The solemnity
    of the vows is there preserved according to rescripts
    formerly obtained from Rome.]

Henceforth, after the novitiate, simple vows are to be made, and
ten years later the solemn profession will be permitted. As to
other monasteries and religious houses, simple vows alone are
permitted, except by special rescript from the holy see; the same
rule applying to all convents of women which may be hereafter
erected in the various dioceses of the United States. The fathers
severely censure those who leave their monasteries and travel
through the country, under pretext of collecting money for houses
pressed with debt or for new foundations; they declare this to be
an intolerable abuse and contrary to the true character of the
religious life.

{508}

Everywhere, to-day, but in no country more than in America, the
question of schools appears most important, and claims the most
lively solicitude on the part of the episcopate.

Here the council begins by firmly asserting the rights of the
church. Jesus Christ said to his apostles, "Euntes docete,"
"Going, teach all nations." Since that time, this utterance has
been understood in the sense of a mission, to be fulfilled by
instruction and the exercise of spiritual maternity toward all,
but especially toward youth. Frequenting such public schools as
exist in the United States offers a thousand dangers. There
indifferentism reigns: corruption of morals is engendered in
early youth; the habit of reading and reciting authors who attack
religion and heap insults on the memory of saintly personages
weakens the faith in the souls of the young, while association
with vicious companions stifles virtue in their hearts. The only
remedy is to create other institutions, to open further
opportunities to Catholic youth. Parochial schools are highly
recommended, as well as the sodalities or congregations which
devote themselves to the instruction of the youth of either sex.

While speaking of houses of refuge and correction, the fathers
notice the numerous abductions of children which are daily made
by the different sects. These are orphans, or disobedient
children whom parents despair of managing. They are taken to
places where their relatives can neither find nor hear from them,
and their names are changed, so as not to recall them at some
future day to their religion or family. Comfortably nourished,
they are reared in the principles of heresy and in hatred of
Catholicity. [Footnote 146] Moved with pity, several bishops have
already opened houses to gather in these little unfortunates; the
council desires them to be everywhere established; for if one
ought to applaud the zeal of those who raise magnificent temples
to God, much more should one praise those who prepare for him a
spiritual dwelling of these precious and living stones.

    [Footnote 146: Acts have recently been passed in the
    Legislature of New York which promise to be a very effectual
    check to the most nefarious arts of these kidnappers in this
    State.--ED. C. W.]

Here follows a tribute of recognition of the services rendered by
the various colleges and academies which already exist in the
United States. The American establishments at Rome, at Louvain,
and in Ireland, are now furnishing priests and missionaries. When
will it be granted to the bishops to found a grand Catholic
university, which will complete all the good accomplished by
these institutions? Yet this is not merely a desire; it is
ardently expressed by the council; we hope the future may bring
about its speedy realization. [Footnote 147]

    [Footnote 147: Amen!--Ed. C. W.]

The missions are one of the most efficacious means of procuring
the salvation of souls. Regulars and seculars are alike called to
this great work. The council demands that a house of missionaries
be founded in each diocese, for giving spiritual exercises in the
parishes, above all during Lent, Advent, at the time of first
communions, and the episcopal visitations. The parish priests are
to co-operate cordially with these auxiliaries, and if any refuse
to do so, they will be constrained by their bishop. On the other
hand, all precautions are taken to avoid any appearance of
interestedness, and any interference in the parochial government
on the part of the missionaries.

{509}

The idea of association, so popular at the present day, is
essentially and originally Catholic. If some have used it against
us, we know how to reclaim and avail ourselves of it. Hence, the
fathers recommend the confraternities approved by the church,
such as those of the Blessed Sacrament, the Sacred Heart, the
Blessed Virgin Mary, St. Joseph, and the Holy Angels. They
recommend the "Apostolate of Prayer," also, another pious
association, which prays especially for the conversion of
non-Catholics; they seek to develop the well-deserving
undertakings of the "Propagation of the Faith" and "Holy
Childhood;" they accord the highest praise to the
arch-confraternity of St. Peter; finally, they add other works of
piety and mercy, among them the "Society of St. Vincent de Paul,"
so well adapted to our times, and which has already produced such
great results.

After this great encouragement, come restrictions no less called
for. No new associations are to be created where ancient
confraternities suffice. In case any priest desires to institute
a new one, he must have a written permission from his bishop; the
latter is forbidden to approve a new foundation unless he is sure
that its means and aim are truly Catholic. It will be truly
desirable to give such a character to the mutual aid societies
to-day so numerous among the working classes.

The welfare of the negroes greatly interests the American
episcopate. What a harvest is here to be gathered among these
poor souls, purchased by the blood of Jesus Christ, and so well
prepared by their emancipation to listen to the Gospel. Heresy
spares no effort to assure herself of possessing them--another
reason for earnestly seconding the desire expressed by the
Congregation of the Propaganda in this respect. But the measures
adopted for this end cannot be everywhere the same, and general
rules are, therefore, hard to determine. The negroes must have
churches either in common with or separate from the other
faithful; they must have schools, missions, orphan asylums.
Laborers are wanting to this harvest. The superiors of religious
orders are requested to designate some of their subjects for this
purpose, and secular priests, who feel this to be their vocation,
to fly to the succor of this class, so destitute and so
interesting. As to particular measures, provincial councils will
determine in those regions where the negroes are more numerous.


                 VII.

Books and journals exercise such a great influence on society,
both for evil and for good, that they could not fail to be the
object of a special decree. After noticing the disastrous effects
of an immoral press, the prelates call on all the servants of
Jesus Christ, especially those who are fathers of families, to
rid their houses of all noxious and dangerous books. They do not
hesitate in this instance to employ the severe words of the
apostle, "If any man have not care of his own, and especially of
those of his house, he hath denied the faith, and is worse than
an infidel." I Tim. v. 8. School-books must be carefully revised,
expurgated, when necessary, and submitted to episcopal
approbation. A sort of permanent committee is created for this
purpose, composed of the superiors of three colleges existing in
the arch-diocese of Baltimore.

As to good books, their circulation should be favored as much as
possible. It is desirable that associations should everywhere be
formed, to employ themselves in this work. The fathers
particularly recommend the "Catholic Publication Society" of New
York, which has existed for some years, and has already done
immense good. Committees in every city are to be formed, and
affiliated to the central society, and collections are ordered to
be made yearly for assisting this good work.

{510}

Prayer-books ought always to be examined by theologians, and none
should be printed without the approbation of the ordinary. This
has hitherto been only a wish; hereafter it shall be a law
obliging all bishops.

Among current periodicals there are many impious and immoral,
some more tolerable, but very few deserving eulogy and full
recommendation to the faithful. The prelates continue:

  "Journals edited or directed by Catholics indirectly
  contributing to the advantage of religion, must exist. But for
  fear lest the political opinions of the writers may be
  attributed to ecclesiastical authority, or to Christianity
  itself, as often happens, thanks to the bad faith of
  adversaries, we desire that all should be duly warned not to
  recognize any journal as _Catholic_ unless it bears the
  express approbation of the ordinary.

  "In several dioceses, there are journals furnished with this
  approbation, under one form or another, because the bishops
  require them as a means of conveying their orders or ideas to
  their clergy and people. Hence they are assumed to have an
  official character, as if the voice of the pastor were to be
  heard from every page and line. This is a misunderstanding,
  although quite general, chiefly propagated by sectarians. From
  it result grave and intolerable inconveniences. For, whatever
  may be written by these editors, who may often be controlled by
  passions private and political, is laid to the account of the
  bishop, and seems to form a part of his pastoral teaching.

  "In order that such a responsibility may cease to weigh upon
  the episcopate, and in order clearly to set forth the relations
  between the ordinary and the ecclesiastical journals, the
  fathers declare that the approbation accorded by a bishop to a
  Catholic journal merely signifies that he has found in it
  nothing contrary to faith or morals; and that he hopes such
  will be the case in future; and moreover, that the editors are
  well-deserving men, and their writings useful and edifying. The
  bishop, then, is only responsible for what appears in the paper
  as his own teaching, counsel, exhortation or command; and for
  this, only when signed with his own hand." (Act. tit. xi. p.
  256.)

They spoke of establishing a journal or review, solely devoted to
the exposition and defence of Catholic dogma, of which the
archbishops of Baltimore, New York, and perhaps other
metropolitans with them, would have the ownership. The question
was submitted by the council to the judgment of the ordinaries.

If the fathers wish to be free from a solidarity often
compromising, they none the less recognize the services of
Catholic writers. The felicitations which they address to them
are borrowed from the pontifical allocution of April 20th, 1849,
and from the letters apostolic of February 12th, 1866.



                 VIII.

The church has frequently uttered severe condemnations of secret
societies, engaged in acts forbidden by religion and justice.
After having recalled to mind and published anew these
condemnations, the fathers add that they do not see any reason
for applying them to societies of artisans which have no other
object than the mutual support and protection of people of the
same calling.

These must not favor the practices of condemned sects, nor
proceed contrary to equity and the rights of patrons. No one must
regard as even tolerated, associations which demand of those
entering an oath to do whatever the chiefs command, or which
would maintain an inviolable secrecy in the face of lawful
questioning. If there be doubt of the nature of an association,
the holy see must be consulted. No person, however high his
ecclesiastical dignity, ought to condemn any society which does
not fall under the censures of the apostolical constitutions.
[Footnote 148]

    [Footnote 148: At the request of certain bishops, this decree
    was to be suppressed. It was re-established in acts according
    to directions from Rome.]

{511}

In the thirteenth chapter, the bishops request the erection of
fifteen new episcopal sees; to wit, four in the province of
Baltimore, seven in that of St. Louis, one in each of the
provinces of Cincinnati, Oregon, San Francisco, and New York.
They also desire the churches of Philadelphia and Milwaukee to be
raised to metropolitan dignity. Excepting this last demand, this
chapter has met favorable reception at Rome; and at the present
moment, America counts twelve new bishoprics or vicarates
apostolic.

We will not speak of the pastoral letter addressed by the bishops
of the council to the faithful of their dioceses. It was
published at the time in many French journals. Moreover, it
merely recapitulates the measures and decrees which ought to be
brought to the knowledge of all the Catholic populations. In it
one perceives the accent of ardent zeal for the salvation of
souls. Amid the felicitations which they address to their flock,
the American prelates mingle cries of sorrow at the sight of the
abuses which still exist and the souls which are lost. A warm
appeal is made to families to favor the development of
ecclesiastical vocations; in this country, more than in any other
in the world, the harvest is immense, and arms alone are often
wanting to gather it.

As to the relations between the church and the state, the fathers
declare that, apart from a few brief instances of over-excitement
and madness, the attitude taken by the civil power and its
non-interference in religious matters is a matter for
congratulation; they complain only of its not according the
necessary guarantees for church property, according to ancient
canons and discipline. But several States have already done what
is reasonable in this respect; it is hoped that others will soon
follow their example.

Such is the incomplete but at least faithful _résumé_ of the
decrees of this great assembly. In reading, one is struck with
the wisdom and prudence which characterize them. After the divine
assistance, certainly not denied to so holy an undertaking, one
here finds something of that American good sense, eminently exact
and practical, which, in dealing with lofty things, seizes them
principally by their positive side, and, without losing sight of
principles, adapts them always to times and circumstances.

If doctrine is greatly represented in this volume, pure theory
occupies but a small space. Above everything else the council has
wished to be a work of organization. No less remarkable for what
it has not said than for what it has said, it seems to embody the
device of the poet, "Semper ad eventum festinat;" no superfluous
details, no useless erudition; all bears the seal of a
legislation soberly but firmly motived, wherein nothing is
omitted which can enlighten and convince the mind, and nothing
allowed to lengthen a text by right short, or to complicate a
simple matter; a majestic monument, of simple and severe
proportions, art seems therein neglected, but is by no means
wanting.

If it were permissible in presence of so great a work to recur to
a secondary detail, we would say that pupils of the seminaries,
in studying these acts, will find in them a model of that
beautiful Latinity unfortunately too rare in theological
treatises.

Their task ended, the prelates had only to congratulate
themselves on the success obtained. After having announced to
their children that they would be more fully notified of the
result in provincial councils and diocesan synods, they have been
able to add, with lawful pride, that they expect all manner of
good from the practical organization given for the future to the
churches of this vast continent.

-------

{512}

        The Legend of St. Thomas.

And it came to pass, in those days, that Thomas abode at
Jerusalem. And in a dream the Lord appeared to him, and said,
Behold, Gondaphorus, who ruleth in India, hath sent Abbas his
servant into Syria, that he may find men skilful in the art of
building. Go thou, therefore, and I will show thee unto him. But
Thomas answered, and said, Lord, suffer me not to go into India.
But the Lord answered, and said to him, Fear not, but rise up and
depart; for behold, I am with thee, and when thou shalt have
converted the nations of India, thou shalt come to me, and I will
give unto thee the recompense of thy reward. And when Thomas
heard this, he said, Thou art my Lord and I am thy servant. Let
it be as thou hast said. And he went his way.

And it came to pass that as Abbas, the servant of Gondaphorus the
king, stood in the market-place, the Lord met him, and said,
Young man, what seekest thou? And Abbas answered, and said,
Behold, my master hath sent me hither, that I might bring to him
cunning workmen who shall build for him a palace like unto those
that are in Rome. And when he had spoken these things, the Lord
showed unto him Thomas, as that skilful and cunning workman whom
he sought.

And straightway Thomas the apostle, and the servant of
Gondaphorus the king, departed. And as they journeyed, the word
of the Lord spake by the mouth of Thomas, and great multitudes of
the Gentiles were converted and baptized. And when they came to
Aden, which lieth at the going in of the Red Sea, they tarried
many days.

And departing thence, they came into the coasts of India. And
behold, there was a marriage in that city, and both Thomas and
Abbas were called to the marriage. And the whole city was with
them. And while they rejoiced together, behold, Thomas spake to
the people the word of the Lord, and wrought many mighty works
before them all, so that great multitudes believed and were
baptized. And the daughter of the king, (whose feast it was,) and
her husband, and the king also, were among them. And this was
she, who, after a long time, was called Pelagia, and took the
holy veil, and suffered martyrdom. But the bridegroom was called
Denis, and became the bishop of that city.

And going from thence, they departed, and came to Gondaphorus the
king. And to him was Thomas the apostle brought, as a cunning
workman, skilled in all manner of building. And the king
commanded him to build for him a royal palace, and gave him vast
treasures wherewith to build it, and having done this, he went
into another country.

And it came to pass, that when Thomas received the treasure of
the king, he put not his hand to the palace of the king, but went
his way throughout the kingdom, for the space of two years,
preaching the Gospel, healing the sick, and giving his treasures
to the poor.

{513}

And after the space of two years, Gondaphorus the king returned
into his own city, and when he had asked concerning his palace,
Thomas answered, and said, Behold, O king! the palace is builded;
but thou shalt dwell therein only in the world that is to come.
Then was the king exceeding wroth, when he had heard these
things, and commanded his soldiers to cast Thomas into prison,
and to flay him alive, and afterward to burn his body with fire.

And it came to pass, that in those days Syd, the brother of
Gondaphorus, died, and the king commanded them to prepare for him
a goodly sepulchre. And on the fourth day, as they made
lamentation over him, behold, he that was dead sat up and began
to speak. And they were sore affrighted and amazed. But he said
to the king, Behold, O king! he whom thou hast commanded to be
flayed and burned is the friend of God. For lo! the angels of
God, who serve him, took me into paradise, and showed to me a
palace adorned with gold and silver and precious stones. And when
I was astonished at its beauty, one cried out to me, and said,
Behold, this is the palace which Thomas has builded for the king,
thy brother. But he has become unworthy; yet, if thou thyself
wouldst dwell therein, we will beseech the Lord, that thou mayest
live again and redeem it of thy brother by paying unto him the
treasure he has lost.

And when Gondaphorus had heard these things, he was sore afraid.
And he straightway ran to the prison, and came in unto the
apostle, and smote off his chains. And bringing a royal robe, he
would have put it on him. But Thomas answering, said, Knowest
thou not, O king! that those who would have power in heavenly
things care not for that which is carnal and earthly? And when he
had said this, the king fell down at his feet, confessing his
sins. And Thomas baptized both him, and his brother, and all his
house, and said to them, In heaven there are many mansions,
prepared from the foundation of the world. But these are
purchased only by faith and almsgiving. Your riches are able to
go before you into these heavenly habitations, but thither they
can never follow you.

And after these things, Thomas arose and departed, and came into
all the kingdoms of India, preaching the Gospel, and doing many
mighty miracles. And all the nations of India believed and were
baptized, hearing his words, and seeing the wonders which he did.

And it came to pass that Mesdeus the king heard thereof. And when
Thomas came into his country, he laid hands upon him, and
commanded him to adore his idols, even the images of the Sun,
which he had made. And Thomas answered, and said, Let it be even
as thou hast said, if at my word the idol bow not its head into
the dust. And when he had said this, the idol fell down prostrate
to the earth.

And there arose a great sedition among the people, and the
greater part stood with Thomas. But the king was exceeding angry,
and cast him into prison, and delivered him up to the soldiers,
that they might put him to death. And the soldiers, taking him,
led him forth to the top of a mountain over against the city. And
when he had prayed a long time, they pierced him with their
spears, and, falling down, he yielded up the ghost. And his
disciples, which stood by, wept for him with many tears, and,
taking up his body, they wound it in precious spices, and laid it
in a tomb. But the church grew and waxed mightily, and Siforus
the priest, and Zuganes the deacon, whom Thomas had ordained as
he went forth to die on the mountain, taught in his stead.

{514}

Such is the legend of St. Thomas, as recited in the name of
Abdias of Babylon, "bishop and disciple," [Footnote 149] in his
"_ten_ books upon the conflicts of the apostles." Whatever
we may think of the individual events therein detailed, the great
outline of the story has much intrinsic probability, and is of no
slight interest to the student of Christian history. Especially
is this so in the present age, when the vast and mystic East
opens her gates once more to the knock of the evangelist, and
when the whole Christian world is agitated with a missionary zeal
which must be comparatively fruitless, unless guided by a
knowledge of the people whom it approaches, and of the religious
traditions with which it must combat or agree. It is our
intention in this article to suggest some of the chief facts in
the ecclesiastical annals of these unknown lands, and to trace,
so far as we may be able, the dogmatic genealogy of those
religious notions with which the Gospel has been, and will be,
there forced to contend.

    [Footnote 149: Abdias of Babylon, to whom is ascribed the
    work mentioned in the text, is accounted among the
    ecclesiastical writers of the first age. He was a Jew by
    birth, and one of the seventy disciples of our Lord. He went
    with SS. Simon and Jude into Persia, and by them was made
    bishop of Babylon. The work which bears his name was first
    printed in the year 1532. Its alleged authorship, on account
    of its citations, and for some other reasons, has generally
    been denied by the learned. On this point the present writer
    ventures no opinion, although convinced that the tradition,
    as contained in _The Legend of St. Thomas_, is
    substantially true, and has existed in the same general
    outline from the earliest periods of Christian history.]

In the legend which we have repeated, and the discussion of which
will occupy the present article, the scene of the labors of St.
Thomas is laid in India. The tradition that he preached in
Parthia and other countries of the east, and that he perished by
martyrdom, is nearly as old as Christianity itself. All of the
early writers are agreed that his apostolic province lay north
and east of Palestine, and that the Persians, Bactrians,
Scythians, and other kindred nations were entrusted to his
spiritual care. But in regard to the particular regions over
which he travelled, and the extent of his missionary efforts, as
embraced in modern geographical divisions, there appears to be no
small discrepancy between them. Thus, while certain ancient
authors ascribe to him the evangelization of the entire East,
Socrates and Theodoret expressly state that the Gospel was not
preached in India till the fourth century, when Frumentius
carried thither the knowledge of the true faith, and established
a mission, of which he himself became the bishop; while some
extend his wanderings to the Ganges, or even to the Celestial
empire itself, others limit him within the eastern boundary of
Persia, and place his death and burial-place near the city of
Edessa, less than two hundred miles north-east from Antioch.

Much of this apparent disagreement, however, is explained away by
the acknowledged ambiguity of the phrases under which these
different countries were anciently described. "India" and
"Ethiopia" seem to have been terms as loosely applied in that age
as "the East," in Europe, and "the West," in America, are today;
and it is not at all unlikely that, as has been the case with the
latter phrase in this country, the application of the former was
gradually changed as their nearer frontiers became better known,
and were localized under distinct and peculiar names. The India
of Socrates and Theodoret may or may not embrace the districts
included in the India of Gaudentius and Sophronius; and each, in
his historic statement, may be entirely accurate in fact, though
contradictory to the others in his language.

{515}

Moreover, in those early ages kingdoms were less known than
nations. The ancients spoke of "Persians," "Romans," "Jews,"
"Egyptians," rather than of the countries in which they were
supposed to dwell; while in our day, on the contrary, the
explorations of geography have rendered the regions far more
definite than the nations which inhabit them. For this reason,
what would be comparatively a safe guide to any given locality in
modern usage, would be far less reliable in writings of a
thousand years ago. Thus we may well dismiss whatever doubts this
seeming disagreement at first sight throws around the
post-scriptural account of this apostle, or at least hold it in
abeyance, to be obliterated if subsequent investigations should
disclose sufficient evidence of the toils and triumphs of St.
Thomas in the vast empires of oriental Asia.

It is in this _generic_ sense of the terms that "India" and
"the Indies" are employed by the author of this legend, and under
the singular as well as under the plural name are included many
kingdoms through which the apostle travelled, from that in which
he preached the Gospel at the nuptials of a king to that in which
he found the mountain of his martyrdom. Each of these seems to
have had its own court and king, and to have been so far
independent of the others that the same religion which was
maintained and promulgated by the state in one, was persecuted
and condemned by the rulers of the other. It is not, therefore,
to these names that we can look with any confidence of finding
such vestiges of the apostle's footsteps as shall afford us a
definite clue to the countries or the nations which enjoyed the
fruits of his laborious love.

Such, however, is not the case with the name of King Gondaphorus
to whom particularly, according to the legend, the mission of St.
Thomas was directed. Until within a few years, the age, the
residence, even the existence of this personage has been matter
of serious controversy. The opinion most commonly received among
the learned was, that "Gondaphorus" was a corruption of "Gun
dishavor" or "Gondisapor," a city built by Artaxerxes, and
deriving its name from Sapor or Schavor, the son and successor of
its founder. [Footnote 150] As the city could have acquired this
title only in the fourth century, this, among other reasons, has
generally led historians to deny the substantial authenticity of
the legend itself, and to regard it as the fabrication of some
later age.

    [Footnote 150: Gundisapor was the episcopal and metropolitan
    city of the province of Sarac, situated on the Tigris, six
    leagues from Susa. It is said to have been built by
    Hormisdas, the contemporary of the Emperor Constantine, and
    to have been called by the name of Sapor, his son, by whom it
    was afterward immensely enriched and beautified with the
    treasures which he ravished from the Roman empire.]

Recent investigations among Indian antiquities have thrown new
light upon this subject, and, in this particular, at least, seem
to have cleared the legend from all suspicions of fraud. Among
the many coins and medals lately discovered in the East are those
of the Indo-Scythian kings who ruled in the valley of the Indus
about the beginning of our present era. One of these kings bore
the name of "Gondaphorus," and pieces of his coinage are now said
to be preserved in different collections of Paris and the East.
[Footnote 151] This striking corroboration, in the nineteenth
century, of a tradition which, in one shape or another, has been
current in the Christian world for eighteen hundred years, can
hardly fail to satisfy the most critical examiner that the legend
ascribed to Abdias is, in its grand outline, entitled to a far
higher degree of credit than it has been accustomed lately to
receive.

    [Footnote 151: Vide _Le Christianisme en Chine_, etc.,
    par M, Huc. Paris, 1857, p. 28, etc.]

{516}

The course of the apostle and his companion toward the east, so
far as this tradition and its modern limitations have defined it,
may thus be traced. Leaving Jerusalem, they journeyed by the
usual route to the Red Sea, and thence along the coasts of Arabia
Petraea and Arabia Felix to Aden, then, as now, a city of much
commercial importance, on account of its excellent harbor and
commanding situation. Here they remained for a considerable
period of time, the apostle preaching the Gospel and laying
foundations on which other men might build. Embarking thence,
they sailed around the southern borders of the Arabian peninsula,
and, crossing the Gulf of Oman, landed at one of the then
flourishing cities near the mouths of the Indus. After some
delay, of which St. Thomas made good use in the service of the
Gospel, they pushed north-easterly into the interior to the
immediate province of King Gondaphorus, where, after the labors
of two years, the apostle brought the monarch and his family
under obedience to the yoke of Christ. His special work thus
accomplished, St. Thomas travelled into many other kingdoms on
the same divine errand, and terminated his devoted and fruitful
life by holy martyrdom. Thus far, the legend; and that it agrees
with and is in fact the interpreter of all other traditions of
St. Thomas, as well as of those various monuments which, until
recently, have been unknown as teachers of Christian history,
will shortly be made manifest.

The holy apostle, having once established Christianity in those
parts of India which lie nearest to Jerusalem, would naturally
extend his journey into more distant regions, rather than retrace
his steps, and occupy, as his field of labor, a territory to
which the Gospel would, without his intervention, probably be
soon proclaimed. For, having in himself powers plenipotentiary
for the organization and perpetuation of the church, wherever he
might plant it, and being assured, as a Christian and disciple,
that the zeal and perseverance of his fellow-workers might safely
be entrusted with the conversion of the nations adjacent to the
centres of Christian doctrine, it was simply manlike, simply
apostolic, for him to set his face steadfastly toward those who,
but for him, might not in many generations obtain the light of
faith. If, therefore, the footsteps which we have already traced
be genuine, we may with reason look for traces of the same
unwearied feet in other and still more unknown lands.

And herein also, the traditions of the early ages will not
disappoint us. Still reckoning by nations, rather than by
kingdoms, the ancient writers tell us that St. Thomas preached
the Gospel to the Parthians, Medes, Persians, Hyrcanians,
Bactrians, Germanians, Seres, Indians, and Scythians. Thus in a
fragment of St. Dorotheus, (A.D. 254,) "The apostle Thomas,
having announced the Gospel to the Parthians, Medes, Persians,
Germanians, Bactrians, and Mages, suffered martyrdom at Calamila,
a city of India." Theodoret, speaking of the universality of the
preaching of the apostles, says, "They have caused, not only the
Romans, and those who inhabit the Roman empire, but the
Scythians, ... the Indians, ... the Persians, the Seres, and the
Hyrcanians to receive from them the law of the Crucified."
Origen, and from him Eusebius, relates that St. Thomas received
Parthia as his allotted sphere; and Sophronius mentions that he
planted the faith among the Medes, Persians, Carmanians,
(Germanians,) Hyrcanians, Bactrians, and other nations of the
extreme east. Both the latter and St. Gaudentius declare that he
suffered at Calamina in India.

{517}

The same traditions are faithfully preserved among the Christians
of India. In the breviary of the Church of Malabar, it is stated
that St. Thomas converted the Indians, Chinese, and Ethiopians,
and that these different nations, together with the Persians,
offer their adorations to God in commemoration of this devoted
apostle, from whom their forefathers received the truth of
Christ. The presumption of fact, which arises out of such a mass
of testimony as these and other witnesses which might be quoted
offer us, existing for so many ages and in countries so widely
separated from each other, is surely sufficient to justify a
careful study of the localities to which these different nations
belonged, as indicative of the later and more extended missionary
labors of St. Thomas.

According to the best authorities on the subjects of ancient
geography and ethnology, all the various territories which were
inhabited by the nations whose conversion has been attributed to
St. Thomas lie east of the Euphrates, and, with the single
exception of the Scythians, below the fortieth parallel of
latitude. The Medes occupied the districts between the Caspian
and Persian seas. The Hyrcanians lay on the south-east of the
Caspian, the Parthians and the Bactrians lying east of them; and
all three being included in the present Turkistan. The Persians
held the northeastern borders of the Persian Gulf, next to the
kingdom of the Medes; the Germanians, or Carmanians, lying next
on the south-east, in part of what is now known as Beloochistan,
and the lower corner of modern Persia. The "Seres" was a name
given to the Chinese in the earliest historic ages, and embraced
the vast and cultivated people who dwell beyond the Emodi, or
Himalaya, mountains, and east of the sources of the Indus. The
Indians and Scythians--the former occupying from the Indian Ocean
and the latter from the Arctic zone--met together between the
Bactrians and the Seres, and formed the Indo-Scythian races of
the ante-Christian age. Calamila, or Calamina, the city near
which the apostle finally rested from his labors, is on the
eastern coast of Hindostan, a short distance from Madras, and has
been known, at different periods, by the names of Meliapour,
Beit-Thoma, and St. Thomas.

The connection of these ancient nations and countries with, and
their successive propinquity to, each other enables us to form a
tolerably correct idea of the course of the apostle's missionary
work, from the baptism of Gondaphorus to the close of his own
career. For although our guide is simply the intrinsic
probability which grows out of the nature of the workman and the
work God had appointed him to do, yet, to whoever takes the map
of the various regions which we have described as the scenes of
the apostolic life and death, it will appear that one of two
courses must have been adopted. The first starts from the valley
of the Indus, and, leading westward, reaches in turn the
Germanians, Persians, and Medes; then, turning toward the north
and flexing eastward by the southern border of the Caspian Sea,
it penetrates the land of the Hyrcanians, Parthians, Bactrians,
Indo-Scythians, and Seres; where, again met by the upper Indus,
it bends southward, and, striking through the heart of Hindostan,
ends in the lower portion of the peninsula at or near Madras.
{518}
The second, beginning at the same point, follows up the Indus in
a path directly opposite to the former, until the place of
departure is again reached and the final journey through modern
India begins. It is scarcely possible to say which of these two
routes is most probably correct. Future researches may throw
light upon the extent of the region over which King Gondaphorus
reigned, upon the relation of the dialects of these bordering
nations to each other, and thus afford a clue to the more exact
path of the apostle. But in either case, the districts over which
he travelled, and the races into contact with whom he carried the
Gospel, are distinguished with a high degree of certainty, and
the triumphs of the cross under his leadership may thus be
clearly understood.

Indeed, the work of scarce any apostle of the twelve can now be
better followed than that of Thomas. The chief indefiniteness
attaches to his mission to the Seres; for here little is extant
to show, with any great conclusiveness, whether his labors
terminated with the borders of Indo-Scythia, or penetrated to the
Yellow Sea. Some monuments of antiquity have, it is true, been
found, which point strongly to the spreading of the Gospel over a
large part of China by primitive if not by apostolic
missionaries; but nothing has as yet been discovered which would
justify the conclusion that St. Thomas actually attempted the
evangelization of that immense and thickly-populated empire. If
such had been the case, it is hardly possible that India should
have received him back again, and given him the distant Calamina
for his martyrdom.

The area of territory over which the apostle Thomas must thus
have journeyed embraces over three million two hundred and fifty
thousand square miles, and the people to whom he opened the doors
of heaven, through the Gospel, numbered more than two hundred
millions of souls. The linear distance of his own personal
travels probably exceeded ten thousand miles, and this, for the
most part, necessarily on foot. The consideration of these facts,
and of the results which followed from the apostle's labors, will
give us some idea of the work which our Divine Lord committed to
his immediate disciples, and of the untiring zeal and superhuman
endurance with which they were endowed. It has become far easier
for us to say, "The Lord hath shortened his hand," than to go and
do likewise.

Yet it is still true that Thomas was an apostle; that it was the
will of the Master that all nations should at once almost receive
some knowledge of his Gospel; that the miraculous gift of tongues
swept out of the way one of the greatest obstacles to missionary
labor; and that St. Thomas had received the gifts of faith and
charity to such a degree as enabled him to co-operate, to the
utmost, with the graces of his work. And it is also true that,
had not he and the others of the twelve been such as they were
and accomplished what they did, the promises of Christ would have
been unfulfilled, and the church have suffered from their failure
to its latest day. But in that they were _apostles_, in that
they did their work, the seed of the Gospel can scarcely fall,
to-day, on soil which has not been already watered by the blood
of martyrs, or among people in whom it has not, long ago, sprung
up and brought forth fruit abundantly.

{519}

There were, however, in the case of St. Thomas, other and natural
reasons why his work should have been so vast and his success so
extraordinary. The facility of intercourse between the east and
the west was far greater in his day than in our own. The
successive conquests of Alexander had led him beyond the present
western boundary of China. The Roman empire, at the beginning of
our era, reached beyond the Euphrates, and the intimate
connection of part with part, and the ease of intercourse between
the imperial city and the farthest military outpost, can scarcely
be exaggerated. [Footnote 152] Up to the seventh century, this
unity continued to a great degree unbroken, and will account not
only for the presence of the minister of Gondaphorus in Jerusalem
and for the results which followed it, but for the diffusion and
preservation of the traditions which have handed down those
events to us.

    [Footnote 152: De Quincey's _Caesars_. (Introduction.)]

Nor was this unity altogether that of conquest. Beyond the empire
of Augustus lay the realms of Porus, of whom history relates that
he held six hundred kings beneath his sway. Between these
emperors there seem to have been two formal attempts at an
intimate political alliance. Twenty-four years before the birth
of Christ, an embassy from Porus followed Augustus into Spain,
upon this errand, and another some years afterward met with him
at Samos. In the reigns of Claudius, Trajan, Antoninus Pius, and
succeeding emperors, the same royal courtesies were interchanged,
and it was not until the Mussulman power, sweeping like a sea of
fire between the east and the west, became an impassable barrier
to either, that these relations had an end.

Nearly the same may be said of commercial unity. The trade in
silk, from which substance the Seres, or Chinese, derived their
name, was carried on between the Romans and that distant nation
on no inconsiderable scale. Numerous caravans perpetually
journeyed to and fro through the wilds of Parthia and along the
southern border of the Caspian Sea; while the Erythrean, Red and
Mediterranean waters glittered with sails from almost every land.
The whole inhabited world (if we except this continent, the date
of whose first settlement no one can tell) was thus
providentially brought close together, and a higher degree of
unity and association established between its different nations
than had existed since the dispersion at Babel, or than has now
existed for over twelve hundred years.

How vast an advantage to apostolic labor this unity must have
been can easily be seen. While it removed almost entirely the
difficulties of travel, it assured for the traveller both safety
and good-will upon the way. While it conciliated in advance the
people among whom they labored, it gave weight and human
authority to the Gospel, when actually preached. And, when the
church had been established and little colonies of Christians
marked the track of the apostles, it enabled them to maintain a
constant intercourse with their spiritual children by messengers
or by epistles, and to keep watch and ward over the millions
entrusted to their care.

Those prophetic traditions of a coming Saviour, which pervaded
the east, as well as the south and west, also effected much
toward the rapid spread and wide espousal of Christian truth. The
origin of these traditions is shrouded in the mystery of an
unchronicled antiquity. They may be attributed to the promise in
paradise, to the transfusion of Mosaic teachings, or to direct
revelation by means of pagan oracles. But that they existed, in a
clear and well-defined prophetic form, is established beyond
question; while that they were in the first instance of divine
disclosure, it becomes no Christian to deny.
{520}
The learned and contemplative minds of Asia especially delighted
in this state of expectation. Sons of a soil whereon the feet of
God had trodden in primeval days, the very atmosphere around them
still throbbed with the echoes of that voice which walked in Eden
in the cool of the day. The mountains that overlooked them had
aforetime walled in the garden of the Lord from a dark and
half-developed world. The deserts of their meditations lay like a
pall above the relics of those generations to whom the deluge
brought the judgment wrath of God. Children of Sem, the eldest
son of Noah, it had been theirs to see, even more clearly than
God's chosen Israel, the coming of the Incarnate to the world, as
it was also theirs to win from heaven the first tidings of his
birth through the glowing orient star.

Among the many forms which this tradition assumed, there is one
so beautiful and so theologically accurate, that we cannot omit
to cite it here. While the swan of Mantua, on the banks of father
Tiber, chanted the glories of the golden age, a Hindoo poet, on
the borders of the Ganges, thus painted to the wondering eyes of
Indian kings the grand event in which the disorders and miseries
of that present age should have an end:

  "Then shall a Brahmin be born in the city of Sambhala. This
  shall be Vishnu Jesu. To him shall the divine scriptures and
  all sciences unfold themselves, without the use of so much time
  in their investigation as is necessary to pronounce a single
  word. Hence shall be given to him the name of Sarva Buddha, as
  to one who fully knoweth all things. Then shall Vishnu Jesu,
  dwelling with his people, perform that work which he alone can
  do. He shall purge the world from sin; he shall set up the
  kingdom of truth and justice; he shall offer the sacrifice; ...
  and bind anew the universe to God. .... But when the time of
  his old age draws nigh, he shall retire into the desert to do
  penance; and this is the order which Vishnu Sarva shall
  establish among men. He shall fix virtue and truth in the midst
  of the Brahmins, and confine the four castles within the
  boundaries of their laws. Then shall return the primeval age.
  Then sacrifice shall be so common that the very wilderness
  shall be no more a solitude. Then shall the Brahmins, confirmed
  in goodness, occupy themselves only in the ceremonies of
  religion; they shall cause penance, and all other graces which
  follow in the path of truth, to flourish, and shall spread
  everywhere the knowledge of the holy scriptures. Then shall the
  seasons succeed each other in unbroken order; the rains, in
  their appointed time, shall water the earth; the harvest, in
  its turn, shall yield abundance; the milk shall flow at the
  wish of those who seek it; and the whole world, being
  inebriated with prosperity and peace, as it was in the
  beginning, all nations shall enjoy ineffable delights."
  [Footnote 153]

    [Footnote 153: _Le Christianisme en Chine_, p. 5.]

The well-known policy of St. Paul, who, preaching on Mars' hill
to the Athenians, seized the inscription on their altar, "To the
unknown God," as the text of his most memorable sermon, is a
divine endorsement of the important part which God intended that
these far-reaching revelations should play in the conversion of
the world. St. Thomas, in the east, had but to repeat the
announcement, Him whom ye ignorantly worship, him declare I unto
you. He, for whom you have waited--he, Vishnu Jesu, has already
come; his wisdom and his counsels I reveal to you.

{521}

And among the clear-thoughted and pure-hearted sages of the east,
among the Magi of Persia, the Brahmins of India, and the
philosophers of China, among such as those who at the mere
bidding of a voiceless star followed it to the world's end--to
the cave of Bethlehem--these declarations of the apostle must
have been the signal of salvation. In them there were no
prejudices to wipe away, no new and strange ideas to be espoused.
The Gospel was not to them, as to the Jews, the subversion of
anticipated glory. It was the realization of expectation, the
golden day which had so long shot gleams of light into the
darkness of their iron age. And so it was that, while Judea could
give to Christianity but simple fishermen, or at most a ruler of
the synagogue, India and the orient thought not too highly of her
kings and sages to yield them up to Vishnu Jesu, and offered on
his altars the wealth of all her realms.

In the year 1521, certain excavations taking place under the
ruins of a large and ancient church at Meliapour, there were
found, in a sepulchre, at a great depth beneath the surface of
the earth, the bones of a human skeleton, in a state of
remarkable whiteness and preservation. With them were also found
the head of a lance, still fastened in the wood, the fragments of
an iron-shod club, and a vase of clay filled with earth. Some
years later, near the same spot, an attempt was made by the
Portuguese to build a chapel; and in digging for the foundations,
the workmen came upon a monumental stone on which was sculptured
a cross, some two feet long by eighteen inches wide, rudely
ornamented and surrounded by an inscription in characters which,
to the discoverers, were totally unknown. The authorities of
Meliapour, being desirous to ascertain the meaning of the letters
engraved around this cross, made diligent search among the native
scholars for an interpreter, and finally obtained one in the
person of a Brahmin of a neighboring city. His translation was as
follows:

  "Thirty years after the law of the Christians appeared to the
  world, on the 25th of the month of December, the apostle St.
  Thomas died at Meliapour, whither he had brought the knowledge
  of God, the change of the law, and the overthrow of devils. God
  was born of the Virgin Mary, was obedient to her during thirty
  years, and was the eternal God. God unfolded his law to twelve
  apostles, and of these, one came to Meliapour, and there
  founded a church. The kings of Malabar, of Coromandel, of
  Pandi, and of other different nations, submitted to the
  guidance of this holy Thomas, with willing hearts, as to a
  devout and saintly man." [Footnote 154]

    [Footnote 154: _Le Christianisme en Chine_, p. 26.]

The same inscription was afterward laid before other oriental
scholars, each of whom, without conference or collusion with the
rest, offered the same rendering of this forgotten tongue.

Thus, again do the discoveries of later ages verify the
traditions of early Christian history. That SS. Dorotheus,
Sophronius, and Gaudentius possessed reliable evidence for their
statement that St. Thomas died at Calamina, we can no longer
doubt. That the original framer of "The Legend of St. Thomas"
recited events which, in his day, were well known, and could be
easily substantiated, is almost beyond dispute. The wondrous
tales of heroism, built out of the deeds of martyrs and apostles
and evangelists are not all foolish dreams. The "Legends of the
Saints" are not, as the wiseacres of the day would lead us to
believe, altogether idle words.
{522}
Men, who could traverse sea and land, without companions, without
aid, converting nations, building churches, founding hierarchies,
setting their faces ever farther on, looking for no human
sympathy, having no mother-country, toiling for ever toward the
martyr's crown, were not the men to fabricate childish stories,
full of false visions and falser miracles. Nor were those who
stood day by day on the brink of doom; who, in the morning, woke
perhaps to meet the lions, perhaps the stake, but certainly the
burden of the cross of Christ; who lay down at night without hope
of day, the men to listen to wild tales of falsehood from some
cunning tongue. Traditions of those early days were all too often
written in blood. They come to us sealed with the lives of
saints. They have stood the test of ages of investigation. They
remain, to-day, monuments, engraved in many languages, and on
many lands, asserting the achievements of our fathers, while
modern science adds to ancient story the corroboration of her
undeniable deductions, and vindicates the traditions of Christian
antiquity both from the sneers and the indifference of
self-exalted men.

It is almost needless to remark, as the conclusion of this
sketch, that modern missionaries, who would rival the success of
St. Thomas, can fairly expect it from no less exertion, no less
singleness of heart. Those who from this or other countries sally
forth, with missionary societies behind them to supply their
needs, burdened with the double cares of family and church, with
boards of directors at home, as well as consciences within, to
satisfy, with a support to some extent conditioned on their
apparent success, can scarcely be expected to compete with him
who, bidding farewell to home and friends, goes out alone,
wifeless and childless, looking to God for everything, and
seeking nothing but an endless crown. The history of missions
proves, by indisputable statistics, which of these two methods is
effective, which has borne with it the divine prestige of
success, and which remains, in spite of persecutions and
oppressions, vigorous and undismayed after the conflicts of
eighteen hundred years. If it were a simple question of policy,
between the Catholic Church and her opponents, the event would
indicate her wisdom. If it were one of precedent, she has the
whole apostolic college, and the missionaries of fifteen
centuries upon her side. But if the touchstone of the Master be
still reliable, and we may know his workmen by their fruits, then
does this history of the great missionary church bear witness,
that not only her vocation but her operations are divine, and may
assure her children, that, though heaven and earth should fail,
no jot or tittle of her power or triumph can ever pass away. The
throne of Peter may be smitten by the thunderbolt of war; the
hoary head of his successor may be bowed with grief; the triple
crown may once more be trampled under the feet of men; the
faithful may again be overwhelmed with fear; but, in the far
wilderness, beyond the glittering deserts, across the frozen and
the burning seas, her sons are gathering strange nations to her
bosom, over whom, in her coming days of victory and peace, she
may renew her joy.

For the same Lord who bade her go into the whole world and teach
all his commandments gave, in the same breath, its people to her
baptism; and he who promised her the nations for her inheritance,
and the uttermost parts of the earth for her possession, was the
same God who said to St. Peter, "Super hanc petram aedificabo
ecclesiam meam, et porta inferi non prevalebunt."

-------

{523}

          Beethoven, His Boyhood.

                  I.

One October afternoon, in 1784, a boat was coming down the Rhine
close to that point where the city of Bonn sits on its left
shore. The company on board consisted of old and young persons of
both sexes, returning from an excursion of pleasure.

The company landed full of gayety and mirth, the young people
walking on before, while their seniors followed. They adjourned
to a public garden, close on the river side, to finish the day of
social enjoyment by partaking of a collation. Old and young were
seated ere long around the stone table set under the large trees.
The crimson faded in the west, the moon poured her soft light
glimmering through the leafy canopy above them, and was reflected
in full beauty in the waters of the Rhine.

"Your boys are merry fellows," said a benevolent-looking old
gentleman, addressing Herr van Beethoven, a tenor singer in the
electoral chapel, pointing at the same time to his two sons, lads
of ten and fourteen years of age. "But tell me, Beethoven, why
did you not bring Louis with you?"

"Because," answered the person he addressed, "Louis is a
stubborn, dogged, stupid boy, whose troublesome behavior would
only spoil our mirth."

"Ah!" returned the old gentleman, "you are always finding fault
with the poor lad, and perhaps impose too hard tasks upon him. I
am only surprised that he has not, ere this, broken loose from
your sharp control."

"My dear Simrock," replied Beethoven, laughing, "I have a remedy
at hand for his humors--my good Spanish cane, which, you see, is
of the toughest. Louis is well acquainted with its excellent
properties, and stands in wholesome awe thereof. And trust me,
neighbor, I know best what is for the boy's good. Carl and Johann
are a comfort to me; they always obey me with alacrity and
affection. Louis, on the other hand, has been bearish from his
infancy. As to his studies, music is the only thing he will
learn--I mean with good will; or, if he consents to apply himself
to anything else, I must first knock it into him that it has
something to do with music. _Then_ he will go to work; but
it is his humor not to do it otherwise. If I give him a
commission to execute for me, the most arrant clodpoll could not
be more stupid about it."

Here the conversation was interrupted, and the subject was not
resumed. The hours flew lightly by. It struck nine, and the
festive company separated to return to their homes.

Carl and Johann were in high glee as they went home. They sprang
up the steps before their father, and pulled the door-bell. The
door was opened, and a boy about twelve years old stood in the
entry with a lamp in his hand. He was short and stout for his
age, but a sickly paleness, more strongly marked by the contrast
of his thick black hair, was observable on his face. His small,
gray eyes were quick and restless in their movement, very
piercing when he fixed them on any object, but softened by the
shade of his long, dark lashes. His mouth was delicately formed,
and the compression of the lips betrayed both pride and sorrow.
It was Louis Beethoven.

{524}

He came to meet his parents, and bade them "Good-evening."

His mother greeted him affectionately. His father said, while the
boy busied himself fastening the door, "Well, Louis, I hope you
have finished your task."

"I have, father."

"Very good; to-morrow I will look and see if you have earned your
breakfast." So saying, the elder Beethoven went into his chamber.
His wife followed him, after bidding her sons good night, Louis
more tenderly than any of them. Carl and Johann withdrew with
their brother to their common sleeping apartment, entertaining
him with a description of their day of festivity. "Now, Louis,"
said little Johann, as they finished their account, "if you had
not been such a dunce, our father would have taken you along; but
he says he thinks that you will be little better than a dunce all
the days of your life, and self-willed and stubborn besides."

"Don't talk about that any more," answered Louis, "but come to
bed."

"Yes, you are always a sleepy-head!" cried they both, laughing;
but in a few moments after getting into bed both were asleep and
snoring heartily.

Louis took the lamp from the table, left the apartment softly,
and went up-stairs to an attic chamber, where he was wont to
retire when he wished to be out of the way of his teasing
brothers. He had fitted up the little room for himself as well as
his means permitted. A table with three legs, a leathern chair,
the bottom partly out, and an old piano which he had rescued from
the possession of the rats and mice, made up the furniture, and
here, in company with his beloved violin, he was accustomed to
pass his happiest hours.

The boy felt, young as he was, that he was not understood by one
of his family, not even excepting his mother. She loved him
tenderly, and always took his part when his father found fault
with him; but she never knew what was passing in his mind,
because he never uttered it. But his genius was not long to be
unappreciated.

The next morning a messenger came from the elector to Beethoven's
house, bringing an order for him to repair immediately to the
palace, and fetch with him his son Louis. The father was
surprised; not more so than the boy, whose heart beat with
undefined apprehension as they entered the princely mansion. A
servant was in waiting, and conducted them, without delay or
further announcement, to the presence of the elector, who was
attended by two gentlemen.

The elector received old Beethoven with great kindness, and said,
"We have heard much, recently, of the extraordinary musical
talent of your son Louis. Have you brought him along with you?"

Beethoven replied in the affirmative, stepped back to the door,
and bade the boy come in.

"Come nearer, my little lad," cried the elector graciously; "do
not be shy. This gentleman here is our new court organist, Herr
Neefe; the other is the famous composer, Herr Yunker, from
Cologne. We promised them both they should hear you play
something."

{525}

The prince bade the boy take his seat and begin, while he sat
down in a large easy-chair. Louis went to the piano, and, without
examining the pile of notes that lay awaiting his selection,
played a short piece, then a light and graceful melody, which he
executed with such ease and spirit, nay, in so admirable a
manner, that his distinguished auditors could not forbear
expressing their surprise, and even his father was struck. When
he left off playing, the elector arose, came up to him, laid his
hand on his head, and said encouragingly, "Well done, my boy! we
are pleased with you. Now, Master Yunker," turning to the
gentleman on his right hand, "what say you?"

"Your highness," answered the composer, "I will venture to say
the lad has had considerable practice with that last air to
execute it so well."

Louis burst into a laugh at this remark. The others looked
surprised and grave. His father darted an angry glance at him,
and the boy, conscious that he had done something wrong, became
instantly silent.

"And pray what were you laughing at, my little fellow?" asked the
elector.

The boy colored and looked down as he replied, "Because Herr
Yunker thinks I have learned the air by heart, when it occurred
to me but just now while I was playing."

"Then," returned the composer, "if you really improvised that
piece, you ought to go through at sight a motive I will give you
presently."

Yunker wrote on a paper a difficult motive, and handed it to the
boy. Louis read it over carefully, and immediately began to play
it according to the rules of counterpoint. The composer listened
attentively, his astonishment increasing at every turn in the
music; and when at last it was finished, in a manner so spirited
as to surpass his expectations, his eyes sparkled, and he looked
on the lad with keen interest, as the possessor of a genius
rarely to be found.

"If he goes on in this way," said he in a low tone to the
elector, "I can assure your highness that a very great
contrapuntist may be made out of him."

Neefe observed with a smile, "I agree with the master; but it
seems to me the boy's style inclines rather too much to the
gloomy and melancholy."

"It is well," replied his highness, smiling; "be it your care
that it does not become too much so. Herr van Beethoven," he
continued, addressing the father, "we take an interest in your
son, and it is our pleasure that he complete the studies
commenced under your tuition, under that of Herr Neefe. He may
come and live with him after to-day. You are willing, Louis, to
come and live with this gentleman?"

The boy's eyes were fixed on the ground; he raised them and
glanced first at Neefe and then at his father. The offer was a
tempting one; he would fare better and have more liberty in his
new abode. But there was his _father!_ whom he had always
loved; who, in spite of his severity, had doubtless loved him,
and who now stood looking upon him earnestly and sadly. He
hesitated no longer, but, seizing Beethoven's hand and pressing
it to his heart, he cried, "No, no! I can not leave my father."

"You are a good and dutiful lad," said his highness. "Well, I
will not ask you to leave your father, who must be very fond of
you. You shall live with him, and come and take your lessons of
Herr Neefe; that is our will. Adieu! Herr van Beethoven."

From this time Louis lived a new life. His father treated him no
longer with harshness, and even reproved his brothers when they
tried to tease him. Carl and Johann grew shy of him, however,
when they saw what a favorite he had become.
{526}
Louis found himself no longer restrained, but came and went as he
pleased; he took frequent excursions into the country, which he
enjoyed with more than youthful pleasure, when the lessons were
over. His worthy master was astonished at the rapid progress of
his pupil in his beloved art.

"But, Louis," said he one day, "if you would become a great
musician, you must not neglect everything besides music. You must
acquire foreign languages, particularly Latin, Italian, and
French. Would you leave your name to posterity as a true artist,
make your own all that bears relation to your art."

Louis promised, and kept his word. In the midst of his playing he
would leave off, however much it cost him, when the hour struck
for his lessons in the languages. So closely he applied himself,
that in a year's time he was tolerably well acquainted not only
with Latin, French, and Italian, but also with the English. His
father marvelled at his progress not a little; for years he had
labored in vain, with starvation and blows, to make the boy learn
the first principles of those languages. He had never, indeed,
taken the trouble to explain to him their use in the acquisition
of the science of music.

In 1785, appeared Louis' first sonatas. They displayed uncommon
talent and gave promise that the youthful artist would, in
future, accomplish something great, though scarcely yet could be
found in them a trace of that gigantic genius whose death forty
years afterward filled all Europe with sorrow.

"We were both mistaken in the lad," Simrock would say to old
Beethoven. "He abounds in wit and odd fancies, but I do not
altogether like his mixing up in his music all sorts of strange
conceits; the best way, to my notion, is a plain one. Let him
follow the great Mozart, step by step; after all, he is the only
one, and there is none to come up to him--none!" And Louis'
father, who also idolized Mozart, always agreed with his neighbor
in his judgment, and echoed, "None!"



It was a lovely summer afternoon about 1787; numerous boats with
parties of pleasure on board were passing up and down the Rhine;
numerous companies of old and young were assembled under the
trees in the public gardens, or along the banks of the river,
enjoying the scene and each other's conversation, or partaking of
the rural banquet.

At some distance from the city, a wood bordered the river; this
wood was threaded by a small and sparkling stream, that flung
itself over a ledge of rocks, and tumbled into the most romantic
and quiet dell imaginable, for it was too narrow to be called a
valley. The trees overhung it so closely that at noonday this
sweet nook was dark as twilight, and the profound silence was
only broken by the monotonous murmur of the stream.

Close by the stream half sat, half reclined, a youth just
emerging from childhood. In fact, he could hardly be called more
than a boy; for his frame showed but little development of
strength, and his regular features, combined with an excessive
paleness, the result of confinement, gave the impression that he
was even of tender years. His eyes would alone have given him the
credit of uncommon beauty; they were large, dark, and so bright
that it seemed the effect of disease, especially in a face that
rarely or never smiled.

{527}

A most unusual thing was a holiday for the melancholy lad. His
whole soul was given up to one passion--the love of music. Oh!
how precious to him were the moments of solitude. He had loved,
for this, even his poor garret room, meanly furnished, but rich
in the possession of one or two musical instruments, whither he
would retire at night, when released from irksome labor, and
spend hours of delight stolen from slumber. But to be alone with
nature, in her grand woods, under the blue sky, with no human
voice to mar the infinite harmony--how did his heart pant for
this communion! His breast seemed to expand and fill with the
grandeur, the beauty, of all around him. The light breeze
rustling in the leaves came to his ear laden with a thousand
melodies; the very grass and flowers under his feet had a
language for him. His spirits, long depressed and saddened,
sprang into new life, and rejoiced with unutterable joy.

The hours wore on, a dusky shadow fell over foliage and stream,
and the solitary lad rose to leave his chosen retreat. As he
ascended the narrow winding path, he was startled by hearing his
own name; and presently a man, apparently middle-aged and dressed
plainly, stood just in front of him. "Come back, Louis," said the
stranger, "it is not so dark as it seems here; you have time
enough this hour to return to the city." The stranger's voice had
a thrilling though melancholy sweetness; and Louis suffered him
to take his hand and lead him back. They seated themselves in the
shade beside the water.

"I have watched you for a long while," said the stranger.

"You might have done better," returned the lad, reddening at the
thought of having been subjected to espionage.

"Peace, boy," said his companion; "I love you, and have done all
for your good."

"You love me?" repeated Louis, surprised. "I have never met you
before."

"Yet I know you well. Does that surprise you? I know your
thoughts also. You love music better than aught else in the
world; but you despair of excellence because you cannot follow
the rules prescribed."

Louis looked at the speaker with open eyes.

"Your masters also despair of you. The court-organist accuses you
of conceit and obstinacy; your father reproaches you; and all
your acquaintance pronounce you a boy of tolerable abilities,
spoiled by an ill disposition."

The lad sighed.

"The gloom of your condition increases your distaste to all
studies not directly connected with music, for you feel the need
of her consolations. Your compositions, wild, melancholy as they
are, embody your own feelings, and are understood by none of the
connoisseurs."

"Who are you?" cried Louis in deep emotion.

"No matter who I am. I come to give you a little advice, my boy.
I compassionate, yet I revere you. I revere your heaven-imparted
genius. I commiserate the woes those very gifts must bring upon
you through life."

The boy lifted his eyes again; those of the speaker seemed so
bright, yet withal so melancholy, that he was possessed of a
strange fear. "I see you," continued the unknown solemnly,
"exalted above homage, but lonely and unblessed in your
elevation. Yet the lot of such is fixed; and it is better,
perhaps, that one should consume in the sacred fire than that the
many should lack illumination."

"I do not understand you," said Louis, wishing to put an end to
the interview.

{528}

"That is not strange, since you do not understand yourself," said
the stranger. "As for me, I pay homage to a future sovereign!"
and he suddenly snatched up the boy's hand and kissed it. Louis
was convinced of his insanity.

"A sovereign in art," continued the unknown. "The sceptre that
Haydn and Mozart have held shall pass without interregnum to your
hands. When you are acknowledged in all Germany for the worthy
successor of these great masters--when all Europe wonders at the
name of _Beethoven_--remember me.

"But you have much ground to pass over," resumed the stranger,
"ere you reach that glorious summit. Reject not the aid of
science, of literature; there are studies now disagreeable that
still may prove serious helps to you in the cultivation of music.
Contemn not _any_ learning: for art is a coy damsel, and
would have her votaries all accomplished! Above all--_trust
yourself_. Whatever may happen, give no place to despondency.
They blame you for your disregard of rules; make for yourself
higher and vaster rules. You will not be appreciated here; but
there are other places in the world; in Vienna--"

"Oh! if I could only go to Vienna," sighed the lad.

"You _shall_ go there, and remain," said the stranger; "and
there too you shall see me, or hear from me. Adieu, now--_auf
Wiedersehen_." ("To meet again.")

And before the boy could recover from his astonishment the
stranger was gone. It was nearly dark, and he could see nothing
of him as he walked through the wood. He could not, however,
spend much time in search; for he dreaded the reproaches of his
father for having stayed out so late. All the way home he was
trying to remember where he had seen the unknown, whose features,
though he could not say to whom they belonged, were not
unfamiliar to him. It occurred to him at last, that while playing
before the elector one day a countenance similar in benevolent
expression had looked upon him from the circle surrounding the
sovereign. But known or unknown, the "auf Wiedersehen" of his
late companion rang in his ears, while the friendly counsel sank
deep in his heart.

Traversing rapidly the streets of Bonn, young Beethoven was soon
at his own door. An unusual bustle within attracted his
attention. To his eager questions the servants replied that their
master was dying. Shocked to hear of his danger, Louis flew to
his apartment. His brothers were there, also his mother, weeping;
and the physician supported his father, who seemed in great pain.


Louis clasped his father's cold hand, and pressed it to his lips,
but could not speak for tears.

"God's blessing be upon you, my son!" said his parent. "Promise
me that throughout life you will never forsake your brothers. I
know they have not loved you as they ought; that is partly my
fault; promise me, that whatever may happen you will continue to
regard and cherish them."

"I will--I will, dear father!" cried Louis, sobbing. Beethoven
pressed his hand in token of satisfaction. The same night he
expired. The grief of Louis was unbounded.

It was a bitter thing thus to lose a parent just as the ties of
nature were strengthened by mutual appreciation and confidence;
but it was necessary that he should rouse himself to minister
support and comfort to his suffering mother.

        To Be Continued.

-------

{529}

        Lecky On Morals. [Footnote 155]

    [Footnote 155: _History of European Morals, from Augustus
    to Charlemagne_. By William Edward Hartpoole Lecky, M.A.
    London: Longmans, Green & Co. 1869. 2 vols. 8vo.]


Mr. Lecky divides his work into five chapters. The first chapter
is preliminary, and discusses "the nature and foundations of
morals," its obligation and motives; the second treats of the
morals of the pagan empire; the third gives the author's view of
the causes of the conversion of Rome and the triumph of
Christianity in the empire; the fourth the progress and
deterioration of European morals from Constantine to Charlemagne;
and the fifth the changes effected from time to time in the
position of women. The author does not confine himself strictly
within the period named, but, in order to make his account
intelligible, gives us the history of what preceded and what has
followed it; so that his book gives one, from his point of view,
the philosophy and the entire history of European morals from the
earliest times down to the present.

The subject of this work is one of great importance in the
general history of the race, and of deep interest to all who are
not incapable of serious and sustained thought. Mr. Lecky is a
man of some ability, of considerable first or second hand
learning, and has evidently devoted both time and study to his
subject. His style is clear, animated, vigorous, and dignified;
but his work lacks condensation and true perspective. He dwells
too long on points comparatively unimportant, and repeats the
same things over and over again, and brings proofs after proofs
to establish what is mere commonplace to the scholar, till he
becomes not a little tedious. He seems to write under the
impression that the public he is addressing knows nothing of his
subject, and is slow of understanding. He evidently supposes that
he is writing something very important, and quite new to the
whole reading world. Yet we have found nothing new in his work,
either in substance or in presentation, nothing--not even an
error or a sophism--that had not been said, and as well said, a
hundred times before him; we cannot discover a single new fact,
or a single new view of a fact, that can throw any additional
light on European morals in any period of European history. Yet
we may say Mr. Lecky, though not an original or a profound
thinker, is above the average of English Protestant writers, and
compiles with passable taste, skill, and judgment.

We know little of the author, except as the author of the book
before us, and of a previous work, on _Rationalism in
Europe_, and we have no vehement desire to know anything more
of him. He belongs, with some shades of difference, to a class
represented, in England, by Buckle, J. Stuart Mill, Frank Newman,
and James Martineau; and of which the _Westminster Review_
is the organ; in France, by M. Vacherot, Jules Simon, and Ernest
Renan; and, in this country, by Professor Draper, of this city,
and a host of inferior writers. They are not Christians, and yet
would not like to be called anti-Christians; they are judges, not
advocates, and, seated on the high judicial bench, they
pronounce, as they flatter themselves, an impartial and final
judgment on all moral, religious, and philosophical codes, and
assign to each its part of good, and its part of evil.
{530}
They aim to hold an even balance between the church and the
sects, between Christian morals and pagan morals, and between the
several pagan religions and the Christian religion, all of which
they look upon as dead and gone, except with the ignorant, the
stupid, and the superstitious. Of this class Mr. Lecky is a
distinguished member, though less brilliant as a writer than
Renan, and less pleasing as well as less scientific than our own
Draper.

The writers of this class do not profess to break with Christian
civilization, or to reject religion or morals, but strive to
assert a morality without God, and a Christianity without Christ.
They deny in words neither God nor Christ, but they find no use
for either. They deny neither the possibility nor the fact of the
supernatural, but find no need of it and no place for it. They
concede providence, but resolve it into a fixed natural law, and
are what we would call naturalists, if naturalism had not
received so many diverse meanings. In their own estimation, they
are not philosophers, moralists, or divines, but really gods, who
know, of themselves, good and evil, right and wrong, truth and
error, and whose prerogative it is to judge all men and ages, all
moralities, philosophies, and religions, by the infallible
standard which each one of them is, or has in himself. They are
the fulfilment of the promise of Satan to our mother Eve, "Ye
shall be as gods."

Mr. Lecky, in his preliminary chapter, on the nature and
foundation of morals, refutes even ably and conclusively the
utilitarian school of morals, and defends what he calls the
"intuitive" school. He contends that it is impossible to found
morals on the conception of the useful, or on fears of punishment
and hopes of reward; and argues well, after Henry More, Cudworth,
Clark, and Butler, that all morality involves the idea of
obligation, and is based on the intuition of right or duty; or,
in other words, on the principle of human nature called
conscience. But this, after all, is no solution of the problem
raised. There is, certainly, a great difference between doing a
thing because it is useful, and doing it because it is right; but
there is a still greater difference between the intuitive
perception of right and the obligation to do it. The perception
or intuition of an act as obligatory, or as duty, but is not that
which makes it duty or obligatory. The obligation is objective,
the perception is subjective. The perception or intuition
apprehends the obligation, but is not it, and does not impose it.
The intuitive moralists are better than the utilitarians, in the
respect that they assert a right and a wrong independent of the
fact that it is useful, or injurious, to the actor. But they are
equally far from asserting the real foundation of morals;
because, though they assert intuition or immediate perception of
duty, they do not assert or set forth the ground of duty or
obligation. Duty is debt, is an obligation; but whence the debt?
whence the obligation? We do not ask why the duty obliges, for
the assertion of an act as duty is its assertion as obligatory;
but why does the right oblige? or, in other words, why am I bound
to do right? or any one thing rather than another?

Mr. Lecky labors hard to find the ground of the obligation in
some principle or law of human nature, which he calls conscience.
But conscience is the recognition of the obligation, and the
mind's own judgment of what is or is not obligatory; it is not
the obligation nor its creator.
{531}
This mistake proceeds from his attempt to found morals on human
nature as supreme law-giver, and is common to all moralists who
seek to erect a system of morals independent of theology. Dr.
Ward, in his work on _Nature and Grace_, commits the same
mistake in his effort to find a solid foundation in nature of
duty, without rising to the Creator. All these moralists really
hold, as true, the falsehood told by Satan to our first parents,
"Ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil;" that is, in order
to know good or evil ye shall not need to look beyond your own
nature, nor to recognize yourselves as subject to, or dependent
on, any authority above or distinct from it. It is the one
fundamental error that meets us in all Gentile philosophy, and
all modern philosophy and science, speculative, ethical, or
political, that holds itself independent of God. The schoolmen
understood by morals, when the term means duty, or anything more
than manners and customs, what is called Moral Theology, or the
practical application of speculative and dogmatic theology to the
offices of life, individual, domestic, and social or political.
Natural morality meant that portion of man's whole duty which is
prescribed by the natural law and promulgated by reason, as
distinguished from revelation. They based all morals on the great
principle of theology, and therefore they called theology the
queen of the sciences. We have made no advance on them.

In morals, three things--first, the obligation; second, the
regula or rule; third, the end--are essential, and must be
carefully distinguished. Why am I bound to do one thing rather
than another? that is, why am I bound at all? What am I bound to
do, or to avoid? For what end? These three questions are
fundamental and exhaustive. The intuitionists hold that all
morals involve the idea or conception of duty; but they omit to
present the reason or ground of duty or obligation, and therefore
erect their moral fabric without any foundation, and make it a
mere castle in the air. They confound conscience with obligation,
and the rule or law with the reason or motive for observing it.
Suppose we find in human nature the rule or law; we cannot find
in it either the obligation or the motive, for the simple reason
that human nature is not independent, is not sufficient for
itself, does not belong to itself, and has in itself neither its
origin nor its end, neither its first nor its final cause. The
rule--_regula_--is the law, and the law prescribes what is
to be done and what is to be avoided; but it does not create the
obligation nor furnish the motive of obedience. Mr. Lecky himself
maintains that it does not, and is very severe upon those who
make an arbitrary law the ground of moral distinctions, or the
reason of duty. The law does not make the right or the wrong. The
act is not right because commanded, nor wrong because prohibited;
but it is commanded because it is right, and prohibited because
it is wrong. Whence then the obligation? or, what is it that
transforms the right into duty? This is the question that the
independent or non-theological moralists, no matter of what
school, do not and cannot answer.

There is no answer, unless we give up the godship of man, give
Satan the lie, and understand that man is a dependent existence;
for an independent being cannot be bound or placed under the
obligation of duty, either by his own act or by the act of
another. If man is dependent, he is created, and, if created, he
belongs to his Creator; for the maker has a sovereign right to
that which he makes.
{532}
It is his act, and nothing is or can be more one's own, than
one's own act. Man, then, does not own himself; he owes himself,
all he is, and all he has, to his Creator. As it has pleased his
Creator to make him a free moral agent, capable of acting from
choice, and with reference to a moral end, he is bound to give
himself, by his own free will, to God to whom he belongs; for his
free will, his free choice, belongs to God, is his due; and the
principle of justice requires us to give to every one his due, or
what is his own.

Here, then, in man's relation to God as his creator, is the
ground of his duty or obligation. It grows out of the divine
creative act. Deny the being of God, deny the creative act, deny
man is the creature of God, and you deny all obligation, all
duty, and therefore, according to Mr. Lecky's own doctrine, all
morals.

The irrational cannot morally bind the rational. All men are
equal, and no man, no body of men has, or can have, a natural
right to bind or govern another. Only the Creator obliges, as the
owner of the creature; and if I owe myself, all I am and all I
have, to God, I owe nothing to another in his own right, and only
God has any right over me, or to me. Here is at once the basis of
obligation and of liberty, and the condemnation of all tyranny
and despotism. From this, it clearly follows that every system of
morals that rests on nature, the state, or any thing created, as
its foundation, is not and of itself cannot be obligatory upon
any one, and that without God as our creator, and whose we are,
there is and can be no moral obligation or duty whatever.
Pantheism, which denies the creative act, and atheism, which
denies God, both alike deny morals by denying its basis or
foundation. Either is fatal to morals, for obligation is only the
correlative of the right to command. Having found the ground of
obligation, and shown why we are morally bound, the next thing to
be considered is the rule by which is determined what we are
bound to do, and what we are bound to avoid. Mr. Lecky makes this
rule conscience, which, though he labors to prove that it is
uniform and infallible in all ages and nations, and all men, he
yet concedes varies in its determinations as to what is or is not
duty according to the circumstances of the age or nation, the
ideal or standard adopted, public opinion, etc. That is,
conscience assures us that we ought always to do right, but
leaves us to find out, the best way we can, what is or is not
right. Conscience, then, cannot be itself the rule; it is a
witness within us of our obligation to obey God, and the judgment
which we pass on our acts, usually, in practice, on our acts
after they are done, is at best only our judgment of what the
rule or law is, not the rule or law itself. The rule or
_regula_ is not conscience, but the light of conscience,
that by which it determines what is or is not duty; it is the law
which, according to St. Thomas, is "quaedam est regula et mensura
actuum, secundum quam inducitur ad agendum, vel ab agendo
retrahitur;" [Footnote 156] or, in the sense we here use the
term, the rule, or measure of duty prescribing what is to be
done, and what avoided.

    [Footnote 156: _Summa_ primae secundae, quest. xc. art.
    I. incorp.]

It is, as St. Thomas also says, an _ordinatio rationis_, and
as an ordination of reason, it can be only the rule or measure of
what is obligatory to be done or to be avoided. It defines and
declares what is or is not duty, it does not and cannot make the
duty, or create the obligation. The author and his school
overlook the fact that reason is perceptive, not legislative.
{533}
They confound the obligation with the rule that measures and
determines it, and assume that it is the reason that creates the
duty. They are psychologists, not philosophers, and see nothing
behind or above human reason, man's highest and distinguishing
faculty. Certainly without reason man could not either perform,
or be bound to perform, a single moral act; and yet it is not the
reason that binds him; and if he is bound to follow reason, as he
undoubtedly is, it is only because reason tells him what is
obligatory, and enables him to do it.

Since only God can bind morally, only God can impose the law
which measures, defines, or discloses what independent of the law
is obligatory. The rule of duty, of right and wrong, is therefore
the law of God. The law of God is promulgated in part through
natural reason, and in part through supernatural revelation. The
former is called the natural law, _lex naturalis;_ the
latter, the revealed law, or the supernatural law. But both are
integral parts of one and the same law, and each has its reason
in one and the same order of things, emanates from one and the
same authority, for one and the same ultimate end. There are, no
doubt, in the supernatural law, positive injunctions, and
prohibitions, which are not contained in the natural law, though
not repugnant thereto; but these have their reason and motive in
the end, which in all cases determines the law. All human laws,
ecclesiastical or civil, derive all their vigor as laws from the
law of God, and all the positive injunctions and prohibitions of
either are, in their nature, disciplinary, or means to the end,
in which is the reason or motive of the law. Hence there is, and
can be, nothing arbitrary in duty. Nothing is or can be imposed,
under either the natural law or the supernatural law, in either
church or state, in religion or morals, that does not immediately
or mediately grow out of our relation to God as our creator, and
as our last end or final cause. As a Christian I am bound to obey
the supreme Pastor of the church, not as a man commanding in his
own name, or by his own authority, but as the vicar of Christ,
who has commissioned him to teach, discipline, and govern me. As
a citizen I am bound to obey all the laws of my country not
repugnant to the law or the rights of God, but only because the
state has, in secular matters, authority from God to govern. In
either case the obedience is due only to God, and he only is
obeyed. It is his authority and his alone that binds me, and
neither church nor state can bind me beyond or except by reason
of its authority derived from him.

The law is the rule, and is prescribed by the end, in which is
the reason or motive of duty. The law is not the reason or motive
of duty, nor is it the ground of the obligation. It is simply the
rule, and tells us what God commands, not whence his right to
command, nor wherefore he commands. His right to command rests on
the fact that he is the Creator. But why does he command such and
such things, or prescribe such and such duties? We do not answer,
because such is his will; though that would be true as we
understand it. For such answer would be understood by this
untheological age, which forgets that the divine will is the will
of infinite reason, to imply that duties are arbitrary, rest on
mere will, and that there is no reason why God should prescribe
one thing as duty rather than another. What the law of God
declares to be duty is duty because it is necessary to accomplish
the purpose of our existence, or the end for which we are
created. Everything that even God can enjoin as duty has its
reason or motive in that purpose or end. The end, then,
prescribes, or is the reason of, the law.

{534}

The end for which God creates us is himself, who is our final
cause no less than our first cause. God acts always as infinite
reason, and cannot therefore create without creating for some
end; and as he is self-sufficing and the adequate object of his
own activity, there is and can be no end but himself. All things
are not only created by him but for him. This is equally a truth
of philosophy and of revelation, and even those theologians who
talk of natural beatitude, are obliged to make it consist in the
possession of God, at least, as the author of nature. Hence, St.
Paul, the greatest philosopher that ever wrote, as well as an
inspired apostle, says, Rom. xi. 36, "Of him, and by him, and in
him are all things;" or, "in him and _for_ him they
subsist," as Archbishop Kenrick explains in a note to the
passage. The motive or reason of the law is in the end, or in God
as final cause. The motive or reason for keeping or fulfilling
the law is, then, that we may gain the end for which we are made,
or, union with God as our final cause. This is all clear, plain,
and undeniable, and hence we conclude that morals, in the strict
sense of the word, cannot be asserted unless we assert God as our
creator and as our last end.

Mr. Lecky and his school do not, then, attain to the true
philosophy of morals, for they recognize no final cause, either
of man or his act; and yet there is no moral act that is not done
freely _propter finem_, for the sake of the end. We do not
say that all acts not so done are vicious or sinful, nor do we
pretend that no acts are moral that are not done with a distinct
and deliberate reference to God as our last end. The man who
relieves suffering because he cannot endure the pain of seeing
it, performs a good deed, though an act of very imperfect virtue.
We act also from habit, and when the habit has been formed by
acts done for the sake of the end, or by infused grace, the acts
done from the habit of the soul without an explicit reference to
the end are moral, virtuous, in the true sense of either term;
nor do we exclude those Gentiles who, not having the law, do the
things of the law, of whom St. Paul speaks, Rom. ii. 14-16.

Mr. Lecky overlooks the end, and presents no reason or motive for
performing our duty, distinguishable from the duty itself. He
adopts the philosophy of the Porch, except that he thinks it did
not make enough of the emotional side of our nature, that is, was
not sufficiently sentimental. The Stoics held that we must do
right for the sake of right alone, or because it is right. They
rejected all consideration of personal advantage, of general
utility, the honor of the gods, future life, heaven or hell, or
the happiness of mankind. They admitted the obligation to serve
the commonwealth and to do good to all men, but because it was
right. The good of the state or of the race was duty, but not the
reason or motive of the duty. The professedly disinterested
morality on which our author, after them, so earnestly insists,
closely analyzed, will be found to be as selfish as that of the
Garden, or that of Paley and Bentham. The Epicurean makes
pleasure, that is, the gratification of the senses, the motive of
virtue; the Stoic makes the motive the gratification of his
intellectual nature, or rather his pride, which is as much a
man's self as what the apostle calls concupiscence, or the flesh.
{535}
Intellectual selfishness, in which the Stoics abounded, is even
more repugnant to the virtue of the actor than the sensual
selfishness of the votary of pleasure. We care not what fine
words the Stoic had on his lips, no system of pagan morals was
further removed from real disinterested virtue than that of the
Porch.

Mr. Lecky denounces the morality of the church as selfish, and
says the selfish system triumphed with Bossuet over Fénélon; but
happily for us he is not competent to speak of the morals
enjoined by the church. He does not understand the question which
was at issue, and entirely misapprehends the matter for which
Fénélon was censured by the Holy See. The doctrine of Fénélon, as
he himself explained and defended it, was never condemned, nor
was that of Bossuet, which, on several points, was very unsound,
ever approved. Several passages of Fénélon's _Maxims of the
Saints_ were censured as favoring quietism, already condemned
in the condemnation of Molinos and his adherents--a doctrine
which Fénélon never held, and which he sought in his
_Maxims_ to avoid without running into the contrary extreme,
but, the Holy See judged, unsuccessfully. His thought was
orthodox, but the language he used could be understood in a
quietistic sense; and it was his language, not his doctrine, that
was condemned.

The error favored by Fénélon's language, though against his
intention, was that it is possible in this life to rise and
remain habitually in such a state of charity, or pure love of God
for his own sake, of such perfect union with him, that in it the
soul no longer hopes or fears, ceases to make acts of virtue, and
becomes indifferent to its own salvation or damnation, whether it
gains heaven or loses it. The church did not condemn the love of
God for his own sake, nor _acts_ of perfect charity, for so
much is possible and required of all Christians. The church
requires us to make acts of love, as well as of faith and hope,
and the act of love is: "O my God! I love thee above all things,
with my whole heart and soul, because thou art infinitely amiable
and deserving of all love; I love also my neighbor as myself for
the love of thee; I forgive all who have injured me, and ask
pardon of all whom I have injured." Here is no taint of
selfishness, but an act of pure love. Yet though we can and ought
to make distinct acts of perfect charity, it is a grave error to
suppose that the soul can in this life sustain herself,
habitually, in a state of pure love, that she ever attains to a
state on earth in which acts of virtue cease to be necessary, in
which she ceases from pure love to be actively virtuous, and
becomes indifferent to her own fate, to her own salvation or
damnation, to heaven or hell--an error akin to that of the
Hopkinsians, that in order to be saved one must be willing to be
damned. As long as we live, acts of virtue, of faith, hope, and
charity, are necessary; and to be indifferent to heaven or hell,
is to be indifferent whether we please God or offend him, whether
we are united to him or alienated from him.

It is a great mistake to represent the doctrine the church
opposed to quietism or to Fénélon as the selfish theory of
morals. To act from simple fear of suffering or simple hope of
happiness, or to labor solely to escape the one and secure the
other, is, of course, selfish, and is not approved by the church,
who brands such fear as servile, and such hope as mercenary,
because in neither is the motive drawn from the end, which is
God, as our supreme good.
{536}
What the church bids us fear is alienation from God, and the
happiness she bids us seek is happiness in God, because God is
the end for which we are made. Thus, to the question, "Why did
God make you?" the catechism answers, "That I might know him,
love him, and serve him in this world, and be happy _with
him_ for ever in the next." _With him_, not without him.
The fear the church approves is the fear of hell, not because it
is a place of suffering, and the fear of God she inculcates is
not the fear of him because he can send us to hell, but because
hell is alienation from God, is offensive to him: and therefore
the fear is really fear of offending God, and being separated
from him. The hope of happiness she approves is the hope of
heaven, not simply because heaven is happiness, but because it is
union with God, or the possession of God as our last end, which
is our supreme good.

Here neither the fear of hell nor the hope of heaven is selfish;
for in each the motive is drawn from the end, from God who is our
supreme good. It therefore implies charity or the love of God.
And herein is its moral value. It may not be perfectly
disinterested, or perfect charity, which is the love of God for
his own sake, or because he is the supreme good in himself; but
to love him as our supreme good, and to seek our good in him and
him only, is still to love him, and to draw from him the motive
of our acts. The church enjoins this reference to God in which,
while she recognizes faith and hope as virtues in this life, she
enjoins charity, without which the actor is nothing.

If Mr. Lecky had known the principle of Catholic morals, and
understood the motives to virtue which the church urges, he would
never have accused her of approving the selfish theory, which
proposes in no sense God, but always and everywhere self, as the
end. He will allow us no motive to virtue but the right; that is,
in his theory, duty has no reason or motive but itself. No doubt
his conception of right includes benevolence, the love of
mankind, and steady, persevering efforts to serve our country and
the human race; but he can assign no reason or motive why one
should do so without falling either into the selfishness or the
utilitarianism which he professes to reject. The sentimental
theory which he seems to adopt cannot help him, for none of our
sentiments are disinterested; all the sentiments pertain to self,
and seek always their own gratification. This is as true of those
called the higher, nobler sentiments as of the lower and baser,
and, in point of fact, sentimentalists, philanthropists, and
humanitarians are usually the most selfish, cruel, heartless, and
least moral people in society. Men who act from sentimental
instead of rational motives are never trustworthy, and are, in
general, to be avoided.

Mr. Lecky maintains that right is to be done solely because it is
right, without any considerations of its particular or general
utility, or regard to consequences. But he shrinks from this, and
appeals to utility when hard pressed, and argues that
considerations of advantage to society or to mankind, or a
peculiar combination of circumstances, may sometimes justify us
in deviating from the right--that is, in doing wrong. He contends
that it may be our duty to sacrifice the higher principles of our
nature to the lower, and appears shocked at Dr. Newman's
assertion that "the church holds that it were better for sun and
moon to drop from heaven, for the earth to fail, and for all the
many millions of its inhabitants to die of starvation in extreme
agony, _so far as temporal affliction goes_, than that one
soul, I will not say should be lost, but should commit one venial
sin, tell one wilful untruth, though it harmed no one, or steal
one poor farthing, without excuse."
{537}
This is too rigid for Mr. Lecky. He places duty in always acting
from the higher principles of our nature; but thinks there may be
cases when it is our duty to sacrifice them to the lower! He
supposes, then, that there is something more obligatory than
right, or that renders right obligatory when obligatory it is.

But this doctrine of doing right for the sake of the right is
utterly untenable. Right is not an abstraction, for there are no
abstractions in nature, and abstractions are simple nullities. It
must be either being or relation. If taken as a relation, it can
be no motive, no end, because relation is real only in the
related. If being, then it is God, who only is being. Your
friends, the Stoics, placed it above the divinity, and taught us
in Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius that it binds under one and the
same law both God and man. But an abstraction which is formed by
the mind operating on the concrete can bind no one, for it is in
itself simply nothing. The weaker cannot bind the stronger, the
inferior the superior, or that which is not that which is. But
there is no being stronger than God or above him; for he is, in
every respect, supreme. Nothing can bind him, and right must
either be identified with him or held to grow out of the
relations of his creatures to himself. In the first case, right
is God, or God is right; and the obligation to do right is only
the obligation to do what God commands. Right, as being, cannot
exist distinct from God, and can bind men only in the sense in
which God himself binds them. Their sovereign, in such case, is
God, who, by his creative act, is their lord and proprietor. But
right and God are not identical, and, consequently, right is not
being, but a relation. What binds is not the right or the
relation, but he who, by his creative act, founds the relation.
Rejecting, then, right as an abstraction, we must understand by
the right what under this relation it is the duty of the creature
to do. Right and duty are then the same. Ask what is man's duty;
the answer is, what is right. Ask what is right, and the answer
is, whatever is duty.

But right does not make itself right, nor duty itself duty. Here
is the defect of all purely rationalistic morals, and of every
system of morals that is not based, we say not on revelation, but
on theology, or the creative act of God. Right and duty are
identical, we grant; but neither can create its own obligation,
or be its own reason or motive. To say of an act, it is duty
because it is right, or it is right because it is duty, is to
reason, as the logicians say, in a _vicious_ circle, or to
answer _idem per idem_, which is not allowable by any logic
we are acquainted with. We must, then, if we assert morals at
all, come back to theology, and find the ground of obligation or
duty--which is simply the right or authority of God to command
us--in our relation to God, as our creator or first cause, and
the reason or motive in our relation to him as our last end or
final cause.

No doubt the reason why the rationalistic moralists in modern
times are reluctant to admit this is, because they very
erroneously suppose that it means that the basis of morals is to
be found only in supernatural revelation, and is not
ascertainable or provable by reason. But this is a mistake,
growing out of another mistake; namely, that the creative act is
a truth of revelation only, and not a truth of science or
philosophy. The creative act is a fact of science, the basis,
rather, of all science, as of all life in creatures, and must be
recognized and held before revelation can be logically asserted.
{538}
That God is, and is our creator, our first cause, and our final
cause, are truths that do not depend on revelation to be known;
and the theological basis of morals which we assert, in
opposition to the rationalistic moralists, is within the province
of reason or philosophy. But the rationalists, in seeking to
escape revelation, lose God, and are forced to assert a morality
that is independent of him, and does not suppose or need him in
order to be obligatory. They are obliged, therefore, to seek a
basis of morals in nature, which in its own right has no
legislative authority; for nature is the creature of God, and is
nothing without him.

The intuition of right, obligation, duty, which, according to our
author, is the fundamental principle of morals, is only, he
himself maintains, the immediate apprehension of a principle or
law of human nature, or of our higher nature, from which we are
to act, instead of acting from our lower nature; but our higher
nature is still nature, and no more legislative than our lower
nature. Nature being always equal to nature, nothing is more
certain than that nature cannot bind nature or place it under
obligation.

Besides, when the author places the obligation in nature, whether
the higher or the lower, he confounds moral law with physical
law, and mistakes law in the sense in which it proceeds from God
as first cause for law in the sense in which it proceeds from God
as final cause. The physical laws, the natural laws of the
physiologists, are in nature, constitutive of it,
indistinguishable from it, and are what God creates: the moral
law is independent of nature, over it, and declares the end for
which nature exists, and from which, if moral nature, it must
act. It is supernatural in the sense that God is supernatural,
and natural only in the sense that it is promulgated through
natural reason independently of supernatural revelation. Natural
reason asserts the moral law, but asserts it as a law _for_
nature, not a law in nature. By confounding it with physical
laws, and placing it in nature as the law of natural activity,
the author denies all moral distinction between it and the law by
which the liver secretes bile, or the blood circulates. He holds,
therefore, with Waldo Emerson that gravitation and purity of
heart are identical, and, with our old transcendentalist friends,
that the rule of duty is expressed in the maxims, Obey thyself;
Act out thyself; Follow thy instincts. No doubt they meant, as
our author means, the higher instincts, the nobler self, the
higher nature. But the law recognized and asserted is no more the
moral law than is the physical law by which the rain falls, the
winds blow, the sun shines, the flowers bloom, or the earth
revolves on its axis. Physical laws there are, no doubt, in human
nature; but the theologians tell us that an act done from them is
not an _actus humanus_, but an _actus hominis_, which
has no moral character, and, whatever its tendency, is neither
virtuous nor vicious.

Mr. Lecky, as nearly all modern philosophers, denies God as final
cause, if not as first cause. The moral law has its reason and
motive in him as our final cause, and this is the difference
between it and physical law. The pagan Greeks denied both first
cause and final cause, for they knew nothing of creation; but
being a finely organized race and living in a country of great
natural beauty, they confounded the moral with the beautiful, as
some moderns confound art with religion. The author so far agrees
with them, at least, as to place duty in the beauty and nobility
of the act, or in acts proceeding from the beauty and nobility of
our nature--what he calls our higher nature.
{539}
We do not quarrel with Plato when he defines beauty to be the
splendor of the divinity, and therefore that all good, noble, and
virtuous acts are beautiful, and that whoever performs them has a
beautiful soul. But there is a wide difference between the
beautiful and the moral, though the Greeks expressed both by the
same term; and art, whose mission it is to realize the beautiful,
has of itself no moral character; it lends itself as readily to
vice as to virtue, and the most artistic ages are very far from
being the most moral or religious ages. The mistake is in
overlooking the fact that every virtuous or moral act must be
done _propter finem_, and that the law, the reason, the
motive of duty depends on the end for which man was made and
exists.

But the author and his school have not learned that all things
proceed from God by way of creation, and return to him without
absorption in him as their last end. Morals are all in the order
of this return, and are therefore teleological. Not knowing this,
and rejecting this movement of return, they are forced to seek
the basis of morals in man's nature in the order of its
procession from God, where it is not. The intuition they assert
would be something, indeed, if it were the intuition of a
principle or law not included in man's nature, but on which his
nature depends, and to which it is bound, by the right of God
founded in his creative act, to subordinate its acts. But by the
intuition of right, which they assert, they do not mean anything
really objective and independent of our nature, which the mind
really apprehends. On their system they can mean by it only a
mental conception, that is, an abstraction. We indeed find men
who, as theologians, understand and defend the true and real
basis of morals, but who, as philosophers, seeking to defend what
they call natural morality, only reproduce substantially the
errors of the Gentiles. This is no less true of the intuitive
school, than of the selfish, the sentimental, or the utilitarian.
Cudworth founds his moral system in the innate idea of right, in
which he is followed by Dr. Price; Samuel Clarke gives, as the
basis of morals, the idea of the fitness of things; Wollaston
finds it in conformity to truth; Butler, in the idea or sense of
duty; Jouffroy, in the idea of order; Fourier, in passional
harmony--only another name for Jouffroy's order. But these all,
since they exclude all intuition of the end or final cause, build
on a mental conception, or a psychological abstraction, taken as
real. The right, the fitness, the duty, the order they assert are
only abstractions, and they see it not.

It is the hardest thing in the world to convince philosophers
that the real is real, and the unreal is unreal, and therefore
nothing. Abstractions are firmed by the mind, and are nothing out
of the concrete from which they are generalized. A system of
philosophy, speculative or moral, built on abstractions or
abstract conceptions of the true, the right, the just, or duty,
has no real foundation, and no more solidity than "the baseless
fabric of a vision." Yet we cannot make the philosophers see it,
and every day we hear people, whose language they have corrupted,
talk of "abstract principles," "abstract right," "abstract
justice," "abstract duty," "abstract philosophy," "abstract
science;" all of which are "airy nothings," to which not even the
poet can give "a local habitation and a name." The philosophers
who authorize such expressions are very severe on sensists and
utilitarians; yet they really hold that all non-sensible
principles and causes, and all ideas not  derived from the
senses, are abstractions, and that the sciences which treat of
them are abstract sciences.
{540}
Know they not that this is precisely what the sensists themselves
do? If the whole non-sensible order is an abstraction, only the
sensible is real, or exists _a parte rei_, and there is no
intelligible reality distinct from the sensible world. All
heathen philosophy ends in one and the same error, which can be
corrected only by understanding that the non-sensible is not an
abstraction, but real being, that is God, or the real relation
between God and his acts or creatures. But to do this requires
our philosophers to cast out from their minds the old leaven of
heathenism which they have retained, to recognize the creative
act of God, and to find in theology the basis of both science and
morals.

Mr. Lecky proves himself, in the work before us, as in his
previous work, an unmitigated rationalist, and rationalism is
only heathenism revived. He himself proves it. He then can be
expected to write the history of European morals only from a
heathen point of view, and his judgments of both heathen and
Christian morals will be, in spite of himself, only those of a
respectable pagan philosopher and in the latter period of pagan
empire, and attached to the moral philosophy of the Porch. He is
rather tolerant than otherwise of Christianity, in some respects
even approves it, lauds it for some doctrines and influences
which it pleases him to ascribe to it, and to which it has no
claim; but judges it from a stand-point far above that of the
fathers, and from a purely pagan point of view, as we may take
occasion hereafter to show, principally from his account of the
conversion of Rome, and the triumph of the Christian religion in
the Roman empire.

But we have taken up so much space in discussing the nature and
foundation of morals, to which the author devotes his preliminary
chapter, that we have no room for any further discussion at
present. What we have said, however, will suffice, we think, to
prove that rationalism is as faulty in morals as in religion, to
vindicate the church from the charge of teaching a selfish
morality, and to prove that the only solid basis of morals is in
theology.

----------

              Faith.

      Faith is no weakly flower,
  By sudden blight, or heat, or stormy shower
      To perish in an hour.

      But rich in hidden worth,
  A plant of grace, though striking root in earth,
      It boasts a hardy birth:

      Still from its native skies
  Draws energy which common shocks defies,
      And lives where nature dies!


   Oratory, Birmington.          E. Caswall.

-------

{541}


       Religion Emblemed In Flowers.


  "Wondrous truths, and manifold as wondrous,
     God hath written in the stars above;
   But not less in the bright flowerets under us
     Stands the revelation of his love.
   And with childlike, credulous affection
     We behold their tender buds expand--
   Emblems of our own great resurrection,
     Emblems of the bright and better land."


Of all the poetic and suggestive traditions that linger with us
from the early ages--those ages when art revived through
religion, and symbolized the truths of eternity by the creation
and application of such esthetics which, under the dominion of
heathendom, had been perverted to purely sensual enjoyment--of
all these traditions, then, we find few more beautiful in their
various types, more elevating in their idealization, or which
form a stronger connecting link between the soul's aspirations
and our material enjoyment, than those frailest children of the
beautiful that belong to the floral kingdom. Coeval with the
creation, the solace, companions, and delight of our first
parents, they shared the punishment, likewise, of man's
transgression, in the flood; but when the waters subsided, they
were the chosen symbols to announce to Noah the cessation of
omnipotent vengeance, and the first to greet the weary wanderers,
as their feet again touched the earth; raising their lowly heads
from around the tree-roots, and through the rocky fissures, as
emblems of the life immortal that springs from decay.

Among those which seem to be the chosen ones, as most expressive
of religious sentiment, both in the Old and New Testament as well
as in early legendary lore, are the rose, the lily, the olive,
and the palm.

To each of these has been given a significance, from the earliest
times, that has made them cherished with our households and
associated with our faith. Although the rose was perverted by the
heathen into a type of sensual love and luxury, yet, through the
marvellous beauty and variety of its creation, it was reclaimed
by the Christian poets, to be the attendant of the pure and holy,
wherever an ornament was needed to paint a moral victory, or
glorify decay.

That this flower was largely cultivated by the Jews, and used in
their religious festivals as an ornament, is made clear by the
frequent use we find of it, as a simile in the Bible. Solomon, in
his song, compares the church to the "rose of Sharon and lily of
the valley." Again, in the book of Wisdom, we see their
appreciation in the admonition, "Let us crown ourselves with
rosebuds ere they be withered." Also, in Ecclesiasticus, occurs
this metaphor, "I was exalted like a palm-tree in Engaddi, and as
a rose-plant in Jericho." Again, "Hearken to me, ye holy
children, and bud forth as roses growing by the brook."

It was a belief among the Jews, according to Zoroaster, says
Howitt, "that every flower is appropriated to a particular angel,
and that the hundred-leaf rose is consecrated to an archangel of
the highest order." The same author relates, that the Persian
fire-worshippers believe that Abraham was thrown into a furnace
by Nimrod, and the flames forthwith turned into a bed of roses.

{542}

In contradistinction to this in sentiment is the belief of the
Turk, who holds that this lovely flower springs from the
perspiration of Mohammed, and, in accordance with this creed,
they never tread upon it or suffer one to lie upon the ground.

I think it was Solon who held the theory that the rose and the
woman were created at the same time, and in consequence thereof,
there sprang up a contest among the gods, as to which should be
awarded the palm of superior beauty. Certainly there may yet be
traced a close resemblance between these native queens, not only
in the matter of beauty, but also in the variety and fragility
for which the rose, above all others, is distinguished.
Everywhere has God planted this exquisite work of his hand. In
the bleak polar regions, where the days of sunshine are so short,
and so few, there is seen among the first breathings of the
summer zephyrs the "_Rosa rapa_," its slender stem covered
with pale double flowers, lifting its head to greet those
ice-bound prisoners as they issue from the stifling air of their
winter huts. Degraded as are that people in their tastes, the
magic of these silent messengers from God is so forcible, that
they greet them with a poet's joy, and deck their heads and rough
sealskin clothing with their tender blossoms. Even to the
broken-hearted Siberian exile, there come a few short days in his
life when these frail comforters rise from the frozen earth to
greet him, like messengers from his lost home and friends. ... It
is not to be wondered, then, with all the associations of Eden
ever clinging about these eloquent voices, that the early
Christians transferred their ornamental and suggestive beauties
from the saturnalian rites of heathendom to the honor of God and
his saints. Hence it is, that, in so many of the beautiful
legends that have come down to us, we find these frail memorials
so often associated as types of some noble deed accomplished, or
the given reward of some heavy human sacrifice. To those who look
upon these legends as myths, or simply religious fairy tales, we
can only say, with Mrs. Jameson, that we most sincerely pity all
such sceptics from our heart; for, where they outstrip the bounds
of even miraculous probability, there may yet be found in their
pages both entertainment and instruction. And after all, why
should not religion have her fairyland, as well as material life?
Why should not the soul enjoy the privilege of an occasional
transport into a world of poetical visions, as well as the
imagination, which finds in the fairy-dreams of childhood only a
dim vista of annual blooms, upon which the breath of heaven can
never blow? Weary with the turmoil of life, with the noise and
whirl of the shifting scenes that open continuously upon a vista
of pain, and sorrow, and unrealized hopes, such legends recall to
the soul auroral gleams of childhood's purity, and transport her
into fields that are redolent with the flowers of that eternal
land where earthly woes can never come. In this Dodona grove, the
soul hallows the heart; the impossible becomes the real; and as
all the aspirations for the higher life possess it, the skies
seem to open, we catch a flutter of the angels' robes, the
perfume of the flowers of paradise, and a glimmer even of the
golden gates shoots radiantly across the uplifted, tear-dimmed
eye; and we feel, for these few moments at least, that God and
heaven are very nigh, ay! even in our heart of hearts.
{543}
What matters it, then, if it be not all truth, since it serves
the purpose, and for the time being decks the soul in regal
splendor, and makes the unattainable and dim worth the longest
toil and hardest battle that the short span of human life can
compass? In those early ages, when the heathen idols were
tottering on their thrones, and the voice of Pan had died out in
a mighty wail at the sound of a feeble infant's cry--in those
dawning Christian days there was felt the need of mental food of
a nourishing and elevating kind for the masses. Heretofore, they
had been kept occupied by public games, periodical saturnalian
revels, gladiatorial combats, and other heathen abominations, in
order to allow the philosopher to pursue his subtle theories in
quiet, and the wheels of government to run smoothly on. As years
and numbers, however, increased the Christian fold, and the first
fervor began to abate under the influence of human passions and
the need of life's varieties, it became evident that some food
was necessary to meet the hunger of the craving mind. The time
and thoughts of the philosophers and theologians were too deeply
engrossed with the abstruse problems of the day--the esoteric and
exoteric--to give other time beyond that of the soul's immediate
requirements to the ignorant. Hence it was, that, as human blood
was poured out like water, in libations to the true God, when
beauty and innocence, rank and lowliness, wealth and poverty,
found a common centre wherein to pray and suffer--hence it was,
that the religious, poetic heart of the people idealized and
beatified these deeds of heroic sanctity; and the church, while
striving to repress extravagance, yet welcomed and fostered a
taste which she saw, in her mighty wisdom, would be productive of
elevating thought and emulative example. "And it is a mistake,"
says Mrs. Jameson, "to suppose that these legends had their sole
origin in the brains of dreaming monks. The wildest of them had
some basis of truth to rest on, and the forms which they
gradually assumed were but the necessary results of the age which
produced them. They became the intense expression of that inner
life which revolted against the desolation and emptiness of the
outward existence; of those crushed and outraged sympathies which
cried aloud for rest, and refuge, and solace, and could nowhere
find them." Mrs. Jameson disclaims any idea of treating these
legends save in their poetic and artistic aspect. But as religion
is the root from whence all have their source, so it is
insensibly transmuted throughout the whole work. And how could
she do otherwise, Protestant though she was? For the great trunk,
the massive column, around which all these delicate fibres of
poesy cling, is religion. Without such support, they would fall,
and be trailed in the dust, and long, long ere this, their
ephemeral life would have been crushed out, as were the oracular
voices of the marble gods.

This literature, then, "became one in which peace was represented
as better than war, and sufferance more dignified than
resistance; which exhibited poverty and toil as honorable, and
charity as the first of virtues; which held up to imitation and
emulation self-sacrifice in the cause of good, and contempt of
death for conscience' sake--a literature in which the tenderness,
the chastity, the heroism of woman, played a conspicuous part;
which distinctly protested against slavery, against violence,
against impurity in word and deed; which refreshed the fevered
and darkened spirit with images of moral beauty and truth,
revealed bright glimpses of a better land, where the wicked cease
from troubling, and brought down the angels of God with shining
wings, and bearing crowns of glory, to do battle with the demons
of darkness, to catch the fleeting soul of the triumphant martyr,
and carry it at once into a paradise of eternal blessedness and
peace." [Footnote 157]

    [Footnote 157: Mrs. Jameson's _Legendary Art_.]

{544}

Under the influence, then, of these new inspirations, art
likewise revived, and the brush and the chisel lent the aid of
their immortal touch to give force and perpetuity to these
creations; and birds, and flowers, and the elements were
introduced as types or allegories of the subjects thus
interpreted. Each one possessed a significance and symbolism that
united the soul to the eternal source of these gifts, and kept
alive in the common heart those principles which the people could
admire if not emulate. The rapidity with which artists multiplied
at this period belongs to the marvelous. God needed artisans for
his work, and truly the old masters seemed, judging from their
deeds and spirit, to have risen, like Adam, from the clay
moulding of the almighty hand. Possessed by a sense of the lofty
nature of their calling, they not only strove for perfection in
detail, but also for a religious spirit, which should so inspire
the work as to move every heart to piety, and embody for
instruction the full force of the solemn truths therein
portrayed. They emerged from the impure influences of the old
religion and literature, like the chrysalis, into the golden-hued
glory that shone in the lives of the ancient patriarchs and
prophets; in the auroral beams that hung like sea-foam over the
angels as they walked or talked as God's messengers on earth,
until, bathed in a glory borrowed from the very smile of the
Creator, they saw the divine Son descend like the morning star,
and dwell upon earth among men.

In all their work a confession of faith lay embodied; and feeling
themselves called to this vocation, hearing the voice and seeing
in the enthusiasm of their fervor the burning bush, they purified
themselves by prayer, and fasting, and long meditation upon the
subject that was to grow into life under the glowing tints of the
brush or the magic stroke of the chisel. This mystical spirit so
elevated and ennobled the soul-work of those grand old masters
that faults in mechanical execution and anachronisms in details
are, even to this day, overlooked, for the sake of that _con
amore_ zeal which pervades the vital treatment of their
subjects. Fra Angelico, a Dominican monk, devoted his art life
exclusively to the religious mysticism of his subjects. "Whenever
he painted Christ upon the cross," says Jarves, "the tears would
roll down his cheeks as if he were an actual eyewitness of his
Saviour's agony. There is a celestial glow in all his beatified
faces that seem to radiate from his own soul." Lippo Dalmasio, an
early painter of Bologna, was also noted for his piety in art.

  "He never painted the holy Virgin without fasting the previous
  evening, and receiving absolution and the bread of angels in
  the morning after; and, finally, never consented to paint for
  hire, but only as a means of devotion." [Footnote 158]

    [Footnote 158: Lord Lindsay's _Christian Art_.]

Add to these, Luini, of Milan; Francia, of Bologna; Gentile and
John Bellini, of Venice; Fra Bartolomeo, the Florentine monk, and
friend of Savonarola; Perugino, and finally, Raphael--and we have
the list of those who led the vanguard in the perpetuity of those
heaven-toned idealizations that yet greet the eye with their
beauty and animate the heart with emotions of grateful homage.

{545}

  "Such art has left us, and can never again be revived until
  artists believe and pray as did those men of old; until they
  can see and feel as they did at all hours, amid their
  rejoicings or as they slept, holy personages, saints, and
  virgins, apostles and evangelists, martyrs, and the symbolized
  faith for which they died. Virtues, and not graces; angels, and
  not muses; types of spiritual truths, and not expressions of
  sensuous beauty or lustful passion--these were their daily
  intellectual food. Amid all things--in church, shop, or
  bedroom; on the roadside and by the palace; at every street
  corner, and over every threshold--were the figures of the
  Redeemer and his holy mother to direct their thoughts still
  higher heavenward. Religion, at all events, in its external
  form, and as _believed_, was confessed by all men and in
  all places. Youth were taught to rely on spiritual powers for
  their earthly support and sole sustenance. Charity, faith, the
  due subjection of the body to the development of its perfect
  strength, humanity, the succor of the oppressed, the relief of
  the unfortunate, _devoir_, duty to all men--such were the
  doctrines of chivalry in the middle ages." [Footnote 159]

    [Footnote 159: _Art Hints_, by Jarves.]

Apart from the palm and olive, we find no mention in the New
Testament of flowers, save that exquisite simile of the lilies,
made by our Saviour himself; and there can be found no other
instance wherein such an illustration is rendered with more
beautiful pathos and force. That he appreciated these frail
emblems is not only made apparent in this, but is further proved
by his choice of the calm repose and soothing influence of these
silent sympathizers on Gethsemane's night of woe. No human
companionship, no human eye or voice, could aid him then, in that
fearful contest of humanity over divinity, as did nature's
voiceless comforters--the flowers that were bent down by the
weight of their tears, the great shifting sky above, with the
eloquent calm of its silver stars, through which floated clear
and luminous the angel comforters. Our Saviour proved in all the
suffering episodes of his life that lovely groves, and dim
funereal forests speak more forcibly to a heart in pain than do
the wilder and grander convulsions of nature.

  "It is in quiet and subdued passages of unobtrusive majesty,
  the deep, the calm, and the perpetual; that which must be
  sought ere it can be seen, and loved ere it is understood;
  things which the angels work out for us daily, and yet vary
  eternally; which are never wanting, and never repeated; which
  are to be found always, yet each found but once--it is through
  these that her lesson of devotion is chiefly taught and the
  blessing of beauty given." [Footnote 160]

    [Footnote 160: Ruskin's _Modern Painters_. ]

Nowhere have these beautiful accessories in life's pilgrimage
been more glowingly and successfully used, not only as an
abstract religious emblem, but as a divine allegorical poem, than
in the representations of the life and attributes of the blessed
Virgin. To this type of all that was pure and noble in woman; to
the humanity which was a link in the chain of divinity, a
partaker of all human woes, and yet the chosen of the Godhead--to
her were specially dedicated those early labors in revived art,
and of which she was the inspiration. Herein, as elsewhere, we
find the historical, mystical, and devotional treated with every
conceivable adjunct that can typify a being so elevated and
benign. The beauty and variety of the rose, the purity and
fragrance of the lily, were devoted to her special honor,
wherever her name was venerated and loved. Even before it was
safe for the early Christians to make an open profession of
faith, they expressed their devotion to the mother conjointly
with the Son, in the darkness and solitude of the catacombs.
{546}
Therein it was, that the first Christian artist dared give life
to his heart's belief; and therein it was, that her image with
that of her divine Son and the apostles were impressed upon the
walls and sarcophagi of that grand subterranean temple.

As the Annunciation was the door through which all future
blessings flowed, so it became a most fruitful theme to the faith
and imagination of those great religious artists whose work was a
labor of love; and we find it treated from the fifth to the
sixteenth century by Byzantine, Italian, Spanish, and German art
with a variety, beauty, and significance that only an enshrined
saint could inspire. In the earliest representations of this
subject, the angel appeared holding a sceptre, but this mark of
authority gradually gave way to the more symbolic lily. This was
introduced universally, either held in the hand of the angel as
he salutes her, or seen growing in a pot placed in some part of
the room. Others again, represent an enclosed garden, upon which
the Blessed Virgin is looking from a window. In all, from the
crudest to the most finished, some floral adjunct gives beauty
and significance to the subject. The Assumption--that fitting
climacteric of a life whence sprung the Eternal Word--was
likewise a theme of devotional and sublimated art-worship, which
gathered pathos and beauty from the belief that her body was
worthy the care of the seraphim and cherubim, who transported it
with angelic harmonies into the home of her glorified Son. Here,
too, we find, according to the legend, her floral emblems
springing up in the tomb from whence her incorruptible body had
just been raised.

In an Annibale Carracci, the apostles are seen below, one of whom
is lifting, with an astonished air, a handful of roses out of the
sepulchre. In another, by Rubens, one of the women exhibits the
miraculous flowers held up in the folds of her dress. Dominico di
Bartolo, who painted in 1430, (according to Mrs. Jameson,) omits
the open tomb, but clothes the holy mother in a white robe
embroidered with golden flowers.

From the time of the Nestorian heresy, when the title of _Dei
genitrix_ was denied the Blessed Virgin, her votaries became
even more zealous to corroborate her right to the title and
privileges of mother of the man-God; and under the influence of
this test of devotion and faith sprang those multitudinous
representations of the woman glorified, as the enthroned Madonna.
From thence the descent was natural and gradual to those
characteristics which distinguished her life in its daily
ministrations to her divine Son; and so touchingly natural, so
beautiful in their tenderness, are many of these more human
portraitures, that the coldest heart cannot withhold its homage,
though it may its devotion. Even Mrs. Jameson, herself a
Protestant, says, "We look, and the heart is in heaven; and it is
difficult to refrain from an _Ora pro nobis_." In a large
number of these inspirations of faith and love, we meet the
various floral emblems that typify her beauty and purity. Some of
the earliest representations are found in many of the old Gothic
cathedrals, executed in sculpture. She is therein portrayed in a
standing position, bearing the child on her left arm, while in
the right hand she holds a flower, or sometimes a sceptre. In a
holy family in the academy of Venice, by Bonifazio, "The virgin
is seated in glory, with her infant on her knee, and encircled by
cherubim. On one side an angel approaches with a basket of
flowers on his head, and she is in the act of taking these
flowers and scattering them on the saints who stand below."

{547}

The Arcadian and pastoral life, with which many of the Italian
artists environ the mother and child, is certainly both poetical
and natural. Mrs. Jameson gives many instances of this treatment;
among them, one by Philippino Lippi, which is a beautiful idea.
"Here," she says, "the mystical garden is formed of a balustrade,
beyond which is seen a hedge, all in blush with roses. The virgin
kneels in the midst and adores her infant; an angel scatters rose
leaves over him, while the little St. John also kneels, and four
angels, in attitudes of devotion, complete the group." "But a
more perfect example," continues the same author, "is the Madonna
of Francia in the Munich gallery, where the divine infant lies on
the flowery turf, and the mother standing before him, and looking
down on him, seems on the point of sinking on her knees in a
transport of tenderness and devotion. With all the simplicity of
the treatment, it is strictly devotional. The mother and her
child are placed within the mystical garden enclosed in a
_treillage_ of roses, alone with each other, and apart from
all earthly associations, all earthly communions."

Those who are familiar with the Raphael series of Madonnas will
recall, in this connection, his exquisite pastoral _La
Jardinière_. There is also one similarly entitled by a French
artist, though differently treated. The virgin is enthroned on
clouds, and holds the infant, whose feet rest on a globe. Both
mother and child are crowned with roses; and on each side, as if
rising from the clouds, are vases filled with roses and lilies.
Titian has also left many beautiful and some exaggerated works of
the Arcadian school. There is an old Coptic tradition which is
very beautiful, and bears somewhat on this subject of nature's
aid in glorifying these two lives. Near the site of the ancient
Heliopolis, there still stands a very pretty garden, in which
(runs the tradition) the holy family rested in their flight into
Egypt. Feeling oppressed with thirst, a spring of fresh water
gushed at their feet, and on being pursued into their retreat by
robbers, a sycamore-tree opened, and hid them from sight. "The
spring still exists," says a recent traveller, "and the tree yet
stands, and bears such unmistakable marks of antiquity as to make
this tradition and faith of the present generation of Coptics at
least plausible." But these floral emblematical tributes are as
inexhaustible as are the sentiments of love, homage, and tender
pity that fill the heart from the contemplation of the _Mater
Dei Genitrix_ down to the appealing anguish of the
_Dolorosa_. "Thus in highest heaven, yet not out of sight of
earth; in beatitude past utterance; in blessed fruition of all
that faith creates and love desires; amid angel hymns and starry
glories," we will leave enthroned the "blessed amongst women,"
and turn to other legends, wherein the saints who followed her
stand crowned with flowers celestial, awaiting a share of our
praise and veneration.


             Part Second.

In Thuringia, one of the provinces of Germany, the traveller is
attracted by a species of rose that is universally cultivated by
the poorest peasant, as well as the richest land-owner. When the
question as to its origin is asked, the answer invariably is,
"Oh! that is the rose of the dear St. Elizabeth, our former
queen; and was grown from one of the sprigs given to her by the
angels."
{548}
One might as well try to turn the faith of these simple people
from their belief in the sanctity of her life as from the truth
of the miraculous roses. According to Montalembert and others,
thus runs the substance of the legend. Elizabeth loved the poor,
and was specially devoted to relieving their necessities,
frequently carrying with her own hands goods of various kinds, to
distribute among them. At one season, there was a great scarcity
of crops throughout the land, and caution and economy in the use
of the royal stores had been advised even in the palace.
Elizabeth could not bear to know of unrelieved suffering among
her people; so, by close economy in her own wants, she managed to
furnish food for many others. On one occasion, a very pressing
case of necessity reached her; and not wishing to encourage her
servants in disobedience to the general command, she started
alone on her errand of mercy, with some lighter articles of food
concealed in the folds of her dress. Just as she reached the back
steps of the chateau, however, she met her husband, with several
gentlemen, returning from the chase. Astonished to see his wife
alone, and thus burdened, he asked her to show him what she was
carrying; but as she held her dress in terror to her breast, he
gently disengaged her hands, and behold! "It was filled with
white and red roses, the most beautiful he ever saw."

Wandering in thought over these scenes wherein the air is
redolent with their fragrance, the form of the young and lovely
Dorothea, with the radiant boy-angel at her side, rises in
diaphonous light before the vision. We see her as she stands
confronting her heathen judge Fabricius, who longs to possess her
charms; and to his command, "Thou must serve our gods or die."
she mildly answers, "Be it so; the sooner shall I stand in the
presence of _Him_ I most desire to behold." Then the
governor asked her, "Whom meanest thou?" She replied, "I mean the
Son of God, Christ, mine espoused. His dwelling is in paradise;
by his side are joys eternal, and in his garden grow celestial
fruits, and roses that never fade." And resisting all
temptations, all entreaties, she went forth to torture and to
death. "And as she went," (continues the legend,) "a young man, a
lawyer of the city, named Theophilus, who had been present when
she was first brought before the governor, called to her
mockingly, 'Ha! fair maiden, goest thou to join thy bridegroom?
Send me, I pray thee, of the fruits and flowers of that same
garden of which thou hast spoken. I would fain taste of them!'
And Dorothea, looking on him, inclined her head with a gentle
smile, and said, 'Thy request, O Theophilus! is granted.' Where
at he laughed aloud with his companions; but she went on
cheerfully to death. When she came to the place of execution, she
knelt down and prayed; and suddenly at her side stood a bright
and beautiful boy, with hair bright as sunbeams. In his hands, he
held a basket containing three apples and three fresh-gathered
fragrant roses. She said to-him, 'Carry these to Theophilus; say
that Dorothea hath sent them, and that I go before him to the
garden whence they came, and await him there.' With those words,
she bent her neck, and received the stroke of death. Meantime,
the angel went to seek Theophilus, and found him still laughing
in merry mood over the idea of the promised gift. The angel
placed before him the basket of celestial fruit and flowers,
saying, 'Dorothea sends thee these,' and vanished."
{549}
Amazement filled the mind of Theophilus, and the taste of the
fruit and fragrance of the roses pervaded his soul with a new
life, the scales of darkness fell, and he proclaimed himself a
servant of the same Lord that had won the heart of the gentle
maiden. Carlo Dolci, Rubens, and Van Eyck have given the most
poetical illustrations of this subject. Many other artists have
also treated it, but more coldly.

With the name of St. Cecilia arise visions of angels poised in
mid-air, enthralled by seraphic music, which, through the power
of its voluminous sweetness, has pierced even the gates of
heaven. But the flowers of paradise, as well as its celestial
harmonies, are also associated with the name of this beautiful
virgin--flowers that were sent to her bridal-chamber, as a reward
for her angelic purity and the eloquence which had moved her
young heathen husband to respect her vow of chastity. Returning
from the instructions of St. Urban, to whom she had sent him, he
heard the most enchanting music, and on reaching his wife's
chamber he "beheld an angel, who was standing near her, and who
held in his hands two crowns of roses gathered in paradise,
immortal in their freshness and perfume, but invisible to the
eyes of unbelievers. With these he encircled the brows of Cecilia
and Valerian; and he said to Valerian, "Because thou hast
followed the chaste counsel of thy wife, and hast believed her
words, ask what thou wilt, it shall be granted thee."

I stood, early one morning late in the month of June, looking
sadly upon the dead, white, upturned face of one who had seemed
to walk, while on earth, more with angels than with men. A
mystery of sadness had enveloped her life, but, like the cloud in
the wilderness, it proved a power that drew her in the footprints
of the "Man of sorrows." As I meditated upon the calm
etherealized beauty that now absorbed the old earthly pain, and
wondered what this secret of a heart-life could have been, her
mother entered with tear-dimmed eyes, and placed upon her brow of
auburn hair, through which glinted here and there a streak of
gray--"dawn of another life that broke o'er her earthly
horizon"--in her hands, and over the white fleecy robes, crowns
and sprays of mingled crimson and white roses, all glistening
with the morning dew.

"Red roses for the dead!" I exclaimed in surprise. "White alone
can surely typify such a life and death as hers."

"So you think, my friend, because you with others saw only the
outward calm that marked her way. But I--I who loved her so, knew
and saw the thorn-crown that pressed her brow, and the hard
stones and barbs that strewed every step of her way through
life--I place them then here, because she loved them, and because
they express, in conjunction with their sister's whiteness, the
sorrow and purity of the angelic life now closed to pain and open
only to joy.

  "Well done of God, to halve the lot,
     And give her all the sweetness;
   To us, the empty room and cot;
     To her, the heaven's completeness.
   For her to gladden in God's view;
     For us to hope and bear on.
   Grow, Lily, in thy garden new
     Beside the rose of Sharon."

I turned away sadly, marvelling upon the mystery of this life now
closed so happily, and involuntarily arose to my mind the
exquisite legend of the sultan's daughter.

{550}

             I.

  "Early in the morning,
   The sultan's daughter
   Walked in her father's garden,
   Gathering the bright flowers,
   All full of dew.
   And as she gathered them,
   She wondered more and more
   Who was the master of the flowers,
   And made them grow
   Out of the cold, dark earth.
   In my heart,' she said,
       'I love him; and for him
   Would leave my father's palace
   To labor in his garden.'

             II.

  "And at midnight
   As she lay upon her bed,
   She heard a voice
   Call to her from the garden,
   And, looking forth from her window,
   She saw a beautiful youth
   Standing among the flowers;
   And she went down to him,
   And opened the door for him;
   And he said to her,'O maiden!
   Thou hast thought of me with love,
   And for thy sake
   Out of my father's kingdom
   Have I come hither.
       I am the master of the flowers;
   My garden is in paradise,
   And if thou wilt go with me,
   Thy bridal garland
   Shall be of bright red flowers.'
   And then he took from his finger
   A golden ring,
   And asked the sultan's daughter
   If she would be his bride.
   And when she answered him with love,
   His wounds began to bleed,
   And she said to him,
   'O Love! how red thy heart is,
   And thy hands are full of roses.'
   'For thy sake,' answered he,
   'For thy sake is my heart so red,
   For thee I bring these roses.
   I gathered them at the cross
   Whereon I died for thee!
   Come, for my father calls,
   Thou art my celestial bride!'
   And the sultan's daughter
   Followed him to his father's garden." [Footnote 161]

    [Footnote 161: _Golden Legend_, by Longfellow.]

Throughout all the early church legends, we find whatever is pure
and beautiful in sentiment and exalted in art carefully
cherished, and constantly presented to the contemplation of the
votary in some glowing form that could act as a counterpoise to
the corrupting influence of heathen passions and pursuits.

When the holy mother stood on Calvary, her heart steeped in agony
unutterable, not the least cause of her anguish was to see the
waste of those precious drops of blood as they bedewed the hard
insensible ground. But behold! as she gazes, and her tears fall,
delicate bell-shaped crimson blossoms spring up, and absorb the
human dew; and thus, through these frail beautifiers of suffering
and consolers of grief, the heart of the mother was comforted,
and the soul is drawn to look upward, away from the agonizing
ignominy of the cross to the beatified glory to which he is
translated at the price of so much woe.

Thus also, in the horrid details of the early martyrdoms, we
constantly meet these compensating, suggestive metaphors of the
glory won. The painful agony of the downward crucifixion of St.
Peter, the waste of blood from that congested head, springs into
a fountain of clear gurgling water, from which flows healing for
all suffering flesh that seek its miraculous aid. As St. Grata
bears the decapitated head of her friend St. Alexander to the
tomb, lo! flowers spring up as the blood falls, and are gathered
by the mourners to deck his grave.

Among the little band that followed Mother Seton more than fifty
years ago, in her divine mission of self-abnegation and Christian
love, was a delicate young woman whose life had been spent in
ease, amid the devoted love and admiration of a large family
circle. Dreamy and poetical by nature, her talent, then rare
among American women, was revered and looked up to by seven young
brothers as something marvellous; and no implement more fatiguing
than the pen or needle was ever allowed to weary her dainty
fingers. One day as she sat amid her flowers and books, conning a
new inspiration, suddenly the open door of heaven seemed to stand
before her, and she felt a voice saying, "He who would come after
me must take up his cross and follow me."
{551}
And believing that her heavenly spouse had called, she closed her
books, and turned her face steadfastly away from her weeping
friends, and went cheerfully forth to privation and labor.
Faithful to her new vows, religion yet did not forbid the
exercise of the talent God had given her; only now her themes had
become more exalted, and the love and perennial sublimity of
heaven took the place of the perishable and annual blooms of
time. The privations and labors spent in the service of suffering
humanity soon reduced her delicate frame to patient helplessness;
but the beauty and love of God in his works and ways triumphed
over all her bodily infirmities, and her strength was never too
frail to raise a _sursum corda_ in his praise. Whitsuntide
of 1813 rose in the light of a glorious May morning, and the
sufferer lay panting for breath, after a night of exhausting
hemorrhage, and she knew that the angel, with palm in hand, stood
by her side ready to conduct her to God. In blissful hope of the
fruition that now dawned upon all those past sacrifices, labors,
and sufferings, she fell, to the music of those unseen,
undulating wings, into a sweet sleep. Mother Seton, who had left
the sufferer's bed for a breath of the fresh morning air, just
then returned from the garden, bearing in her hand the first rose
of the season, knowing how refreshing and suggestive such a gift
would be to the weary sufferer. Rejoiced to find her in repose,
she gently laid the flower upon her bosom, above the white,
folded hands, and quietly left the room. The fitful fever sleep
was soon ended, and as Mary opened her eyes, first the fragrance,
then the beauty of this heavenly symbol, caught her eye. Wasted
and dying though the earthly tenement was, the soul, the poet's
soul, yet glowed with vital power; and raising from a little
table at her side a pencil and paper, she thereon breathed her
last pean of poetic utterance in these lines:

  "The morning was beautiful, mild, and serene,
     All nature had waked from repose;
   Maternal affection came silently in,
     And placed on my bosom a rose.

  "Poor nature was weak, and had almost prevailed,
     The weary eyelids were closed;
   But the soul rose in triumph, and joyfully hailed
     The sweet queen of flowers--the rose.

  "Whitsuntide was the time, the season of love:
     Methought the blest spirit had chose
   To leave for awhile the mild form of a dove,
     And come in the blush of a rose.

  "Come, Heavenly Spirit, descend on each breast,
     And there let thy blessing repose,
   As thou once didst on Mary, thy temple of rest;
     For Mary's our mystical rose.

  "Oh! may every rose that blooms forth evermore,
     Enkindle the spirit of those
   Who see it, or wear it, to bless and adore
     The hand that created the rose."

When Mother Seton returned, she found the lines with the rose
still lying on her bosom; and looking into the sweet upturned
face, she saw the signet of death stamped upon the luminous eyes,
and knew by her short, heavy breathing that ere long she would be
singing her songs in the rose-gardens of paradise.

Suggestive of peace and lowliness as are these creations, yet
even they have been perverted by the passions of man into
insignia of blood and shame. The thirty years' war of the houses
of York and Lancaster make the white and red rose ever associated
with the sorrows and humiliations, the heroic endurance, and true
womanly nobility of Margaret of Anjou. We see her as she stands
under her rose-banner, on the heights of Tewksbury, with
dauntless courage in her heart, and a mother's wild prayer upon
her lips; standing there, amid the wild havoc, unflinchingly,
until the wailing, weird blast of the trumpeters tells her that
her beautiful white rose is broken at the stem, and its leaves
scattered, trampled, and bathed in the life-blood of her only
son.

{552}

Tracing, then, these exquisite adumbrations throughout the
spiritual aspect of life, is it strange that we have learned to
look upon these frail children of the beautiful as one of the
connecting links with heaven? Of such every heart has its
conservatory; every home its storehouse of withered, scentless
mementoes, that recall, when the gates of the sanctuary are
unbarred, memories deep and voiceless, and faces whose beauty has
paled, like them, in dust. Here is the remnant of a cross of
white _immortelles_. It was taken from the breast of a loved
one who died far away in a foreign land, among strangers. It was
sent with the last spoken words to comfort and uplift the heart
of the mourners; and as we lift it from the sacred casket, the
echo of those words seems to take form in the rustle of its
blighted leaves, and the old, subdued sorrow breaks out afresh
before the multitudinous memories and images evoked by a withered
flower.

Here lie together a sprig of orange blossom and a white rosebud,
double memorial of a happy bridal and an early grave. Ere the
perfume of the orange blossom had faded from her brow, the white
rose lay on her pulseless heart. Ere the echo of the wedding
march had died on the air, it was merged into a requiem dirge of
woe.

Ah this spray of brown leaves! what memories lie folded in its
veins! A picture of a lone, far away grave rises, and by its side
kneel a wife and daughter, come from a great distance to pay some
tribute to a beloved one's last resting-spot in a land of
strangers. Desolate looked the bare, uncultivated mound; but at
the head some tender stranger's hand had placed a plain wooden
cross to mark the spot for the absent ones, and planted a wild
rose which twined its arms over and around the cross in graceful
beauty, as if to offer a poor substitute for the visits of loving
friends. How warmly the prayers of the widow went forth for that
unknown one who had thus filled the place and thoughtfulness of
the absent!

A prisoner walks rapidly up and down the parapet of the Capitol
prison in Washington, the wild throbbings of his heart keeping
time to the tramp, tramp of his restless feet, which long for
space, for liberty, and the sound of the brother voices that send
their wild echo from the other side of the Potomac. Suddenly the
laughter of a child's voice sounds above him, and, as he in
surprise raises his eyes, lo! a cherub head looks from a window
down upon him, and the little hands drop at his feet a half-blown
rose.

"War's wild alarum call" suddenly dies out, and the soldier's
dream of glory gives place to the man's warm love. The wide blue
sea no longer rolls between him and home, and over and above the
din of battle floats the voice of mother and sister in loving
prayer for the absent one, who, impelled by a noble people's cry
for aid, hastened to the rescue, and found instead of the
_élan_ of battle the cold, dark walls of a prison home. Lo!
the power and pathos of a little child and a fragile flower
within the walls of a dungeon.

A father kneels in grief unutterable by the soulless body of a
little daughter. In the agony of his rebellious grief, he prays
to God to send him one ray of comfort, one gleam of light, to see
and know that the transition is at least well for her. As he
raises his head, his eyes fall upon the family Bible, and with
the prayer still in his heart he opens its leaves, and  his
finger, as if guided by an angel, falls upon these lines, "And he
took the damsel by her hand, and said unto her, I say unto thee,
arise."
{553}
With the sacred verse, there came shining down into his heart a
clear, sweet perception of the fact that at that very moment our
Lord Jesus Christ, who alone is the resurrection and the life,
was raising up out of her cold and lifeless form that beautiful,
spiritual body in which little Lucy will exist as an angel for
ever. He plucked some white and green leaves from the flowers
which lay in the dead child's hands, and placed them on that
verse of the sacred volume.

  "Years have passed away, and they are there still, pale and
  withered, sacred little mementoes of the consolation which came
  like a voice from heaven in his hour of need. When he is
  haunted by sorrowful memories, and falls into states of
  desolation and despair, he opens that holy book, and kisses
  those faded leaves, and his spirit is sometimes elevated into
  that mount which the three disciples ascended with their Lord,
  and there, by the permission of the same Redeemer who makes
  every child an image of himself, he sees the body of his little
  daughter transfigured in glory!" [Footnote 162]

    [Footnote 162: _Our Children in Heaven_, by W. H.
    Holcombe, M.D. ]

In a white alabaster box, yellowed by the mould of years, are
lying, side by side, a crisp, golden curl, a sprig of lily of the
valley, and a tuberose. Through the mist of tears that fill the
eye rise the angelic features of a little girl, the first-born of
her mother. The joyous laughter, the music of the little feet,
the endless activity of the waxen fingers, ere they closed
lifelessly over those tender lily sprays, all take form and life
in presence of these mute memorials. Other children God sent to
console the mother for the loss of this little one, and long,
long years have ripened them into men and women, and sent them
forth to fill the various missions of life that separate them
from mother and home. But to the long and early lost, the
maternal heart now yearningly turns, as still, above all others,
the child of her love. No stronger earthly ties stand between
them even now; the _mother_ holds her place supreme
_here_, and feels that for her, above all others on earth,
those little hands are folded in prayer, and that sweet-toned
voice raised in songs of supplication.

  "Yet still, in all the singing,
     Thinks haply of her song,
   Which in that life's first springing
     Sang to her all night long."

Comforted by such memories,
she kisses the mute and withered
mementoes, and, as she folds them
again reverently, lovingly away in
their casket, she prays that

  "When her dying couch about
     The natural mists shall gather,
   Some smiling angel close shall stand
     In old Correggio's fashion,
   And bear a _lily_ in his hand
     For death's annunciation."

-------

{554}

        Catholicity And Pantheism.

             Number Seven.

	 The Finite.--Continued.


We pass to the next question: What is the end of the exterior
action of God?

God is infinite intelligence. An agent who acts by understanding
must always act for a reason, which is as the lever of the
intelligence. This reason is called the end of the action.
Therefore, the external act, being the act of an infinite
intelligence, must have an end, an object, a reason. So far
everything is evident; but a very difficult question here arises:
What can the end of the exterior action be? In the first place,
it cannot be an end necessarily to be attained; for the necessity
of the end would imply also the necessity of the means, and the
external act in that supposition would become necessary. But
suppose the end not necessary. God, in that case, would be free
to accept it; and in that supposition he would either act without
a reason, or have another reason or object for accepting an end
not necessary to be attained; which second reason would, in its
turn, be either necessary or not necessary. If the former, the
same inconvenience would exist which we have pointed out before;
if the latter, it would require a third reason to account for the
second; and so on _ad infinitum_. The answer to this
difficulty consists in the following doctrine. The reason by
which an agent acts may be twofold: one, efficient or
determining; the other, qualifying the action without determining
it. Ontologically speaking, every intelligent agent must act for
a reason, but not always be determined to act by the reason. This
is eminently true when the agent or efficient cause is the first
and universal agent. In this case there would be a contradiction,
if the first and universal agent were to act by a reason
determining him to the act. For then the predicate would destroy
the subject; that is, if the first and universal agent were to
act by a determining reason, he would no longer be first, but
second agent; no longer universal, but particular. Because in
that case the final cause would move him, and thus he would
neither be the first nor the cause of everything. This theory
resolves the question of the end of the external act. There
exists neither an intrinsic reason on the part of the agent to
determine him to act outside himself, nor an exterior reason on
the part of the term to impel him to act, as we have already
demonstrated. Consequently, there can be no determining reason
for the external act, and the act must determine itself. The
efficient or determining reason of the external act is the choice
of the act which is absolute master of itself; it lies in its
liberty: and here applies with strict truth that saying, "Stat
pro ratione voluntas." And necessarily so, since the first agent
either determines himself without any efficient reason, or he is
determined by the reason; and in that case he is no longer first,
but second. But then God acts outside himself without any reason?
Without any efficient and determining reason, independent of his
own act, it is granted; without a sufficient reason to make the
act rational, it is denied.
{555}
If there be a reason which qualifies the act, it is sufficient
and rational. Now, for instance, to create finite substances is
to create substantial good; hence the act of creating them must
be good, and therefore rational. And since every finite being, or
its perfection, is good, inasmuch as it resembles the infinite
goodness and perfection of God, it follows that, as St. Thomas
says, the goodness of God is the end of the external act.
_Divina bonitas est finis omnium rerum_.

The determination of the end of the exterior act, which is the
goodness of God, as we have explained it, gives rise to another
question, which has occupied the highest intellects among
philosophers and theologians, and of which we must speak, to pave
our way to lay down the whole plan of the exterior action of God,
as proclaimed by the Catholic Church.

Finite beings are capable of indefinite perfection. An assemblage
of finite beings would form a cosmos, or universe; and as they
are capable of indefinite perfections, we may suppose an
indefinite number of these, one more perfect than the other, all
arrayed in beautiful order in the intelligence of the Creator, in
which the intelligibility of all possible things resides. The
question arises here, suppose God has determined to act outside
himself, which of the whole series of the ideal worlds residing
in his intelligence shall he choose? Can he choose any of them?
Is he bound to choose the best?

The reader will remark that this question is different from that
of the end of creation. The one establishes that God cannot be
forced by any reason to act outside himself, else he would not be
the first and universal cause. The other question that is
proposed now, supposes that God has determined freely and
independently of any reason to act outside himself, and asks
whether God can choose any of the possible ideal worlds residing
in his intellect, or is he forced to choose the best in the
series?

Some philosophers, among whom are Leibnitz and Malebranche,
contend that God is absolutely free to create or not to create;
but once he has determined to create, he is bound to choose the
best possible cosmos in the series. We shall let them expound
their system in their own words.

  "God," says Leibnitz, "is the supreme reason of things, because
  those which are limited, like everything which comes under our
  vision and experience, are contingent and have nothing in them
  which may render their existence necessary; it being manifest
  that time, space, and matter, united and uniform in themselves,
  and indifferent to everything, may receive every other movement
  and figure and be in another order. We must, therefore, seek
  for a reason for the existence of the world, which is the whole
  assemblage of contingent beings, and seek it in that substance
  which carries within itself the reason of its own existence,
  and which is consequently necessary and eternal.

  "It is necessary also that this cause should be intelligent,
  because the world which exists now, being contingent, and an
  infinity of other worlds being equally possible, and equally
  claiming existence, so to speak, it is necessary that the cause
  of this world should have looked into all such possible worlds
  to determine upon one.
{556}
   This look or relation of an existing substance to simple
   possibilities can only be the intelligence which possesses
   their ideas; and to determine upon one, can only be the act of
   a will which chooses. The power of such substance renders its
   will efficacious. Power has relation to being; intelligence,
   to truth; the will, to good. This cause, moreover, must be
   infinite in every possible manner, and absolutely perfect in
   power, in wisdom, in goodness; because it reaches all
   possibility. And as all this goes together, we can only admit
   one such substance. Its intelligence is the source of
   metaphysical essences; its will, the origin of existences.
   Behold, in a few words, the proof of one God with all his
   perfections, and of the origin of things by him!

  "Now, this supreme wisdom, allied to a goodness no less
  infinite, could not fail to choose the best. For as a lesser
  evil is a kind of good, so a lesser good is a kind of evil; and
  there would be something to correct in the action of God, if
  there were a means to do better. And as in mathematics when
  there is neither a maximum nor a minimum--in fact, no
  difference at all--all is done equally, or, when this is
  impossible, nothing is done, [Footnote 163] so we may say the
  same in respect to perfect wisdom, which is no less regulated
  than mathematics, that if there had not been a best one among
  all possible worlds God would not have created any. I call
  world the whole series and collection of all existing things,
  that none may say that several worlds might exist in different
  times and places. For in that case they would be counted
  together as one world, or, if you prefer, universe. And
  although one might fill all time and space, it would always be
  true that they could be filled in an infinity of manners, and
  that there is an infinity of worlds possible; among which it is
  necessary that God should have selected the best, because he
  does nothing without acting according to supreme reason."
  [Footnote 164]

    [Footnote 163: If it is required, for instance, to draw the
    shortest possible line from the centre to the circumference
    of a circle, you may draw a line to every point of the
    circumference, and there is no reason why a line should be
    drawn to any one point rather than to another. Or, if an
    object at the centre is attracted equally to every point in
    the circumference, it cannot move in any direction, but
    remains at rest.--ED.]

    [Footnote 164: Leibnitz. Theod. P. I., par 8.]

   Malebranche, in his ninth metaphysical conversation, after
   having laid down the principle that the end of creation is the
   glory of God, concludes that God must choose the best possible
   cosmos, because thereby he would gain greater glory than if he
   chose any of the series. "That which God wishes solely,
   directly, and absolutely in his designs, is to act in the most
   divine manner possible; it is to impress upon his conduct, as
   well as upon his work, the character of his attributes; it is
   to act exactly according to what, and to all he is. God has
   seen from all eternity all possible works, and all possible
   ways of producing them; and as he does not act but for his own
   glory and according to what he is, he has determined to will
   that work which could be effected and maintained by ways which
   must honor him more than any other work produced in a
   different manner."

The principles of this theory are two. One is to admit a
necessity on the part of God to choose the best possible world in
the series; the other is to suppose from reason that there is a
best possible cosmos, as Leibnitz does; in other words, it is to
limit the question only to the creative moment, and not to the
whole external action of God. Now, we think that both
propositions are false. As regards the first, why should God
choose the best? For three reasons, according to the German
philosopher.
{557}
The first is as follows: A lesser good is a kind of evil, if it
be opposed to a greater good. But if God chose any world of the
series in preference to the best, he would prefer a lesser good
to a greater; hence, he would prefer a kind of evil to good, and
the world chosen would be a kind of evil. The major of the
syllogism might be granted, though not perfectly correct, if a
lesser good were opposed to a greater which must necessarily be
effected, but not otherwise. Suppose, among a number of actions,
one more perfect than the other, of which I am not bound to
perform any, I choose to perform any of the series, rejecting all
others; how would the action which I choose to perform be a kind
of evil? If I was bound to perform the best, and preferred one
which is less so, in a certain sense we might grant that the one
I select is a kind of evil. But when I am not bound to perform
any, the one I choose, though not the most perfect, cannot change
its nature of good because I might, if I preferred, perform a
more perfect one. The argument, therefore, of Leibnitz, supposes
what is to be proved, that God _was_ bound to effect the
best possible cosmos; for only in that case it might be said that
he preferred a certain kind of evil to good. His second reason is
not more solid than the first: If God did not choose the best, we
might find something to correct in his action, because there
would be a means to do better. We might find something to correct
in the action of God, if, in the world he chose in preference to
the best, there was something wanting in the attributes and
properties required by its nature. But if the world that God
chooses is endowed with all its essential attributes and proper
elements, certainly there would be nothing at all to correct in
it. When that great Italian artist drew a fly upon the picture of
his master, so true to nature that the master on coming home went
right up to the canvas to chase it away, if any one holding the
opinion of Leibnitz had told him, "There is something to correct
in your fly, because you could have painted a madonna or a
saint," the painter would certainly have been astonished, and his
answer would have been, "I might do a greater and better work;
but you cannot discover any defect in my fly, because you cannot
deny that, though a fly, it is a masterpiece of art." The same
reason holds good with regard to the subject in question. God
might certainly do better; but if he prefers not to create the
best possible cosmos, and selects any of the series, if the one
selected is endowed with all the elements its nature requires, it
is perfect in its own order; and no one could discover any flaw
or defect in it, but every one would be obliged to call it a
masterpiece. The last reason of Leibnitz has much less
foundation, and savors very strongly of pantheism: If there had
not been a best possible world in the series of all the possible
ones, God would not have created any. This means neither more nor
less than that the world, or the aggregate of all contingent
beings, unless it had a kind of absolute perfection, would be
impossible. It is tantamount to denying the very possibility of
creation. Because a best possible world cannot be had; for the
nature of all contingent beings is like number, which progresses
indefinitely, without ever reaching to a number beyond which you
cannot go. Consequently, the nature of contingent things, though
capable of indefinite progress, is altogether incapable,
ontologically speaking, of absolute perfection; a perfection
which would be required to effect a world truly the best.
{558}
If, therefore, such ultimate perfection is required in order that
God may create, it is evident that creation is impossible, and
that optimism runs into pantheism. The argument drawn from the
sufficient reason also fails. If God were to choose a cosmos less
perfect in preference to one more perfect, he would have no
sufficient reason for the preference. This argument fails, first,
because a cosmos, the very best and most perfect, cannot be had,
as we have hinted just now. Therefore, there is no necessity for
any sufficient reason for choice. Suppose a series of worlds, one
more perfect than the other, arrayed in the mind of God according
to numerical order. If God were to choose the tenth in the
series, there would be no sufficient reason for his preferring it
to the eleventh; and if he were to select this last, there would
be no sufficient reason for his preferring it to the twelfth, and
so on indefinitely; and as we cannot reach to a cosmos which
would be the last and the highest in perfection, so there never
could be a sufficient reason for the preference of any.
Consequently; there being no sufficient reason for preferring any
cosmos of the series, God is free to choose any.

In the second place, even if there could be a best possible
cosmos, the reason alleged by Leibnitz would not, on that
account, oblige God to choose it. For a reason may be objectively
or subjectively sufficient; that is, its sufficiency may emerge
from the object to be created, or from the agent. Now, granting
the principle of the German philosopher, God might have a
subjective reason to make him act according to the requirements
of wisdom, even in preferring any cosmos of the series and
rejecting the best. This subjective reason might be to show and
to put beyond any possibility of doubt his absolute freedom and
independence in the creative act. No optimist can deny that this
may have been a sufficient reason for the creative act.
Consequently, even granting the possibility of a best possible
world, God was not bound to create it.

The reason of Malebranche is not more conclusive than those we
have just refuted. God must prefer the best possible cosmos,
because this alone would manifest his glory in the best possible
manner. The argument would be conclusive if it were proven that
God does wish to, or must manifest his glory in the best possible
manner. But this the French philosopher does not and cannot
prove. Because the best possible manner for God to manifest his
infinite excellence is, to cause an infinite effect. Now, this is
a contradiction in terms.

The second position of the optimists to which we object is, to
assume the possibility of a best possible cosmos, as Leibnitz
does, from _reason_. Now, we contend that reason alone,
unaided by revelation, proves decidedly the contrary; it proves
that, ontologically speaking, a best possible cosmos cannot
exist, and that if there be a way by which to raise the cosmos to
a certain ultimate perfection, or perfection beyond which it
could not be supposed to go, this is altogether outside and
beyond the province of reason alone, and must be determined by
revelation. We have already alluded to this in the examination of
the third argument of Leibnitz. The best possible cosmos implies
a certain ultimate and absolute perfection. Now, ontologically
speaking, this is impossible in finite beings. For the question
here is between two extremes, the finite and the infinite.
Between the two lies the indefinite.
{559}
The first extreme, or the finite, may be supposed to ascend the
ladder of perfection, or quantity of being, indefinitely, without
ever reaching the infinite; because its nature is essentially
immutable, as every other essence. Hence, suppose it as great in
perfection as you can, it will be always finite, and consequently
you may always suppose a greater still. Hence, admitting a series
of numberless worlds one ontologically more perfect than the
other, and you can never arrive at one of which you may say this
is the best, because you can always suppose a better still.

St. Thomas with his eagle glance saw, centuries before, the birth
of optimism, and refuted it triumphantly, in the following
argument, similar to that which we have just given. Asking the
question, whether the divine intellect is limited to certain
determinate effects, he denies it thus: "We have proved," he
says, "the infinity of the divine essence. Now, however you may
multiply the number of finite beings, they can never approximate
the infinite, the latter surpassing any number of finite beings,
even if it be supposed infinite. On the other hand, it is clear
that, besides God, no being is infinite, because every being
comes under some category of genus or species. Therefore, no
matter of what quality the divine effects are supposed to be, or
what quantity of perfections they may contain, it is in the
nature of the divine essence infinitely to excel them, and hence
the possibility of an indefinite number of them. Consequently,
the divine intellect cannot be limited to this or that effect."

This argument might be abridged thus: The nature of the infinite
and of the finite being immutable, the infinite must always
surpass, infinitely, the finite. Hence there can be no definite
term assigned to the perfection of the finite, and consequently
there cannot be a cosmos ultimate and absolute in perfection. Our
reason, therefore, does not support the optimists in supposing a
most perfect cosmos; on the contrary, it shows that, as to
essence and nature, there cannot be a cosmos the perfection of
which can be supposed to be ultimate, and in a certain manner
absolute; in other words, limiting the question to the creative
moment which effects ontological perfection only, a best possible
cosmos cannot be had. Moreover, if there be a way by which to
raise the cosmos to a certain ultimate and absolute perfection,
reason can tell us also that it must be altogether supernatural,
and to it superintelligible. In other words, this way must be a
moment or moments of the action of God, distinct from the
creative moment, and causing effects above and beyond the nature
and essential attributes of every possible cosmos, ontologically
considered.

For if this way of raising the cosmos to an ultimate perfection
were the same moment of the action of God which creates essences
and proper attributes, it could not correspond to the effect
desired--that of raising the cosmos to a certain absolute
perfection. Because, when we speak of a creative moment effecting
essences and attributes, we consider the cosmos ontologically;
and ontologically the cosmos cannot have an absolute and ultimate
perfection. The creative moment creates substances and essential
attributes; hence if the moment of raising the cosmos to an
ultimate perfection were identified with the creative moment, it
would always effect substances and essential attributes--that is,
a cosmos indefinitely progressive--and could not give us a cosmos
absolute in perfection. Therefore the moment or moments of the
action of God raising the cosmos to a certain absolute perfection
must be distinct from the creative moment, and must produce
effects above and beyond every possible cosmos, ontologically
considered.

{560}

Now, that which implies a moment of the action of God, distinct
from the creative moment and causing effects above and beyond
every possible cosmos, is called supernatural, because beyond and
above nature or essence. Therefore, the way of raising the cosmos
to a certain absolute perfection must be supernatural in its
cause and in its effects.

If supernatural in its cause and in its effects, it is evident
that this way is superintelligible to reason. Because reason,
being an effect of the creative moment, cannot understand that
which is above and beyond it in its cause and in its effects.

Hence, reason cannot determine whether there is such a way, or
what this way is; and must necessarily leave these two questions
to be determined by revelation.

Another problem, closely connected with the one which we have
just discussed, presents itself here. It is as follows: In the
supposition that God could find a way by which to raise the
cosmos to a certain ultimate perfection, it is asked whether the
divine goodness, which is the end of the exterior action of God,
contains in itself a principle of fitness and agreeableness to
incline it to effect this best possible cosmos. This question, as
the reader is aware, is altogether different from optimism. This
opinion contends that God _must_ create the best possible
cosmos. The question we propose now asks whether divine goodness,
which is the end of the external action of God, may be inclined
to effect it in force of reason of fitness and agreeableness
between divine goodness and the best possible production of it, a
reason of fitness which implies no manner of obligation or
necessity whatever.

We answer it affirmatively; it having the support of all Catholic
tradition, and the proof of it is to be found in the very force
of the terms--God is infinite goodness; in acting outside
himself, he effects finite goodness. Now, finite goodness and
infinite goodness are agreeable to each other; therefore, if
there be a way of raising finite goodness to a certain absolute
goodness, it will be most agreeable to infinite goodness.
[Footnote 165]

    [Footnote 165: S. Th. S. T. p. 3. q. I.]

Before we enter upon the explanation of the whole plan of the
exterior works of God, it is necessary to notice another point
altogether within the reach and province of reason; this is, to
assign some general laws which must govern the exterior action of
God.

Reason, as we have seen, cannot of itself tell whether there may
be a way of exalting the cosmos to a certain ultimate perfection,
and thus rendering it the best possible cosmos; again, reason
cannot tell whether God has or has not chosen to effect it. But,
admitting the supposition that there is such a way, and that God
has preferred it, reason can assign some laws, which it conceives
must necessarily govern his exterior action, if he chooses to
effect the best possible cosmos. Nor is this going beyond the
sphere or province of reason, or infringing upon the rights of
revelation. Because, although the premises are superintelligible,
and to be declared by revelation, yet the premises once given,
reason may lawfully and safely deduce some consequences,
evidently flowing from those premises. In this case, the premises
would be superintelligible; the consequences springing from them
altogether intelligible.

{561}

Reason, therefore, affirms that if God chooses to make the best
possible cosmos, the effectuation of such cosmos must be governed
by the laws of _variety_, of _unity_, of
_hierarchy_, of _continuity_, of _communion_, of
_secondary agency_. The first imports that, if God intends
to effect the best possible manifestations of himself, to which
the best possible cosmos would correspond, he must effect a
_variety_ of moments, a _variety_ of species, of
individuals under each species, except when the nature and the
object of the moment admits no variety or multiplicity. St.
Thomas proves the necessity of such a law by the following
argument: "Every agent," he says, "intends to stamp his own
likeness on the effect he produces, as far as the nature of the
effect will permit, and the more perfect the agent, the stronger
is the likeness he impresses upon his effect."

God is a most perfect agent; it was fitting therefore that he
should impress his own likeness on his exterior works as
perfectly as their nature would allow. Now, a perfect likeness of
God cannot be expressed by one moment or species of effects;
because it is a principle of ontology that, when the effect is
necessarily inferior in nature to the cause, as in the present
case of the cosmos with regard to God, the perfections, which in
the cause are united and, as it were, gathered together into one
intense perfection, cannot be expressed in one effect, but ask
for a variety and multiplicity of effects. The truth of this
principle may be seen in the following example. What is the
reason that we must frequently make use of a variety of words to
express one idea? The reason lies in the objective and
ontological difference of the nature of the two terms. The idea
is simple, spiritual, intelligible; words are a material sound.
The one in its nature is far superior to the other; the idea is
possessed of more being, more perfection than words. Hence the
one cannot be expressed and rendered by the other, except through
a variety and multiplicity of terms. Consequently this example
illustrates the principle that, when an effect is inferior in
nature to its cause, whatever perfections are found in the cause,
as united and simplified in one perfection, cannot be rendered or
expressed except by a multiplicity and variety of effects. What
we have said of language may be affirmed of every fine art, as
painting, sculpture, music, etc. The type which creates them is
always one and simple; it cannot be expressed except in a variety
and multiplicity of forms.

The best manifestations, therefore, of God's transcendental
excellence cannot be rendered and mirrored except through a
variety of moments, of species, and of individuals.

The law of variety asks for the law of _hierarchy_. For
variety cannot exist except by supposing a greater or less amount
of perfection in the terms composing the series, one being
varying from the other by possessing a greater amount of
ontological perfections. Now, by admitting a greater or less
amount of being, we admit a superiority on the part of that which
is endowed with more ontological perfection, and an inferiority
on the part of that which is endowed with less; and each being
composing the cosmos, keeping its own place according to the
general order, and in relation to other beings, it follows that
this superiority on the part of one, and inferiority on the part
of the other, founded on the intrinsic worth of their respective
essences, establishes and explains the law of hierarchy.

{562}

The third law is that of unity, which implies that the variety of
the different moments composing the cosmos must be brought
together so as to form a perfect whole. For, first, if the
variety of moments, of species and individuals, is requisite in
order to express the intensity of the ontological perfection and
excellence of the type of the universe, which is the infinite
grandeur of God, unity, also, is required, in order to express
the simplicity and entirety of the type. In the second place,
what would be the cosmos without unity but a numberless and
confused assemblage of beings? Hence, whatever may be the variety
of the moments and species of the cosmos, they must necessarily
be brought together as parts and components of one harmonic
whole. The nature of this unity will be gathered from the
explanation of the other laws. And first, it begins to be
sketched out by the law of continuity. This implies that there
should be a certain proportion between each moment of the cosmos,
between one species and another, and between the degrees and
gradations within the species, all as far as the nature of the
terms will permit. Hence, the law embraces two parts:

1st. The necessity of the greatest number of moments and of
species, as much as possible alike to each other, without ever
being confounded.

2d. The greatest possible number of gradations within the same
species, in proportion as individuals partake more or less fully
of the species.

To give an instance: the first part of this law explains why
substantial creation is composed of, 1st, atoms which do not give
any signs of sensitive life; 2d, of brute animals; 3d, of
intelligent animals; 4th, of pure spirits. The second part of
this law explains why each of the four species just mentioned is
developed in gradations almost infinite--minerals composed and
recomposed in all possible ways, manifesting forms, properties,
and acts altogether different, and some so constantly as to defy
any change from the force of nature so far known to man; hence,
in force of that immutable type, they are taken by naturalists as
so many scientific species, and the fifty-nine or sixty elements
which chemistry so far enumerates; animals also, extending so
gradually that the ladder of fixed marks, taken by natural
philosophers as so many species, begins where the signs of life
are almost insensible and dubious, and ends with man; nor is
there wanting, as far as it may be known, any of the intermediate
steps.

The pure spirits, as we know from revelation, are divided into
choirs and legions innumerable, whose successive gradations in
quality and number, to us unknown but certain, are unfathomable;
and it is most probable that the ladder of pure spirits is
higher, beyond measure, than that which we observe in the
sensible universe, and that one spirit is far more superior and
distant from another spirit than one star from another.

The necessity of this law springs from that of unity. For, if the
type of the cosmos be one, each moment and species representing,
as it were, a side of that type, there must be as much affinity
and proportion between each moment and each species as to pave
the way for the law of unity to represent and mirror the entirety
and oneness of the type. We say as much affinity as it is
possible to produce, because between each moment and each species
there is necessarily a chasm which no continuity or affinity can
fill up. For instance, between pure animality and pure
intelligence there is necessarily a chasm. Man, placed between
the two, draws them together as much as possible; yet the
necessary distance marking the two distinct natures cannot by any
proportion be eliminated, else the natures would be confounded
and destroyed.

{563}

But variety, brought together by the law of continuity, cannot
sufficiently exhibit unity. Hence the necessity of a fourth law,
that of _communion_.

This law implies, 1st, that the terms of the cosmos should be so
united together as to act one upon the other, and serve each
other for sustenance and development; 2d, that, founded on the
law of hierarchy, inferior beings should be so united to superior
ones as to be, in a certain sense, transformed into them, the
distinctive marks of their respective natures being kept
inviolate.

This law, in both its aspects, we see actuated in the visible
universe. Thus man has need of food, which is administered to him
by brutes and the vegetable kingdom; he has need of air, to
breathe; of light, to see; of his kind, to multiply and to form
society. All other animals have need of beings different from
themselves to maintain their own existence; and of their like, to
multiply their species. The vegetable kingdom needs minerals,
earth, water, and the different saps by which it lives. If
vegetables did not expel oxygen and absorb carbonic acid, air
would become unfit for the respiration of animals; and these
sending back, by respiration, carbonic acid, supply that
substance of which plants stand in need. Everything, moreover, in
the world serves for the development and perfection of man, both
as to his body and as to his intellectual, moral, and social
life. Every inferior creature is transformed into man. The same
animal and vegetable kingdom which, transformed into his blood,
sustains his life, helps him for the development of his ideas and
his will. The reason of this law, which may be called the law of
life, is, that the unity of the cosmos should not be only
apparent and fictitious, but real. Now, a real union is
impossible if the terms united exercise no real action upon each
other, and do not serve for the maintenance and development of
each other.

Finally, the law of communion calls for the law of secondary
agency; that is, the effects resulting from the moments of the
exterior action of God should be real agents. For no real union
and communion could exist among the terms of the external action
unless they really acted one upon another; any other union or
communion being simply fictitious and imaginary. Hence
Malebranche, in his system of occasional causes, where he
deprives finite beings of real agency, has not only undermined
the liberty of man, but destroyed the real communion among
creatures, and marred the beauty and harmony of the cosmos. To
represent the cosmos as a numberless series of beings united
together by no other tie than juxtaposition, and by no means
really acting upon each other, is to break its connection, its
real and living unity; is to do away with the whole beauty and
harmony of that hymn and canticle which God has composed to his
own honor and glory.

We come now to the last question: What is the whole plan of the
exterior action of God? We have seen that if there be a way by
which to effect a cosmos endowed with a certain absolute
perfection, that it would be most agreeable to infinite goodness,
the end of the exterior action of God. We have seen, moreover,
that whether there be such a way, and what this way is, must be
determined by revelation. The Catholic Church, therefore, the
living embodiment of revelation, must answer these two problems.

It answers both affirmatively. The most perfect cosmos is
possible. God has effected it, because most agreeable to his
infinite goodness.

What is this cosmos? We shall give it in the following synoptic
table.

{564}

  God's exterior action divided into:
    The hypostatic moment;
    The beatific, or palingenesiacal moment;
    The sublimative moment;
    The creative moment.

The terms corresponding to each moment of the action of God are:

  The Theanthropos, or Jesus Christ, God and man, centre of the
  whole plan;
  Beatific cosmos;
  Sublimative cosmos;
  Substantial cosmos.
  Individual terms of each cosmos:
    1. Beatified angels and men;
    2. Regenerated men on the earth;
    3. Angels, or pure spirits;
  Men, or incarnate spirits;
  Sensitive beings;
  Organic beings;
  Inorganic beings.

As each moment of the action of God, as the creative, implies two
subordinate moments, preservation and concurrence, it follows
that each moment of the action of God implies its immanence and
concurrence, though in the Theanthropos it takes place according
to special laws. Hence,

  Hypostatic immanence and concurrence;
  Beatific immanence and concurrence;
  Creative immanence and concurrence.

----------

     To A Favorite Madonna.

  Lady Mary, throne of grace,
    Imaged with thy Child before me!
  Softly beams the perfect face,
    Fragrant breathes its pureness o'er me.

  I but gaze, and all my soul
    Thrills as with a taste of heaven.
  Passion owns the sweet control;
    Peace assures of sin forgiven.

  Oh! then, what thy loveliness
    Where it shines divinely real,
  If its strength has such excess
    Feebly shadowed in ideal!

  From thy arms thy Royal Son
    Waits to fill us past our needing:
  Hears for all, denied to none,
    Thy resistless whisper pleading.

  Dream, say they, for poet's eye?
    _Thou_ a dream! Then truth is seeming.
  Only let me live and die
    Safely lost in such a dreaming!

                           B. D. H.

-------

{565}

       Translated From The French.

   To Those Who Tell Us What Time It Is.


Before introducing our subject, my dear reader, let me give a
moment to a little person whose caprices equal those of any woman
living.

Brilliant as the most fashionable beauty, she never goes without
her diamonds and rubies in their golden setting, and of which she
is equally proud.

Her little babbling is heard continually; and while she boasts
her independent movements, like any prisoner or slave she always
wears her chain.

I call her a little person, because she accompanies me
everywhere; though sometimes she stops while I walk, and goes
again when I am inclined to stop.

This delicate, fantastical organization, so difficult to
discipline, and as subject to the influences of cold and heat as
any nervous lady or chilly invalid, is Mademoiselle--my watch.

You have nearly all, my dear readers, a watch of silver or gold
in your vest-pocket, and you can have them of wood or
mother-of-pearl, with one great advantage: they cannot be pawned.

Ladies wear watches whose cases shine with their diamonds like
the decorations of a great officer of the Legion of Honor. And
they can have them inserted in bracelets, in bon-bon boxes, and
in buckles for sashes and belts.

But I must tell you, the first accurate instruments, after the
sun-dial and hour-glass of the ancients, were huge clocks; and
these clocks, so immense, led artists insensibly to construct
smaller ones for apartments, in form of pendulums, and which were
in the beginning very imperfect.

Then others still more skilful conceived the idea of portable
clocks, to which they gave the name of _montres_, (watches,
in English,) from _montrer_, to show.

But at first these ornaments were very awkward, and of
inconvenient size for the pocket to which they were destined.

Finally, however, they were lessened to such a point that they
graced the heads of canes, the handles of fans, and even the
setting of rings, and were about the size of a five-cent silver
piece.

It is to Hook, a physician and English philosopher, born in 1635,
died in 1702, that we owe the invention of pocket watches.

In 1577, the first watches were brought from Germany to England.
They had been made at Nuremberg for the first time in the year
1500, and were called the eggs of Nuremberg, on account of their
oval form.

At last a man appeared who, not content to enchain time,
endeavored to force matter to represent with greater accuracy the
flight of years. This was Julien le Roy, the most skilful
practical philosopher that France ever had. Always on the _qui
vive_ for everything useful and curious, as soon as he heard
of the watches of the celebrated Graham, he imported the first
one seen in Paris, and not until he had proved it would he
relinquish it to M. Maupertuis. Graham, in turn, procured all he
could from Julien le Roy.
{566}
One day my Lord Hamilton was showing one of these wonderful
repeaters to several persons. "I wish I were younger," said
Graham, "to be able to make one after this model."

This illustrious Maupertuis, who accompanied the king of Prussia
to the battle-field, was made prisoner at Molwitz and conducted
to Vienna. The grand-duke of Tuscany--since emperor--wished to
see a man with so great a reputation.

He treated him with respect, and asked him if he had not
regretted much of the baggage stolen from him by the hussars.
Maupertuis, after being urged a long time, confessed he would
gladly have saved an old watch of Graham's, which he used for his
astronomical observations.

The grand-duke, who owned one by the same maker, but enriched
with diamonds, said to the French mathematician, "Ah! the hussars
have wished to play you a trick; they have brought me back your
watch. Here it is; I restore it to you."

To-day, as formerly, the handling of watches is an art. It is
much more difficult to measure time than wine or cider.
Therefore, among the members of the Bureau of Longitudes, by the
side of the senator Leverrier, the marshal of France, (M.
Vaillant,) the Admiral Matthieu, is placed the simple
clock-maker, M. Bregnet.

And for these artists who give us the means of knowing the hour
it is, there is a publication as serious as the _Journal of
Debates_, called the _Chronometrical Review_. It
certainly should be regularly sent to its subscribers. If the
carrier is late, it cannot be for want of knowing if he has
to-day's or yesterday's paper; and the subscribers are never
exposed to _chercher midi à quatorze heures_.

M. Claudius Saurrier, the chief editor of this _Chronometrical
Review_, has also a clock-maker's annual almanac for 1869.
This appears very abstruse at the first glance; but if we examine
the little volume with the same nicety as a watchmaker his
mainspring--that is to say, with a powerful magnifying glass--we
will find some things to greatly interest us. For example, a
sketch of different attainable speed:

                              Miles per hour.
  The soldier in ordinary step makes,    2¾
  The soldier in a charge                4
  The soldier in gymnastic exercise,     7
  The horse walking,                     3
  The horse on the trot,                 7
  The horse on the gallop,              14
  The horse on the race-course,         30
  The locomotive at ordinary speed,     30
  The locomotive going rapidly,         60
  The current of the Seine,              3
  Steamboats,                      4 to 14

  A railroad train making thirty miles the hour would consume
  about three hundred and fifty years in the journey from the
  earth to the sun. More than a dozen successive generations
  would have time to appear and disappear during the transit.

But nothing can more surely measure speed than the man who says
to his watch, "Thou givest me sixty seconds a minute, and thou
canst go no farther."

The little book which has so worthily occupied my attention is
not contented with simply describing professional instruments. It
plunges into old curiosity shops, and brings out the watch of
Marat!

Evidently it does not tell us if this watch was hung in the
bathing saloon where the _friend of the people_ was struck
by the poignard of Charlotte Corday. But it gives us an exact
description of the jewel, or rather of the _onion_ of the
celebrated and redoubtable tribune.

It was, indeed, a curious watch that Marat possessed; and, if we
cannot imagine the fashion of the epoch, which gave to every one
an immense gewgaw, requiring a counter-weight to support it, it
will be impossible to explain the oddity of its form.

{567}

It was a massive silver pear, opening into two equal parts. In
the lower part of the fruit was found the dial; the upper
contained engraved designs of foliage. The case of the pear
reproduced the same model; the artist evidently had but one idea.
Its size was that of an English pear of medium dimensions, and,
thanks to its density, this jewel has been able to pass without
any deterioration through the most stormy periods of the world.

The almanac for clock-makers also contains its good stories. It
relates that a thief introduced himself into a watch-store as a
workman seeking employment, but with the design of abstracting
the pocket-book of the proprietor. The scene is dialogued as the
two parts of a clock containing the chimes of the north, the
solemn stillness of the night broken by question and response,
until they mingled in a _naïve contre-point_.

"Thy purse," said the thief.

"I have forgotten it."

"Thy chain."

"I only wear a ribbon."

"Pshaw! no more ceremony. Look at thy watch. What hour is it?"

"The hour of thy death!" replied the young man in a thundering
voice, presenting at the same time a double-barrelled pistol at
his head.

"Oh! oh!" said the thief, "I was only joking."

"So much the worse. Come, thy purse."

The thief handed it to him.

"Thy chain."

And the chain followed the purse.

"Thy watch."

The thief, trembling from head to foot, drew out a package of
watches, entangled one in the other.

"Oh! oh! I have you now. Get out, file to the left, turn thy
dial, and go."

And the pickpocket withdrew.

The young watch-maker, perfectly astonished, went immediately to
the mayor. They counted twenty-two watches; and the grateful
proprietors handsomely indemnified him for his trouble, while at
the same time he found himself, by this one stroke, with
twenty-two good jobs and a patronage.

Had I time, I could extract many more interesting things from
this little work.

For example, a description of a watch made by the grandfather of
the present Bregnet--the perpetual watch, so called because it
winds itself through some simple movement inserted by the maker.
And I could give, also, good advice to wearers of watches.

Where to put them at night.

The manner and time to wind them, and the management of the
little needle that makes them go slower and faster.

Then, again, the injury done watches by trotting horsemen,
especially physicians, who thereby lose an accurate guide for the
pulse of their patients.

Then I should like to consider how Abraham Bregnet made the
sympathetic clock, upon which it is only necessary to place
before midday or midnight a pocket repeating-watch, advancing or
retarding it a little to allow for the time consumed, and by
simple contact it regulates the pendulum.

If M. Claudius Saurrier wants something curious for his almanac
of the coming year, he has only to take the chapter on
clock-making from _The Arts of the Middle Ages_, by Paul
Lacroix. There he will see the three primitive methods of
measuring time, namely, the sun-dial or gnomon that Anximandre
imported from Greece; the clepsydra, where the flowing water
indicated the flying minutes; and the hour-glass, where the sand
took the place of the water.

{568}

He will find there a watch of the house of Valois placed in the
centre of a Latin cross, and moving with it symbolical figures,
Time, Apollo, Diana, etc.; or, again, the Virgin, the apostles
and saints.

Time has not always been lost through the instruments that
indicate its flight. Ages have changed even palaces; and the
Palais Royal, whose cannon gives us still the exact hour of
mid-day, once knew no hours for its _habitués_, and vice and
immorality consumed the time that virtue now gives to better
purposes. The poet of 1830 said:

  "The palace lives in better days,
     And virtue holds its court supreme;
   The sun that lent to vice its rays
     Now gives to time its potent beam."

But now that I have rendered every tribute to M. Claudius
Saurrier that his special science can demand, may I not be
equally frank with him?

I don't like to know what time it is; I am seized with profound
melancholy when the clock strikes and as the hands of my watch
indicate the rapidity with which my life is passing.

If there had never been an hourglass, a clepsydra, a clock, a
regulator, a Swiss cuckoo, or a French chronometer, what with the
variations of the seasons which are no longer regular--the trees
leafing in January, and the house-tops iced in April--we might
never be sure of anything, and lead the existence of those who
frequented the balls of the tenor Roger. With shutters closed and
curtains drawn, the sun excluded for four days, his guests could
have doubted whether time had anything to do with their
existence.

Then we could so long believe ourselves young! The dreaded
question _How old are you?_ could be answered in all
sincerity, _I do not know_.

One word more, however, for our pretty watch. How often has it
been the symbol of gallantry.

A lady asked a poet why he used two watches. He replied
immediately:

  "Dear madam, shall I tell you why?
     One goes too fast, and one too slow;
   When near you I would fondly fly,
     I use the first; the other, when I go."

          ----------

        New Publications.

  The Catholic Doctrine Of The Atonement.
  An Historical Inquiry into its Development in the Church. With
  an Introduction on the Principle of Theological Development.
  By Henry Nutcombe Oxenham, M.A., formerly Scholar of Balliol
  College, Oxford.
  Second Edition. London: Allen & Co. 1869.

This is a very scholarly treatise on an important subject. It is
not a dogmatic work, but a work on the history of dogma. The
author possesses a remarkable insight into the deep and sublime
mysteries of faith, especially that of the Incarnation, and
writes like one whose whole mind and soul have become imbued with
the spirit of scriptural and patristic theology. His manner is
remarkably calm, impartial, and dignified; his method of
statement, clear and succinct; and his style is that of an
accomplished English and classical scholar, often rising to
passages of high poetic fervor and beauty.
{569}
So far as the exhibition of the true doctrine of the atonement is
concerned, beyond the critical statement of different schools of
opinion, its chief value consists in the refutation of the
Calvinistic doctrine, and its discrimination of the modern
prevalent Catholic opinion derived from St. Anselm from the dogma
properly so called. The essay on development is one of the ablest
portions of the book. Möhler, in his _Athanasius_, has
accused Petavius of overstating or pressing too far, in his
controversial zeal, the well-known points of his thesis
respecting the doctrine of the anti-Nicene fathers against Bishop
Bull. It appears to us that Mr. Oxenham has overstepped the mark
in the same way in regard to development in general, or at least
has used language liable to misapprehension. We think, also, that
the character of his mind, which is not adapted to metaphysical
or speculative inquiries, and the influence under which his
opinions have been formed, lead him to undervalue scholastic
theology. There are here and there, also, indications of a bias
toward the opinions of a certain class of French writers of the
last century, which appears to us to be out of harmony with the
genuine spirit of docility to the teaching of the church, and the
_pietas fidei_ with which the author is certainly animated.
We will specify one instance of this, where Mr. Oxenham has
exposed a most vulnerable spot in his defensive armor. It is on
page 11 of the introductory essay, where he is rebutting the
famous statement of Chillingworth, that there are "Popes against
popes, councils against councils," etc. In reply to this, he
says, "On this I have to observe, as to popes against popes,
waiving the question of fact, their judgments, when resting on
their own authority alone, if maintained by some theologians to
be infallible, are as strenuously denied to be so by others. It
is a purely open question. Councils are held by no one to be
infallible except in matters of doctrine, and there is no case of
doctrinal contradiction between councils universally received in
the church as ecumenical." The author, in this specimen of most
faulty logic, by waiving the question of fact respecting the
dogmatic judgments of the popes, concedes everything which
Chillingworth asserted on that point, and leaves him master of
the field. He confines himself to one point of defence, that
there are no dogmatic decisions of ecumenical councils which are
contradictory to each other. But suppose there are dogmatic
decisions of popes to which obedience is required as a term of
communion and under pain of excommunication, which are contrary
to dogmatic decisions of councils, what then? Suppose one pope
requires submission to a dogmatic decision as a term of
communion, and his successor requires the same to an opposite
decision, what then? Can Mr. Oxenham say _transeat?_ If Mr.
Ffoulkes should write a letter to Mr. Oxenham containing an
argument based on an affirmation that those suppositions are
facts, against the actual position of the holy see and the
Catholic episcopate, as against Constantinople and Canterbury,
could Mr. Oxenham answer it conclusively without defending that
point which he so easily gives up? That the question of the
infallibility of the pope is not entirely closed is, of course,
true; but it is not so wide open as an ordinary reader would
infer it to be from the author's very inconsiderate and
unsatisfactory way of stating the matter; nor has it ever been so
wide open at any time since St. Peter received from our Lord the
charge to confirm his brethren in the faith. Bossuet would never
have exposed his flank in the unguarded manner that our author
has done. The indefectibility of the Roman see in doctrine, and
the duty of obedience to its dogmatic judgments, were always
maintained by that great theologian, and by all orthodox
Gallicans. The doctrine of what may be called passive
infallibility is logically contained in this doctrine of Bossuet
and in that doctrine of Catholic faith, that the pope is always
the supreme head of the church. By passive infallibility, we mean
a security against the separation of the pope and the Roman
Church in doctrine from the universal church, either by apostasy
from dogmas already defined, or by the enforcement of any new and
false dogmas.
{570}
The active power of the pope, as the teacher and defender of the
faith which he perpetually proclaims to the world, and protects
by denouncing and condemning heresy, which no Catholic questions,
is necessarily secured by this indefectibility or passive
infallibility from being perverted to the service of heresy or
immorality. The only question that can be discussed between
Catholics regarding this matter relates to the conditions and
extent of the active infallibility of the pope. The gift of
infallibility must necessarily preserve the dogmatic unity of the
pope and the Catholic episcopate, and must therefore influence
both. They are both factors in the sum of infallibility. What is
precisely the force of each as distinct from the other is not yet
fully and clearly defined as a canon of faith, and we are willing
to await the result of the approaching council which will,
probably, at least consider the question of the propriety of
making such a canon, before applying any theological formula as a
criterion of the orthodoxy of writers, or written statements.
Nevertheless, we have a right to expect that every writer should
so guard his language and statements that they be not open to a
misconception that furnishes a convenient door for the enemy to
enter in by.

Perhaps Mr. Oxenham will not essentially dissent from the view we
have expressed; and we have the best reason to expect that
whatever there may be that is defective or inconsequent in his
theological system will be filled up and harmonized by the result
of riper thought and study. His work, as a whole, is one of the
best and most valuable of those which have been produced by the
sound scholars and devoted sons of the church who have been won
to the ancient faith of England within the classic halls of
Oxford. Every clergyman or scholar addicted to theological
studies will find it well worthy of a place in his library, and
of a careful perusal.

----

  Alice Murray; a Tale.
  By Mary I. Hoffmnan, authoress of _Agnes Hilton_.
  1 vol. 12mo. Pp. 490.
  New York: P. O'Shea. 1869.

We like this story for its perfect picture of American country
life. We get but one glimpse, and that a very imperfect one, of
the city. We have plenty of books, good, bad, and indifferent,
describing city life, its manners and customs, its frivolities
and follies, and even its vices. It was, therefore, with a
feeling of relief, that we read this volume; for, even if one can
but seldom visit the country, still one likes to read about its
green fields, rippling brooks, gushing springs and dark, cool
woods, the lowing kine, and bleating sheep, and in this book we
get a goodly dose. Miss Hoffman seems to be a practical farmer,
and is as much at home with the butter-ladle as with the pen, and
has a thorough disgust, as all good farmers must have, for what
city folk often cultivate as flowers--the "pesky white daisy."

The first chapters of the story are a little dull, and the place
in which its scene is laid is not definitely stated; but further
on, we learn that it is in Western New York. There is nothing
extraordinary or intricate in the plot of of the story. Every
scene and incident may have occurred just as it is related. It is
the old story of innocence and virtue being outgeneralled for a
while by craftiness and vice. And while we have such timid girls
as Alice Murray, such acts of wrong are possible. It is very well
to follow the gospel precept, and when struck upon one cheek to
turn the other; but the gospel nowhere requires us to give in
addition our own hand with which to smite our cheek.

Alice Murray was the niece of Mr. Elbray's first wife. Her
parents died while she was quite young, and Mr. Elbray brought
her up as his daughter, as he had no children of his own. He was
rich, a self-made man, and a worldly-minded Catholic, paid little
attention to the duties or requirements of his religion, but made
money his God.
{571}
He became acquainted with a strong-minded, designing widow, who
manages to make him marry her, and from that moment Alice Murray
had actually no home. The ambitious wife had her own daughter to
provide for, and her whole energies were bent on getting rid of
Alice, which she succeeded in accomplishing. From her adopted
home Alice went to her uncle Bradley--her mother's sister's
husband--who procured her a district school. Even here, though
miles away from her, the new Mrs. Elbray, beside intercepting all
letters between Alice and her uncle, got up a charge against her
of having stolen a gold chain presented to her by her _dear_
departed husband. This was done to prevent Alice returning to her
uncle, who was ever regretting her absence. But the crafty woman
succeeded; Alice is discarded, and the result is, that Mrs.
Elbray's daughter makes a brilliant match, and all the Elbray
family move to New York, where old Elbray is ruined by his wife
and her daughter's husband, and has to go to the almshouse, where
he is discovered by a priest who knew him, and Alice is informed
of the poverty of her uncle. She hesitates not a moment, accepts
the hand of the lover she had previously refused, because she
wished to pay back her uncle all the money he had spent on her,
and the new-married couple go straight to New York, rescue the
uncle from the almshouse, and take him home with them, where he
lives in peace.

The picture of the Bradley family is a beautiful one--just what a
good Catholic family should be; in fact, all of Miss Hoffman's
family pen-pictures are good. Her great weakness lies in her
dialogues; they need more animation and sprightliness; and her
very _bad_ characters are better drawn than her very
_good_ ones. For instance, in Mrs. Elbray, an ambitious,
proud, self-willed and worldly woman, we have decidedly the best
depicted character in the book. She labors for a purpose, a bad
purpose it is true, and succeeds, although the success was her
ruin. Had Alice used for a good purpose one half the energy Mrs.
Elbray did for a bad one, a world of suffering would have been
saved her, but then _Alice Murray_ would not have been
written. We wish the writers of our Catholic stories would allow
their good characters to act like living men and women, not mere
machines, throwing the responsibility of all their troubles and
tribulations upon God, and leaving it _all_ in his hands to
see justice done; but teach them to use the means God gave them
to help themselves.

We have said that Miss Hoffman's descriptions of American country
life and scenery are good. There is one pen-picture on page 170
that will remind many of similar scenes. The story is thoroughly
Catholic in tone and sentiment, but is not of the belligerant
class. There are no religious discussions indulged in for the
sake of displaying one's theological knowledge; but the whole
atmosphere of the book--the whole sentiment is Catholic, and the
reader feels it, just as one in reading à Kempis would know and
feel that the writer was a devout, practical Catholic.

The typographical execution of the book might easily be improved
by employing a better proof-reader and the use of better type.

----

  Chips From A German Workshop.
  By Max Müller, M. A.
  2 vols. crown 8vo, pp. 374, 402.
  New York: Charles Scribner & Co.

These two volumes consist of various essays, lectures, etc.,
which Professor Müller has published from time to time during the
intervals of his long years of labor on the Rig-Veda. They are
all more or less closely connected with the great work to which
he has devoted his life, and are all illustrations of a
systematic religious philosophy. The first volume is devoted to
essays on "The Science of Religion." The author remarks that in
religion "everything new is old, and everything old is new, and
there has been no entirely new religion since the beginning of
the world." St. Augustine says that "what is now called the
Christian religion has existed among the ancients, and was not
absent from the beginning of the human race until Christ came in
the flesh;" and the design of these essays is to show how the
radical ideas of religion revealed by Almighty God at the
beginning have undergone various changes, corruptions, and
combinations, yet, though frequently distorted, tend again and
again to their perfect form.
{572}
Professor Müller traces these primitive ideas through the ancient
religions of India and Persia, and extracts from the forbidding
obscurity of Sanscrit literature a wealth of illustration, which,
with his charming style and incomparable happiness in selection,
he makes attractive to nearly all classes of readers. He studies
the matter not as a theologian but as a coldly critical man of
science; and his reasoning is, of course, directly in support of
the truths of revelation. The second volume contains an essay on
_Comparative Mythology_, and papers on early traditions and
customs, all bearing upon the subject of the first, and many of
them highly curious. At some future day, if opportunity permits,
we hope to recur to these valuable "Chips," and give our readers
a few specimens of their excellence.

----

  Pastoral Letter Of The Most Rev. Archbishop
  and Suffragan Prelates of the Province of
  Baltimore, at the close of the
  Tenth Provincial Council. May, 1869.
  Baltimore: J. Murphy & Co.

This letter of the fathers of the council of Baltimore is a
renewed evidence of the paternal affection and ceaseless
vigilance with which the pastors of the church watch over their
flock. On many most important points, they have spoken out with a
clearness that must be gratifying to every Catholic heart. First
among them is Education. We quote a portion:

  "Bitter experience convinces us daily more and more that a
  purely secular education, to the exclusion of a religious
  training, is not only an imperfect system, but is attended with
  the most disastrous consequences to the individual and to
  society. Among Catholics, there cannot be two opinions about
  this subject. And we are happy to see that this practical truth
  is beginning to find acceptance also in the minds of reflecting
  men among our separated brethren.

  "The catechetical instructions given once a week in our
  Sunday-schools, though productive of the most beneficial
  results, are insufficient to satisfy the religious wants of our
  children. They should every day breathe a healthy religious
  atmosphere in those schools, where not only their minds are
  enlightened, but where the seeds of faith, piety, and sound
  morality are nourished and invigorated.

  "Children have not only _heads_ to be enlightened, but,
  what is more important, _hearts_ to be formed to virtue."

The most reverend archbishop has been from the first one of the
most earnest supporters of the Catholic Publication Society, and,
with the prelates of the council, again commends it to the
patronage of clergy and laity.

  "We desire to renew," say they, "our cordial approbation of the
  Catholic Publication Society, recently established in New York,
  and we earnestly hope it may receive from our clergy and laity
  all the patronage it so well deserves.

  "This society is laudably engaged in the publication of such
  Catholic works as are peculiarly adapted to the wants of our
  times, and it serves as a powerful auxiliary in the propagation
  of Catholic truth.

  "Short religious tracts are also issued under the auspices of
  the same society. These tracts are daily growing in popularity
  and usefulness. In one year, about six hundred thousand of them
  were printed and distributed. Their brevity recommends their
  perusal to many who have neither leisure nor disposition to
  read books treating of the same subject. Their short but
  convincing arguments always make a favorable impression on
  sincere minds; while their plain, familiar style renders them
  attractive to the lowest capacity. The very moderate price at
  which they are sold places them within the reach of all.

  "We trust that our zealous missionary clergy will adopt some
  effectual and systematic means by which the books, and
  especially the tracts of this excellent society may be
  regularly circulated throughout their missions, and distributed
  among the children attending our schools."

{573}

These words are very encouraging and opportune; for one thing is
sure, and that is, "The Catholic Publication Society," without
this co-operation and sympathy, both on the part of the clergy
and the laity, cannot accomplish the great work that is before it
in our country.

Then follow some timely words of admonition to Catholics lest
they imbibe the loose notions which prevail among many around
them in regard to the crime of infanticide.

Next, are condemned round dances, indecent publications, and the
obscene theatrical performances which are becoming so abundant.

The remainder of the letter contains words of encouragement to
the clergy and laity in the various charitable works in which
they are engaged, as the erecting of protectories and orphan
asylums, the providing churches and schools for our colored
brethren, etc.

----

  Fénélon's Conversations With M. De Ramsai On The Truth Of
  Religion, With his Letters on the Immortality of the Soul, and
  the Freedom of the Will.
  Translated from the French by A. E. Silliman. 1869.

Fénélon was a genius and a saint. He had, moreover, the faculty
of expressing his thoughts in a remarkably clear style, and
throwing a peculiar charm about every subject he handled. The
conversations with Chevalier Ramsay form a short treatise,
proving that there is no medium between deism and Catholicism. It
is very admirable, and Mr. Silliman has done a good service in
translating it, with the two other short but excellent treatises
which are appended. The translator's preface, which is perfectly
calm and passionless in its tone, gives a brief but interesting
sketch of Fénélon's character, and of some of the events of his
life, and relates the circumstance which gave occasion to the
conversations with Chevalier Ramsay. As it alludes to the
condemnation of the _Maxims_ by the pope, and states that
this condemnation was given reluctantly and under threats from
the king of France, it may be well to explain this matter in a
few words. It is true that the accusation of Fénélon at Rome was
made through enmity against his person, and in a manner
discreditable to the parties concerned, and very displeasing to
the pope. It is not true, however, that the decision was given in
accordance with the wishes of the king on account of his
entreaties or threats. The pope did not wish to have the matter
brought before him, because he preferred to leave the errors of
Fénélon's book to be corrected by milder methods than a public
condemnation, and desired to spare so great and holy a
prelate--who had erred only through a mistaken judgment of the
true sense of certain statements of the most approved mystic
authors--the mortification of a public censure and a formal
retraction. The action of Fénélon's enemies made the matter so
public and notorious, and brought his erroneous statements into
such a clear light that it was impossible to avoid an examination
and judgment without scandal. The judgment was impartial, and was
necessarily against Fénélon, whose doctrine was clearly
irreconcilable with the teaching of the church. At the same time,
a sharp reproof was given to his accusers for the spirit which
they had shown in pushing matters to extremes, and the personal
respect and esteem of the pope for Fénélon were clearly
manifested.

The translator has added a very judicious note to the treatise on
the immortality of the soul, justly censuring certain statements
of the author on the nature of the connection between soul and
body. Like many other writers of that time, Fénélon was too much
influenced by the philosophy of Descartes whose ridiculous theory
of occasional causes appears in the passages criticised by Mr.
Silliman. On this point, the language of the Protestant
translator is much more in accordance with the Catholic doctrine
that the soul is _forma corporis_ than that of the Catholic
archbishop.

We recommend this most beautiful specimen of reasoning and
persuasive eloquence most heartily to all readers, especially to
those who fancy they can find a halting-place somewhere between
the rejection of all positive revelation and the acceptance, pure
and simple, of Catholicity.
{574}
The translation is well done, and the mechanical execution of the
book, which is a medium between a volume and a pamphlet, is
elegant. If the translator finds sufficient encouragement in the
reception which it meets with to induce him to continue, we
recommend to him the translation of Fénélon's admirable treatise
on the existence and attributes of God, as a work which we should
welcome as a timely and valuable addition to our English
religious literature.

----

  La Natura E La Grazia,
  (Nature And Grace.)
  Discourses on Modern Naturalism delivered in Rome during the
  Lent of 1865.
  By Father Charles M. Curci, S.J.
  2 vols. Rome, Turin, and Venice.

We are greatly indebted to the courtesy of F. Curci in sending us
a copy of this admirable collection of discourses. With the
greatest modesty, the distinguished author apologizes in his
preface for the defects of his work. To his readers, however, his
name will be a sufficient guarantee of its excellence and
ability; nor will a careful examination give them any reason to
change their opinion. These are no ordinary Lent sermons upon the
commonplace themes of exhortation which preachers are wont to
handle during this holy season. They are profound, eloquent, and
classically written discourses upon all the great Catholic
doctrines and practices which are disputed or denied by modern
infidels and rationalists; a specimen of that high, intellectual,
philosophical, and, at the same time, thoroughly spiritual
preaching which is so necessary in our day for the educated
classes. If it were possible, it would be highly desirable and
beneficial to have these volumes translated into English. If we
are not able, at present, to have this done, it is only because
of the very great cost of translating and publishing in this
country a work of such a high class, the circulation of which
would be necessarily limited to the clergy and a small portion of
the most highly educated among the laity.

-----

  Italy, Florence, And Venice.
  From the French of H. Taine.
  By J. Durand.
  8vo, pp. 385. New York: Leypoldt & Holt.

This is a companion volume to M. Taine's book on _Rome and
Naples_, which appeared in an English dress about a year ago.
The author visited Italy in 1864, (though the date, by a strange
oversight, is not mentioned in the volume now before us,) and his
observations upon the political situation of the country and such
social peculiarities as arose from political causes, have now
lost much of their value. These observations are fortunately few,
nor were they ever very profound. M. Taine is not a student of
public affairs, nor a keen observer of popular characteristics.
Of Italian life and manners, he learned no more than the mere
guide-book tourist can see in hotels, galleries, and public
conveyances, and what he saw he tells no better than many have
told the same things before him, and not so well as at least one
or two American travellers whom we could mention. It is as a
critic of art that he demands our attention, and in this
particular he far surpasses nine tenths of all the writers on
such topics with whom English readers are familiar. The eloquence
and rapidity of his style, the refinement of his esthetic sense,
and the keenness of his philosophy, invest his pages with an
interest and a brilliancy which must charm every body. Yet there
is something lacking in his appreciation of paintings, there is a
coldness even in the midst of his enthusiasm, which leave the
mind unsatisfied. The fact is, he writes like a man of the world,
to whom the inner religious sentiment of art is only half
revealed. He judges of paintings only with the head; but there
are certain works--above all, for instance, those of Fra
Angelico--which must be judged by the heart.

-----

  Love; Or Self Sacrifice:
  a Story by Lady Herbert.
  Published by D. & J. Sadlier & Co.
  Price, 75 cts.

The life of Gwladys, the heroine of Lady Herbert's story, is made
up of three important events; two marriages and the death of her
lovely boy; and it required all of Lady Herbert's experience as a
writer to fill a volume covering the space of eighteen years,
with the joys and sorrows of her monotonous life.
{575}
The book abounds in exquisite descriptive scenes and truthful
narratives of the fatigues and incidents of travel; but there is
a striking resemblance between many of the leading characters,
and the episodes, in general, are unnatural.

These faults can only be accounted for on the supposition that
the overstrained mind of the heroine did not preserve a perfect
picture of each individual; their virtues and faults appearing to
Gwladys in proportion to the amount of kindness they heaped upon
her. Thus Lady Herbert was unable to paint them as they were in
reality and contented herself by coloring them to suit the ideas
of her much-loved friend. The external appearance of the book we
cannot praise. The proofs must have been read by the "printer's
devil," with _malice prepense_, for a more slovenly printed
book it has never been our misfortune, as a reviewer, to have
been compelled to read.

-----

  Die Alte Und Neue Welt.
  Vols. I. II. III.
  New York and Cincinnati: Benziger Bros.

We are indebted to the publishers for the three volumes,
beautifully bound, of this excellent German illustrated magazine.
We have already noticed the admirable character both of the
reading matter and of the illustrations of this periodical, which
is an instructive and at the same time highly entertaining family
magazine, decidedly the best of its class we have ever met with
in any language. For those who can read the German language,
these volumes form as pleasant a companion as one could desire of
a rainy afternoon, or in any leisure hour when one is desirous of
some pleasant and innocent mental relaxation. It is also
profitable as well as pleasant, chiefly on account of the
charming pictures it presents of Catholic life in ancient and
modern Germany. To all who read German, we cordially recommend
the purchase of these volumes, both for the sake of the reading
matter, and also of the excellent illustrations. As for our
German fellow-Catholics, they ought to be proud of possessing in
their own rich and grand mother-tongue a magazine which does them
so much honor, and ought to give it their universal support. For
the clergy, for parish libraries, for the family, and for young
people who have a taste for reading, it is invaluable. We fear
that the children of our German fellow-citizens are too much
disposed to forget the glorious fatherland of their parents,
which is in them a great folly, to be checked and discouraged in
every way. It is not necessary, in order to become good
Americans, to disown and forget the country and the literature of
one's ancestors. If it is worth while for those whose
mother-tongue is English to spend years in acquiring a knowledge
of the language and literature of Germany, it is surely a great
piece of folly for those whose early education has given them the
means of attaining this knowledge without any trouble to throw it
away as of no value.

We think that the American part of the magazine, that is, all
that represents the life of the German population in the United
States, might be much better sustained than it is. We cannot
blame the editors for this defect, which is no doubt entirely due
to a lack of contributors living in this country; but it appears
to us that a more extensive and zealous co-operation of the
clergy here with the European editors would, without difficulty,
supply it, and make the _Alte und Neue Welt_ really, as its
name imports, a magazine of the new as well as of the old world.
We wish the enterprising firm of the Messrs. Benziger abundant
success in their laudable and skilful efforts to promote the
cause of Catholic literature in the German language.

-----

  Winifred; Countess Of Nithsdale.
  By Lady Dacre.
  New York: D. & J. Sadlier & Co.

This story has appeared in _The Tablet_, and has nothing
remarkable in it to praise or blame, if we except the numerous
typographical errors, which are the more noticeable on account of
the dulness of the narrative, and the low order of the curious
dialogues.

-----

{576}

  Little Women; Or, Meg, Jo, Beth, And Amy.
  By Louisa M. Alcott.
  Illustrated by May Alcott.
  Boston: Roberts Brothers. 1869.

This is a charming story, full of life, full of fun, full of
human nature, and therefore full of interest. The little women
play at being pilgrims when they are children, and resolve to be
true pilgrims as they grow older. Life to them was earnest; it
had its duties, and they did not overlook them or despise them.
Directed by the wise teachings and beautiful example of a good
mother, they became in the end true and noble women. Make their
acquaintance; for Amy will be found delightful, Beth very lovely,
Meg beautiful, and Jo splendid; that there is a real Jo somewhere
we have not the slightest doubt.

-----

  Mental Photographs.
  An Album for Confessions of Tastes, Habits, and Convictions.
  Edited by Robert Saxton.
  New York: Leypoldt & Holt.

We have here an ingenious invention for the amusement of the
social circle, and one which is capable of affording a good deal
of merriment and interest, provided smart and sensible people
take part in it. The album contains places for photographs, and
by the side of each a series of forty questions, such as "What is
your favorite book? color? name? occupation?" etc., to which
answers are to be written by the original of the picture. In this
way, the editor says, as complete a portrait as possible is
obtained both of the inner and outer man. Most of the questions
are pertinent and suggestive.

-----

  The Phenomena And Laws Of Heat.
  By Achille Cuzin, Professor of
  Physics in the Lyceum of Versailles.
  Translated and edited by Elihu Rich.
  1 vol. 12mo. Illustrated. Pp. 265.
  New York: Charles Scribner & Co. 1869.

This volume belongs to the _Library of Wonders_, and its aim
is to present in a summary the principal phenomena of heat, as
viewed from the standpoint afforded by recent discoveries in
physics. The illustrations are excellent, and give the reader a
complete elucidation of the text.

-----

  The Fisher-Maiden. A Norwegian Tale.
  By Björnstjerne Björnson.
  From the Author's German Edition,
  by M. E. Niles.
  New York: Leypold & Holt. 1869.

"An artist, not a photographer, Björnson draws souls more than
faces." "In these times of blatant novelists, it is no ordinary
treat to get a story which affects one almost as finely as a
poem."

-----

The Catholic Publication Society will soon publish _The History
of the Catholic Church on the Island of New York_. By the Rt.
Rev. J. R. Bayley, D.D., Bishop of Newark. This work will contain
many important documents relating to the history of the church in
this city, not heretofore published.

-----

         Books Received.

From Charles Scribner & Co., New York:

  Waterloo; a Sequel to the Conscript of 1813.
  Translated from the French of Erckmann-Chatrian.
  Illustrated. 1 vol. 12mo, pp. 368.


From P. M. Haverty, New York:

  Speeches on the Legislative Independence of Ireland.
  With introductory notes by Thomas Francis Meagher, and a
  memorial oration, by Richard O'Gorman.
  1 vol. 12mo, pp.317.


From Lee & Shepard, Boston:

  The Gates Wide Open; or,
  Scenes in another World.
  By George Wood. Pp. 354.

----------

{577}

           The Catholic World.

      Vol. IX., No. 53.--August, 1869.

-----

    "Our Established Church."  [Footnote 166]

    [Footnote 166: _Putnam's Monthly Magazine_. Our
    Established Church. New York. G. P. Putnam & Son. July,
    1869.]


The title, Our Established Church, given by _Putnam_ to a
bitterly anti-Catholic article in its number for last July, is
too malicious for pleasantry and too untrue for wit. The writer
knows perfectly well that we have in this State of New York no
established church, and that, of all the so-called churches, the
Catholic Church is the furthest removed from being the state
church. In no city, town, or county of the State are Catholics
the majority of the population; and even in this city, where
their proportion to the whole population is the largest, they
probably constitute not much, if any, over one third of the
whole. Public opinion throughout the State, though less hostile
than it was a few years ago, is still bitterly anti-Catholic. In
this city, the numbers and influence of naturalized, as
distinguished from natural born citizens, is, no doubt, very
great; but these naturalized citizens are by no means all
Catholics, and a large number of those who may have been baptized
Catholics are wholly uninfluenced by their Catholicity in their
public, and, we fear, to a great extent, even in their private
life. It is simply ridiculous, even by way of irony, to speak of
our church as the established church, or as exerting a
controlling influence in the State or city.

Moreover, no church can be the established church, here or
elsewhere, unless it concedes the supremacy of the state, and
consents to be its slave. This the Catholic Church can never do.
The relations of church and state in Catholic countries have for
many centuries been regulated by concordats; but in this country,
since the adoption of the Federal constitution, the civil
authority has recognized its own incompetency in spirituals, and,
as before it, the equal rights of all religions not _contra
bonos mores_, as also its obligation to protect the adherents
of each in the free and full enjoyment of their entire religious
liberty. The state guarantees, thus, all the freedom and
protection the church has ever secured elsewhere by concordats.
She much prefers freedom to slavery, and her full liberty, though
shared with hostile sects, to the gilded bondage of a state
church. She neither is the established church, nor can she
consent to become so; for a state church means a church governed
by the laity, and subordinated to secular interests, as we see in
the case of the Anglican establishment.
{578}
Her steady refusal to become a state establishment is the key to
those fearful struggles in the middle ages between the church and
the empire; and the secret of the success of the Protestant
Reformation is to be found in its ready submission to the secular
prince, or its practical assertion of the supremacy of the civil
power and the subordination of the spiritual.

There is always great difficulty in discussing such questions as
the writer in _Putnam_ raises with our Protestant
fellow-citizens; for we and they start from opposite principles
and aim at different ends. We, as Catholics, assert the entire
freedom and independence of the spiritual order; but they,
consciously or unconsciously, assume that the state is supreme,
and that the spiritual should be under the surveillance and
control of the secular. We understand by religious liberty the
freedom and independence of the church as an organic body; they
understand by it the freedom of the laity from all authority
claimed and exercised by the pope and clergy as ministers of God
or stewards of his kingdom on earth. If each Protestant sect
claims, in its own case, exemption from secular control, every
one insists that the Catholic Church shall be subject to Caesar,
and all unite to deprive her of her spiritual freedom and
independence. Hence, they and we view things from opposite poles.
They regard them from the point of view of the Gentiles, with
whom religion was a civil function, and the state supreme alike
in spirituals and temporals; we, from the point of view of the
Gospel, or the New Law, which asserts the divine sovereignty, and
requires us to obey God rather than men. They would secularize
the church and education, abolish the priesthood, explain away
the sacraments, and reduce the worship of God to the exercise of
preaching, praying, and singing, which can be performed by
laymen, or even women, as well as by consecrated priests. What
they call their religion is a perpetual protest against what we
call religion, or the Christian religion as we understand, hold,
and practise it. It is especially a protest against the
priesthood, priestly functions and authority.

Hence the difficulty of a mutual understanding between them and
us. What they want is not what we want. We are willing to let
them have their own way for themselves, but they are not willing
that we should have our own way for ourselves; and they try all
manner of means in their power to force us to follow their way
and to fashion ourselves after their model. They do not concede
that we have, and are not willing that we should have, equal
rights with themselves in the state. If the state treats us as
citizens standing on a footing of equality with them, they are
indignant, and allege that it treats us as a privileged class,
and to their great wrong. If it does not subordinate us to them,
they pretend that it makes ours the established church, and
places them in the attitude of dissenters from the state
religion. They are not satisfied with equality; they can see no
equality where they are not the masters. They cannot endure that
Mordecai should be allowed to sit in the king's gate. This is the
real sense of _Putnam's_ article, and the meaning of the
clamor of the sectarian and a large portion of the secular press,
against the State and city of New York, for their alleged
liberality to the church.

{579}

The complaint in _Putnam_ is, that the State and city of New
York have granted aid to certain Catholic charitable
institutions, such as hospitals, orphan asylums, reformatories or
protectorates for Catholic boys, etc., out of all proportion to
its grants of aid to similar Protestant institutions. Also, that
the Legislature has authorized the city to appropriate a certain
percentage of the fees received for liquor licenses to the
support of private schools for the poor, some portion, even the
larger portion, of which, it is assumed, will go to the support
of Catholic parochial schools, and therefore, it is pretended, to
the support of _sectarian_ schools; for in the Protestant
mind whatever is Catholic is sectarian. But is it true that the
State or the city does proportionably less for non-Catholic
charitable or educational institutions--not a few of which are
well known to be formed for the very purpose of picking up, we
might say kidnapping, Catholic poor children, and bringing them
up in some form of Protestantism or infidelity--than it does for
Catholic charitable institutions? Most certainly not. It does far
less for Catholic than for non-Catholic institutions; and yet,
because it does a little for institutions, though for the benefit
of the whole community, under the control and management of
Catholics, the State and city are calumniated, and we are
insulted by its being pretended that our church is made the state
church.

In this matter of State grants or city donations, the Protestant
mind proceeds upon a sad fallacy. The divisions of Protestants
among themselves count for nothing in a question between them and
Catholics. Protestants overlook this fact, and while they call
all grants and donations to Catholic institutions sectarian, they
call none sectarian of all that made to Protestant institutions
which are not under the control and management of some particular
denomination of Protestants, as the Episcopalian, the
Presbyterian, the Baptist, or the Methodist; but this is a grave
error, and cannot fail to mislead the public. All grants and
donations made to institutions, charitable or educational, not
under the control and management of Catholics are made to
non-Catholics; and, with the exception of those made to the
Hebrews, to Protestant institutions. There are but two religions
to be counted, Catholic and Protestant. The true rule is to count
on one side whatever is given to institutions under Catholic
control and management, and on the other side all that is given
for similar purposes to all the institutions, whether public or
private, not under Catholic control and management. The question,
then, comes up, Have the State and city given proportionately
greater amounts to Catholic charitable and other institutions
than to Protestant institutions? If not, we have no more than our
share, and the Protestant clamor is unjust and indefensible.

Of the policy of granting subsidies by State or city, to
eleemosynary institutions, whether Catholic or Protestant we say
nothing; for being, even now, at most not more than one fifth of
the whole population of the State, we are in no sense answerable,
as Catholics, for any policy the State may see proper to adopt.
But, if it adopts the policy of granting subsidies, we demand for
our institutions our proportion of the subsidies granted. Have we
received more than our proportion? Nay, have we received anything
like our proportion? We find from the official report made to the
State Convention, that the total of grants made by the State to
charitable and other institutions--including the New York
Institution of the Deaf and Dumb, the New York Institution for
the Blind, the Society for the Reformation of Juvenile
Delinquents of New York, State Agricultural College, State Normal
School, the Western House of Refuge for Juvenile Delinquents,
State Lunatic Asylum, the Asylum for Idiots, the Willard Asylum
for the Insane, academies, orphan asylums, etc., hospitals, etc.,
colleges, universities, etc., and miscellaneous---have amounted,
for twenty-one years, ending with 1867, to $6,920,881.91.
{580}
Of this large amount, Catholics should have received for their
institutions certainly not less than one million of dollars. Yet,
all that we have been able to find that they have received out of
this large sum is a little less than $276,000; that is, not over
one fourth of what they were entitled to; yet _Putnam's
Magazine_ has the effrontery to pretend that our church is
favored at the expense of Protestantism.

So much for the State subsidies. In passing to the city, we find
its donations to charitable institutions, from 1847 to 1867
inclusive, amount to $1,837,593.27; of which, Catholic
institutions, including $45,000 for parochial schools, have
received, as nearly as we can ascertain from the returns, a
little over three hundred thousand dollars. All the rest has gone
to non-Catholic, and a large part to bitterly anti-Catholic
associations and institutions. Of the aggregate grants and
donations of the State and city of $8,754,759.18, Catholic
institutions, as far as we have been able to discover from the
official tables before us, received, prior to 1868, less than
$600,000, not, by any means, a fourth of our proportion. Yet we
are treated as the established church!

But we have not yet stated the whole case. We do not know how
many millions are appropriated annually for the support of public
schools throughout the State; but in this city the tax levy, this
year, for the public schools, is, we are told, $3,000,000 or
over. Catholics pay their proportion of this amount, and they are
a third of the population of the city. The sum appropriated to
the aid of private schools, we are told, is estimated at
$200,000; and if every cent of it is applied in aid of our
schools, as it will not be, it is far less than the tax we pay
for schools which we cannot use. The public schools are
anti-Catholic in their tendency, and none the less sectarian
because established and managed by the public authority of the
State. The State is practically Protestant, and all its
institutions are managed almost exclusively by Protestants. St.
John's College, Fordham, or St. Francis Xavier's, in this city,
is not more exclusively Catholic than Columbia or Union is
exclusively Protestant. These latter are open to Catholics, but
not more than the former are to Protestants. We count in the
grants and donations to Protestant institutions the whole amount
raised by public tax, together with that appropriated from the
school fund of the State for the support of the public schools.
Thus we claim that Catholic charities and schools do not receive,
in grants and donations, a tithe of what is honestly or justly
their share--whether estimated according to their numbers or
according to the amount of public taxes, for sectarian charitable
and educational purposes levied on them by the State and its
municipalities. How false and absurd, then, to pretend that this
State specially favors our religion, and treats us as a
privileged class! The writer in _Putnam_ is obliged to draw
largely on his sectarian imagination for facts to render his
statements at all plausible. His pretended facts are in most
cases no facts at all. We wish his estimate of the value of the
real estate owned by the church were true; but he exaggerates
hugely the amount, and then says it is held, for the most part,
in fee-simple, by one or another of five ecclesiastics, which
shows how ill-informed he is.
{581}
We subjoin the brief but spirited contradiction, by the bishop of
Rochester, of several of his misstatements.

  "_To the Editor of the Rochester Democrat:_

  "In your paper, of June 16, appears an article with the
  caption,  Our Established Church.' The article is based on one
  with the same title in _Putnam's Magazine_ for July. I do
  not wish to review the article in _Putnam_, but claim the
  privilege of correcting some of its misstatements.

   "I am one of the 'five ecclesiastics' in the State of New York
   holding property worth millions. Yet, strange to say, there is
   not to my knowledge one foot of land in the wide world in my
   name. All the church societies in the diocese of Rochester not
   organized as corporate bodies under the laws of the State of
   New York, previous to my appointment as Bishop of Rochester,
   have organized or are completing their organization under
   those laws. So soon as these societies comply with the law of
   the State, Bishop Loughlin, of Brooklyn, will transfer to
   them, by quit-claim deeds, whatever property of theirs he
   inherited from the late Bishop Timon. Had I had ever so little
   desire to hold property in my name, I might have held in
   fee-simple the lots on which I am building the bishop's house;
   but I have placed the title in the name of 'St. Patrick's
   Church Society.'

  "The other 'ecclesiastics' in the State of New York, who have
  not already transferred the property which they held in
  fee-simple, are engaged in making such transfer of the 'fifty
  millions' said to be held by them.

  "The chief trouble, it seems to me, is in the fact that the
  Catholic Church is allowed to hold property in any shape or
  form. But the Catholic Church does hold property, and she will
  continue to hold it to the end of the chapter, and 'What do you
  propose to do about it?'

  "'The (Catholic) Nursery and Hospital on Fifty-first street and
  Lexington avenue,' is a Protestant institution.

  "The new St. Patrick's Cathedral stands on ground purchased by
  Catholics about sixty years ago, and ever since in their
  possession. This fact spoils Parton's compliment to the
  Archbishop Hughes's foresight, and a nice bit of irony in
  _Putnam's Magazine_.

  "The Catholics in New York City, in 1817, opened an orphan
  asylum, which they maintained, without assistance from the city
  or State, until some time after the year 1840, when they
  received on a perpetual lease the block of ground between
  Fourth and Fifth avenues and Fifty-first and Fifty-second
  streets, at that time of very little value. On these lots they
  have erected two vast and magnificent buildings, in which they
  support over a thousand children, at an annual cost to them,
  and not to the city or State, of from $70,000 to $90,000.

  "I make these corrections to show that the writer of the
  article in _Putnam_ is far astray in his facts. There are
  many other objectionable statements in the article, but a
  magazine contribution without a little spice in it would be
  tame and unreadable. Thus, the allusion to the church trouble
  in Auburn, and the pretty play on the name of the church, would
  lose their point if the history of that affair were properly
  understood.

  "Catholics do not claim to have rights above any one else, but
  they know they have equal rights with others. They have no
  notion of their church ever becoming the 'Established Church,'
  and they are just as certain that no other church shall ever
  assume to be the 'Established Church' in the United States.
      B. J. McQuaid,
      "Bishop of Rochester."

This is conclusive as far as it goes. We do not know the money
value of our churches, the sites and buildings of our schools,
colleges, orphan asylums, hospitals, religious houses, and
academies; but it is possible that in the five dioceses into
which the State is ecclesiastically divided it may be half as
much as the value of the real estate owned by Trinity Church in
this city; but be it more or be it less, the property of the
church has been bought and paid for, so far as paid for at all,
with very slight exceptions, by the voluntary offerings of the
faithful, and none of it has been obtained by the despoiling of
Protestant owners. Very little of it is due to public grants, and
the few lots leased us by the city at a nominal rent for a term
of years, though of great value now, were of little value when
leased.
{582}
Nor have these lots in any case been leased for sites of
churches, but in all cases for purposes in which the city itself
is no less deeply interested than the Catholics themselves. The
grants to the reformatory for Catholic boys, though apparently
large, are measures of economy on the part of the city; for we
can manage reformatories and take care of our juvenile
delinquents far more economically than the city or Protestant
institutions can. The industrial school of the Sisters of Charity
is a public benefit, and the city and the State would save money
were all their hospitals and asylums placed under the charge of
these good sisters, or of the kindred congregation of the Sisters
of Mercy. Our hospitals, again, are as open to Protestants as to
Catholics. It is never a Catholic practice to inquire what is a
man's religion before rendering him assistance. Whoever needs our
help, whatever his religion, is our neighbor.

The city has made donations, as far as we are aware, only to such
Catholic institutions as are established for really public
objects, and which in their operations save the city from what
would otherwise be either a public nuisance or a public charge.
Take the case of Catholic orphan asylums. The orphans they
receive and provide for would otherwise be a charge on the city
treasury. Take the institute of the Sisters of the Good Shepherd.
It has for its object a noble charity, that of rescuing and
reforming fallen women. These victims of vice and propagators of
corruption, received and cared for by the Sisters of the Good
Shepherd, and generally restored to health, virtue, and
usefulness, would, if not taken up by them, fall into the hands
of the correctional police, and the city would have the expense
of arresting, punishing, and providing for them in the house of
correction, the penitentiary, or its hospitals. Catholic charity
not only accomplishes a good object, confers a public benefit,
but saves a heavy expense to the Commissioners of Public
Charities and Correction. It is only such Catholic institutions
as tend directly to promote a public good, and to lighten the
public expense, that the city aids with its grants and donations.
It aids in the same way, and to a far greater extent, similar
Protestant institutions, such as the House of the Friendless, the
House of Mercy, the Society for the Protection of Juvenile
Delinquents, the Christian's Aid Society, the Magdalen Society,
the Nursery and Children's Hospital, etc., for the most part,
institutions founded with an anti-Catholic intent.

The _Magazine_ asserts, the "State paid out, in 1866, for
benefactions under religious control, $129,025.49, ... of which
the trifling sum of $124,174.14 went to the religious purposes"
of the Catholic Church. We have not been able to find a particle
of proof of this, and the mode of reckoning adopted by
_Putnam_ is so false, and its general inaccuracy is so
great, that, in the absence of specific proof, we must presume it
to be untrue, and made only for a sensational effect. The writer
in _Putnam_ seems to count as Catholic such institutions and
associations as the Ladies' Mission Society, The New York
Magdalen Benevolent Society, Ladies' Union Aid Society, Nursery
and Children's Hospital, Ladies' Home Missionary Society, Five
Points Gospel Union Mission, Five Points House of Industry, Young
Men's Christian Association, and we know not how many more, all
Protestant, and not a few of them designed, under pretext of
charity, and by really rendering some physical relief to the poor
and destitute, to detach the Catholic needy, and especially
Catholic children, from the church, and yet all of them are
beneficiaries of the State or city.
{583}
No institution supported, even for proselyting purposes, by a
union of two or more evangelical sects, is reckoned by
_Putnam_ as Protestant or sectarian. We hold them to be
thoroughly Protestant, and rabidly sectarian.

The sensational writer in _Putnam_ complains of the city for
leasing to Catholics valuable real estate, at a nominal rent, for
a long term of years. Only one such lease, that for the House of
Industry for the Sisters of Charity, has been made in this city
since 1847. The site of St. Patrick's Cathedral, which he
pretends is leased by the city, at a rent of one dollar a year,
has been owned by Catholics for over sixty years, and was bought
and paid for by them with their own money, as the venerable
Bishop of Rochester asserts. The only other instance named, that
of the Nursery and Children's Hospital, Fifty-first street and
Lexington avenue, is a Protestant, not a Catholic institution.
The writer should not take grants and donations made to
Protestants as grants and donations made to Catholics. Between
Catholics and Protestants there is a difference!

The writer's statement of the huge endowments the church will
have, at the rate the city and State are endowing her, in 1918,
we must leave to the consideration of the future _Putnams_.
Sufficient for the day is the evil thereof. We will only say that
the church has had, thus far, in this country, no endowment, and
has no source of revenue but the unfailing charity of the
faithful. The magnificent revenues of our churches, colleges,
hospitals, asylums, etc., so dazzling to the writer in
_Putnam_, are all in his eye. We have not a single endowed
church, convent, college, school, hospital, or asylum in the
Union! We do great things with small means, and what to
Protestants would seem to be no means at all, because He who is
great is with us, and because we rely on charity, and charity
never faileth.

We have sufficiently disposed of the property question, and
vindicated the State and city from the charge of undue favoritism
to our church. No charge can be more untrue or more unjust. A few
words on the common school question, and we dismiss the article
in _Putnam_, which has already detained us too long.

The writer in _Putnam_ attempts to be so ironical and so
witty, and so readily sacrifices sobriety and truth to point,
that he must excuse us from following him step by step in his
account of our relation to the common schools. We know well the
common school system of this and other States. We--we speak
personally--received our early education in the public schools,
were for five years a common school teacher, and for fifteen
years had charge of the schools in the place of our residence, as
school committee-man. We have not one word to say against them as
schools for the children of those who are willing to secularize
education. We make no war on the system for non-Catholics. If
they wish the system for themselves, we offer them no opposition.
Indeed, for those who hold the supremacy of the secular order,
and believe that every department of life should be secularized,
no better system can be devised. We oppose it not when intended
for them, but only when intended for us and we are taxed to
support it. We hold the spiritual order superior to the secular,
and wish our children to be educated accordingly.

{584}

We hold that education, or the instruction and training of
children and youth, is a function of the church, a function which
she cannot discharge except in schools exclusively under her
management and control. This education and training can be
successfully given only in the Catholic family and the Catholic
school. In this country, for reasons we need not stop to
enumerate, the Catholic school is especially necessary. We do
not, by any means, oppose what is called secular learning, and in
no country where they have not been prevented by a hostile or
anti-Catholic government, have Catholics failed to take the lead
in all branches of secular learning and science. All the great
literary masterpieces of the world, since the downfall of Pagan
Rome, are the productions either of Catholics or of men who have
received a Catholic training. Few as we are, and great as are the
disadvantages under which we labor in this country, Catholics
even here compare more than favorably, at this moment, in secular
learning and science, with non-Catholics. The religious training
they receive from the church, the great catholic principles which
she teaches them in the catechism and in all her services, tend
to quicken and purify the mind, and to fit it to excel even in
secular science and learning. The Catholic has the truth to start
from, and why should he not surpass all others? No! we do not
oppose, we favor secular learning and science; but we oppose
separating secular training from religious training, and can
never consent to the secularization of education. Here is where
we and the present race of Protestants differ. It is because the
common schools secularize, and are intended by their chief
supporters to secularize, education and to make all life secular,
that we oppose them, and refuse to send our children to them
where we can possibly avoid it. Even if religious education is
given elsewhere, in the family or in the Sunday-school, the evil
is only partially neutralized. The separation of the secular from
the religious tends to create a fearful dualism in both
individual and social life, to place the spiritual and the
secular in the relation of antagonism, each to the other, which
renders impracticable that concord between the two orders so
necessary to the harmonious development of the individual life
and the promotion of the well-being and progress of society. We
insist, therefore, on having our children and youth trained in
schools under charge of the church, that in them the spiritual
and the secular may be harmonized as necessary parts of one
dialectic whole.

Such are our views and wishes, and such our conscientious
conviction of duty. Whether we are right or wrong, is no question
for the state or civil authority to settle. The state has no
competency in the matter. It is bound to respect and protect
every citizen in the free and full enjoyment of the freedom of
his conscience. We stand before the state on a footing of perfect
equality with non-Catholics, and have the same right to have our
Catholic conscience respected and protected, that they have to
have their non-Catholic and secularized conscience respected and
protected. We do not ask the state to impose our conscience on
them, or to compel them to adopt and follow our views of
education; but we deny its right to impose theirs on us, or even
to carry out their views of education in any degree at our
expense. The Catholic conscience binds the state itself so far,
but only so far, as Catholics are concerned. Non-Catholics are
the great majority of the population, at least five to our one,
throughout the State, and they have the power, if they choose to
exercise it, to control the State and to deny us our equal
rights; but that does not alter the fact that we have equal
rights, and that the State is bound to respect and cause them to
be respected.
{585}
The State no doubt is equally bound to respect and protect the
equal rights of non-Catholics, but no more than it is bound to
respect and protect ours.

On this question of education, we and non-Catholics no doubt
stand at opposite poles. We cannot accept their views, and they
will not accept ours. Between them and us there is no common
ground on which we and they can meet and act in concert. They
feel it as keenly as we do. Now as the State owes equally respect
and protection to both parties, and has no right to attempt to
force either to conform to the views of the other, its only just
and honest course is to abandon the policy of trying to bring
both together in a system of common schools. Catholic and
non-Catholic education cannot be carried on in common. In purely
secular matters, Catholics and Protestants can act in common, as
one people, one community; but in any question that involves the
spiritual relations and duties of men, we and they are two
communities, and cannot act in concert; and as both are equal
before the State, it can compel neither to give way to the other.
This may or may not be a disadvantage; but it is a fact, and must
by all parties be accepted as such.

The solution of the problem would present no difficulty, were the
non-Catholics as willing to recognize our rights as we are to
recognize theirs. They support secular schools, and wish to
compel us to send our children to them, because they hope thus to
secularize the minds of our children--_enlighten_ them, they
say; darken them, we say--and detach them from the church, or, at
least, so emasculate their Catholicity that it will differ only
in name from Protestantism. They regard common schools, in which
secular learning is diverted from religious instruction and
training, as a most cunningly devised engine for the destruction
of the church; and therefore they insist on it with all the
energy of their souls, and the strength of their hatred of
Catholicity. It gives them the forming of the character of the
children of Catholics, and thus in an indirect way makes the
State an accomplice in their proselyting schemes. Here arises all
the difficulty in the case. But, whether they are right or wrong
in their calculations, the State has no more right to aid them
against us, than it has to aid us against them. If it will, as it
is bound to do, respect and protect the rights of conscience, or
real religious liberty, the only solid basis of civil liberty, it
must do as the continental governments of Europe do, and divide
the public schools into two classes; the one for Catholics, and
the other for non-Catholics; that is, adopt the system of
denominational schools, or, rather, as we would say, Catholic
schools--under the management and control of the church--for
Catholics, and secular schools--under its own management and
control,--for the rest of the community. Let the system stand as
it is for non-Catholics, by whatever name they may be called, and
let the State appropriate to Catholics, for the support of
schools approved by their church, their proportion of the school
fund, and of the money raised by public tax for the support of
public schools, simply reserving to itself the right, through the
courts, to see that the sums received are honestly applied to the
purposes for which they are appropriated.
{586}
The State may, if it insists, fix the minimum of secular
instruction to be given, and withhold all or a portion of the
public moneys from all Catholic schools that do not come up to
it.

This, if the State, for public reasons, insists on universal
education, is the best way of solving the difficulty, without
violence to the equal rights of either Catholics or
non-Catholics. The State would thus respect all consciences, and
at the same time secure the education of all the children of the
land, which is, no doubt, a public desideratum. Another way would
be, to exempt Catholics from the tax levied for the support of
the public schools, and give to the schools they maintain their
proportion of the school fund held in trust by the State, and
leave Catholics to establish and manage schools for their own
children in their own way, under the supervision and control of
the church. Either way of solving the difficulty would answer our
purpose, and we venture to say that one or the other method of
dealing with the public school question will ere long have to be
adopted, whatever the opposition excited.

The American sense of justice already begins to revolt at the
manifest wrong of taxing us to support schools from which our
conscience will not permit us to derive any benefit. At present,
we pay our quota to the support of the public schools, which we
cannot with a good conscience use, and are obliged to support our
own schools in addition. This is grossly unjust, and in direct
violation of the equal rights guaranteed us by the constitution,
and the religious liberty which is the loud boast of the country.
The subsidies granted to some of our parochial schools in this
city are an attempt, and an honorable attempt, to mitigate the
injustice which is done us by the common school system. But the
sums appropriated, as considerable as they may seem, are far
below the sums collected from us, for the support of the public
schools. The principle on which the common school system is
founded is, that the wealth of the State should educate the
children of the State. One third, at least, of the children of
this city, are the children of Catholic parents, and belong to
the Catholic Church. The sum appropriated for the public schools
in this city, the present year, is, if we are correctly informed,
something over three millions of dollars, and Catholics are
entitled to one third of it, or to one million of dollars. They
do not receive for their schools even a third of one
million--even according to the most exaggerated statements of
_Putnam's Magazine_ and the sectarian press--and nothing
like the amount of the public school tax which they are compelled
to pay; yet it is pretended that ours is the established church,
and that Catholics are specially favored by the State and city!
We ask no favors, but we demand justice, and that our equal
rights with non-Catholic citizens be respected, and protected.

There are other points, in _Putnam_, that we should like to
notice--points which are intended, and not unfitted, to tell on
the minds of ignorant anti-Catholic bigots and fanatics; but our
space, as well as our patience, is exhausted. The writer is
worthy of no confidence in any of his statements. He proves
effectually that it is untrue that figures cannot lie; for under
his manipulation they not only lie, but lie hugely. Even the
anti-Catholic _Nation_ has rebuked him for his levity, and
he has even disgusted all fair-minded and moderate Protestants.
He has quite overshot his mark. But be that as it may, we have
confidence in the justice and right sense of the great body of
our countrymen and fellow-citizens, and we do not believe,
however much they dislike the church, that they will persevere in
a course manifestly unjust to Catholics, and repugnant to the
first principles of American liberty, after becoming once aware
of its bad character.

{587}

As to the subsidies granted by the Legislature to Catholic
charitable and educational institutions, they have been far less
than are due--as the Hon. John E. Devlin justly remarked in the
Convention, not ten per cent of the amount granted. And it has
been no crime on our part to accept what has been offered us; for
we have received and accepted them only for purposes of public
utility and common humanity. Nor are we responsible for the
action of the State Legislature; for it is composed chiefly of
non-Catholics, and by a large majority elected by non-Catholics.
Catholics are by no means the majority of electors in the State.
We institute no inquiry into the motives that have influenced the
members of the Legislature; we never assign bad or sinister
motives, when good and proper motives are at hand. We presume the
motive has been a sense of justice toward a large and growing
class of the community, whose rights have for a long time been
trampled on or disregarded. To condemn them, is not at all
creditable to the rabid Protestant press, and, in our judgment,
is very bad policy. However it may be with the Protestant
leaders, the majority of the American people are sincerely and
earnestly attached to the American doctrine of equal rights, and
will no more consent to its manifest violation in the case of
Catholics than of non-Catholics.

----------

             Mark IV.

  "Why are ye afraid, O ye of little faith?"


           As if the storm meant Him;
           Or'cause Heaven's face is dim,
               His needs a cloud.
           Was ever froward wind
           That could be so unkind,
               Or wave so proud?
  The wind had need be angry, and the water black,
  That to the mighty Neptune's self dare threaten wrack.

           There is no storm but this
           Of your own cowardice
               That braves you out:
           You are the storm that mocks
           Yourselves; you are the rocks
               Of your own doubt.
  Besides this fear of danger there's no danger here,
  And he that here fears danger does deserve his fear.

		                   Crashaw.
-------

{588}

            Daybreak.

          Chapter XII.

         So As By Fire.

When spring came again, the letters from Mr. Granger were less
frequent, and as weather and work grew warmer, the family had to
content themselves with a few lines at irregular and sometimes
long intervals.

They were not to be anxious, he wrote, even if they should not
hear from him for several weeks. As the newspapers and the
speech-makers had it, we were making history every day, and he
must write his little paragraph with the rest. It took both hands
to wield the pen, and he must have a care to make no blots. Which
was a roundabout way of saying that his military duties required
all his time. They must remember that "no news is good news," and
try to possess their souls in patience.

On his next furlough he would

  "Shoulder his crutch,
   and tell how fields were won,"

or lost; but till then a hasty scrawl must suffice. He thought of
them whenever he lay down to rest; and sometimes, when he was in
the midst of the hurry and noise of battle, he would catch a
flitting vision of the peaceful fireside where friends sat and
thought of him. That home was to him like the headland beacon to
the mariner far away on the rough horizon, and threw its point of
tender light on every dark event that surged about him.

"I shall be there before long. Meantime, good-by, and don't
worry."

From Mr. Southard they had heard less frequently, and less at
length. His monthly letters to his congregation were usually
accompanied by a few lines addressed to Mr. or Mrs. Lewis,
telling them in rather formal fashion where he was, and as little
as possible of what he was doing. At present, the regiment of
which he was chaplain still had their quarters at New Orleans.

"I am afraid he thinks that we don't care much to hear from him,"
Margaret said, the three ladies sitting together, and talking the
matter over. "Suppose we all write just as freely as we do to Mr.
Granger? We can tell him all the little household events, and how
his chair and his place at the table are still called his, and
kept for him. I think he would be pleased, don't you, Aura?"

"I do. It isn't a wonder that he writes formally to us when he
gets such ceremonious answers."

"To complain of cold replies to cold letters is like the wolf
accusing the lamb of muddying the brook," retorted Mrs. Lewis. "I
shall waste none of my sweetness on the desert air, and you will
be a pair of simpletons if you do. We might expend ourselves in
those gushing epistles to him, and after a month or two we should
probably get about three lines apiece in return, each line cooler
than the last, and not an intimation that he wasn't bored."

"But I think he would be pleased," repeated Margaret doubtfully,
beginning to waver.

"What right or reason have you to think so when he never says
that he is?" Mrs. Lewis persisted. "For my part, I think that
friendship is worthy of acknowledgment from king or kaiser--that
is, if he wants it; and if Mr. Southard isn't an iceberg, then he
is a very selfish and arrogant man, that's all.
{589}
You may do as you like. But I shall never again try to get a
sunbeam out of that cucumber. I have spoken."

The entrance of Mr. Lewis put an end to their discussion. He came
in with a very cross face.

"Here I've got to start for Baltimore, with the thermometer at
eighty degrees, and the Confederates swarming up the Shenandoah
by tens of thousands, and ready to pounce on anybody south of New
York!' Why have I got to go?' Why, my agent is on the point of
absconding with the rents, and the insurance policies on my
houses are out, and I can't renew them in Boston or New York for
love or money; and if things are not seen to there, we shall be
beggars. You needn't laugh, madam! It's no joke. I've just seen a
man straight from Baltimore, and he says that rascal is all but
ready to start on a European tour with my money in his pocket. I
shall get a sunstroke, or have an apoplexy; I know I shall."

"A cabbage-leaf in your hat might prevent the sunstroke," his
wife said serenely. "As to the apoplexy, I am not so safe about
that, if you keep on at this rate. When do you start?"

"To-night; and now it is two o'clock. The rails may be ripped up
at any hour. You see now, Mrs. Lewis, the disadvantage of living
in one town and having your property in another. You would come
to Boston. Nothing else would suit you. And the consequence is,
that I've got to go posting down to Baltimore in July, to collect
my rents."

Mrs. Lewis laughed merrily.

"'The woman whom thou gavest me'--that's the way, from Adam
down. Who would think, girls, that this is the very first
intimation I ever had that Mr. Lewis would rather live in
Baltimore than Boston! But, bless me! I must see to his valise,
and have an early dinner. As for the raid panic, I will risk you.
I don't believe there's much the matter."

Margaret had been looking steadily at Mr. Lewis ever since he
began speaking. She said not a word while the others exclaimed
and questioned, and finally went out to prepare for his journey;
but some sharp work was going on in her mind, an electric
crystallization of vague and floating impressions, impulses, and
thoughts into resolve.

It had been weeks since they heard from Mr. Granger. She had not
been very much troubled about it--had, indeed, wondered that she
felt so little anxiety; but her quietude was by no means
indifference or security. She could not have defined her own
feelings. For the last week she had not uttered his name, had
shrunk with an unaccountable reluctance from doing so, and, worse
yet, had found it impossible to pray for him.

Her other prayers she said as usual; but when she would have
prayed for his safe return, the words died upon her lips. She was
neither excited nor distressed; she was, perhaps, more calm than
usual. Her hands were folded, her face upraised, she had placed
herself in the presence of God; but if a hand had been laid upon
her lips she could not have been more mute. A physical weakness
seemed to deprive her of the power of speech. This was not once,
but again, and yet again.

Margaret had the most absolute faith in the power of prayer. She
believed that we may sometimes obtain what we had better not
have, God giving for his word's sake to those who will not be
denied, but chastening the petitioner for his lack of submission
by means of the very gift he grants
{590}
She had said to herself, "If a sword were raised to strike one I
love, it could not fall while I prayed. He has promised, and I
believe."

But now, if the sword hung there indeed, she could utter no word
to stay its falling. She felt herself forbidden, bound by a
restraint she could not throw off. "Well, Margaret," Mr. Lewis
said at length, "what are you thinking of? You look as if your
brain were a galvanic battery in full operation, sending messages
in every direction at once. The sparks have been coming out of
your eyes for the last five minutes."

The crystallizing process was over, and her resolution lay there
in her mind as bright and hard as though it were the work of
years.

"I'm going to Washington," she said. "I have been thinking of it
this week. I will go with you tonight, if you please."

Of course there were wonderments, and questions, and objections.
According to all the canons of propriety, it was highly improper
for a lady to go South under the existing state of things, unless
there were bitter need. It was warm, and it was hard travelling
night and day, as he would have to do. He would like to have her
company, of course, but he didn't see--

"No matter about your seeing," interrupted Miss Hamilton, rising.
"If you won't have me with you, I'll go alone. Please don't say
any more. Cannot you understand, Mr. Lewis, that there are times
when trivial objections and opposition may be very irritating? We
will not discuss canons of propriety just now. I have something
of more consequence to attend to."

"Well, don't be cross," he said good-naturedly. "I won't say
another word. If you can stand the journey, I shall be glad to
have you go. But you will have to be quicker in getting your
traps ready than my wife and Aurelia ever are."

"I can be ready in fifteen minutes to go anywhere," was the
reply. "Now I will go tell Mrs. Lewis."

Mrs. Lewis saw at a glance that opposition was useless. Moreover,
she was one of those persons who can allow for exceptional cases,
and distinguish between rashness and inspiration.

"I know it seems odd," Margaret said to her; "but I must go. I
feel impelled. I would go if I had to walk. You will be good, and
take my part, won't you? Don't tell anybody where I have
gone--nobody has any right to know--and take care of my little
Dora. I'm going up to the State House now, but will be back by
the time dinner is ready."

"I wouldn't venture to stop her if I could," Mrs. Lewis said.
"Margaret is not given to flying off on tangents, and this start
may mean something. She has perception at every pore of her."

In the messenger's room at the State House a score of persons
were in waiting.

"I would like to see the governor a few minutes," Margaret said.

"You will have to wait your turn, ma'am," answered a very
authoritative individual. "The gov'ner's tremendously
busy--overwhelmed with work--hasn't had time to get his dinner
yet. Just sit down and wait, and I will let him know as soon as
there is a chance. If you tell me your business, I might mention
it to him."

"Thank you! Which is his room?"

He pointed to a door. "But you can't go in now. I'll tell him
presently, if you give me your name."

{591}

With the most sublime disregard for formalities, Miss Hamilton
walked straight toward the door indicated.

"But I tell you you can't go in there," said the messenger
angrily, attempting to stop her.

For answer, she opened the door, and walked into the room where
the governor sat at a table, with a secretary at each side of
him. He looked up with a frown on seeing a visitor enter
unannounced, but rose immediately as he recognized her.

"That's right. I'm glad you did not wait," he said. Then as she
glanced at his companions, added, "Come in here," and led her
through a small ante-room where two young ladies sat waiting, and
into the vacant council-chamber.

I will detain you but a minute," she said hastily. "I am going to
start for Washington to-night, and I want to visit the hospitals
there. Will you give me a letter to some one who will get me
permission? I am not sure that I shall find an acquaintance in
the city at this season, except the family to whose house I shall
go, and they are people of no influence. Besides, I do not wish
to have any delay!"

"Certainly; with pleasure! I will give you letters that will take
you through everything without a question. But what in the world
are you going there now for? It is hardly safe. My autograph will
stand a pretty good chance of falling into the hands of Mosby."

"I am uneasy about Mr. Granger," she replied directly. "We
haven't heard from him for weeks, and I must know if there is
anything the matter. He has been a good friend to me. He saved my
life once, and I owe him everything. We are only friends, you
know; but that word means something with me. Do you think there
is any impropriety in my going? Mr. Lewis goes with me as far as
Baltimore."

"Not the least impropriety in life," was the prompt reply. "I
won't say a word against your going. I always think that when any
person, man or woman, gets that raised look that I see in your
face, slow coaches had better roll off the track. Come, now, and
I'll write your letters."

"You are worth a million times your weight in gold!" Margaret
exclaimed. "You are one of the few persons who don't carry a wet
blanket about in readiness to extinguish people. I cannot tell
how I thank you!"

The gentleman laughed.

"Rather an extravagant valuation, considering the present
percentage, and my pounds avoirdupois. As for wet blankets, I
never did much believe in 'em."

While the governor wrote, Margaret stood at his elbow and watched
the extraordinary characters that grew to life beneath his pen.

"Are you sure they will understand what those mean?" she asked
timidly.

"They will know the signature," he replied, making a dab over a
letter, to indicate that an _i_ was somewhere in the
vicinity. "You can use them as
_cartes_--well--_noires_, I suppose, on the strength of
which you are to ask anything you please. Choate and I"--here a
polysyllable was dashed across the whole sheet--"had a vocation
for lettering tea-boxes, you know. There! now you had better use
either of these first, if it is just as convenient, and keep Mr.
Lincoln's till the last. But aren't you afraid of being stopped
on the way? Everything is in a heap down there."

"So I hear; but I feel as if we shall get through."

"Don't mention to any one about my going, will you?" she
whispered, as they went to the door.

{592}

He laughed. "To nobody but the council. Good-bye. Good luck to
you!"

An hour later she saw the city slowly disappearing as the cars
rolled out over the new lands.

Mr. Lewis settled himself comfortably in his seat. "And now for
Maryland, my Maryland!"

"By George!" he exclaimed presently, putting his hand into his
pocket, "here is a letter from Mr. Southard. It will serve to
amuse us; but I am sorry that the others hadn't seen it."

He opened the letter, and they read it together. Mr. Southard had
been ill, he wrote, and was yet only able to dawdle about the
wards of the hospital and gossip with the patients. He had been
offered private quarters, but had preferred a hospital. It
chanced that the Sisters of Charity had charge of the one to
which he was sent, and they had given him the best of care.

That was the gist of the letter.

How will that read to his congregation, I wonder?" Margaret said.
"I fancy they won't half like it."

"Perhaps not. But I call that a good letter. It is the best we
have had; not a word of religion, from first to last."

"But it breathes the very spirit of charity," was the quick
reply. "How gently he mentions every one! Not a hard word even
for the enemy!"

Mr. Lewis deliberately folded the letter.

"I dare say; and that is the kind of religion I like. When I hear
a man continually calling on God to witness everything he says
and does, I always think that he stands terribly in need of a
backer."

They reached New York the next morning, and learned there that
the panic was increasing rather than diminishing. The track was
yet open, but no one went South who had not pressing business.

"What do you say, Maggie?" asked Mr. Lewis. "On to Richmond, eh?"

"Do let us go!" she begged, her impatience growing with every
obstacle.

"On it is, then. I like your pluck."

"I should think that the lady would rather wait," the conductor
suggested.

"Wait, sir?" said Mr. Lewis bluffly. "By no means! Don't trouble
yourself. She isn't one of the squealing sort."

"Very well," the man replied doubtfully. "But we shall go pretty
fast."

Margaret's heavy eyes brightened. "That is what I want. You
cannot go too fast for me."

On they went again with steadily increasing speed, reaching
Philadelphia ahead of time. There fresh news of disaster awaited
them. On then to Baltimore, where they found the citizens arming,
and every one full of excitement.

"I must and will go through!" Margaret said passionately, seeing
Mr. Lewis about to expostulate.

He resumed his seat. "Then I shall go with you."

They stopped only long enough to be assured that communication
with Washington was still open, then started on the last stage of
their journey, keeping a sharp lookout, since it was not
impossible that at almost any moment they might be saluted by a
volley of musketry, or thrown headlong over an unseen hiatus in
the rail.

{593}

"Seems to me we are getting over the ground at a tearing pace,"
remarked one of the passengers in a lazy drawl. "For my part, I
don't know but I'd as lief stand my chance of a minie-ball as run
the risk of being knocked into railroad-pi. A slug is a neat
thing; but these smash-ups are likely to injure a fellow's
personal appearance."

"There they are!" exclaimed an other, who had been watching
through a glass ever since they left Baltimore. "I should guess
that there's only a score of cavalry; but they may have more
behind. Do you see? Just over the hill. It's a pretty even thing
which of us reaches the crossing first. Not above a mile ahead,
is it?"

He of the drawl, a cavalry captain, turned to Margaret. "Do you
object to fire-arms, ma'am?" he asked, in much the same tone of
voice he would have used in asking if she objected to
cigar-smoke.

"Not when there is need of them," she replied.

He pulled a beautiful silver-mounted revolver out of his pocket,
and carefully examined the barrels.

"This has been like a father to me," he said with great
tenderness. "It's all the family I have. The barrels I call my
six little sisters. Each one has a name. They've got pretty sharp
tongues, but I like the sound of 'em; and they always speak to
the point. Jennie is my favorite--see! her name is engraven, with
the date--ever since she helped me out of a hobble at Ball's
Bluff. I was playing cat and mouse with a fellow there, he with
his rifle aimed, waiting to get a shot at something besides my
boot or the end of my beard, and I hanging on the off-side of my
horse, clinging to saddle and mane. I was brought up on
horseback, and have spent a good part of my time scouring over
the Southwest, Missouri, Texas, and thereabouts; but of course I
couldn't hang there for ever. Well, just as I was thinking that I
should have to drop, or straighten up and take my slug like a
man, I managed to spare a finger and thumb, and got Paterfamilias
here out of my belt. Where can one better be than in the bosom of
his family? says I. I didn't hurt the fellow much; I didn't mean
to. When two men have been dodging and watching that way for some
time, they get to have quite an affection for each other. I
spoilt his aim, though; and I fancy that he will never be a very
good writer any more."

"Aren't you sorry now that you came?" Mr. Lewis asked Margaret.

"No," she said brightly; "I feel as though we shall get through."

A new spirit was beginning to stir in her veins. The speed of the
cars was of itself exciting--those long strides at the full
stretch of the iron racer, when the wheels, instead of measuring
the track with a steady roll, rise up and drop again with a sharp
click, as regular as verse; not that cantering line of Virgil's,
"Quadrupedante" and the rest, but a hard, iambic gallop. Besides
this, the sense of danger and power combined was intoxicating.
For, after all, danger is intolerable only when we have nothing
to oppose to it.

There had been trees and rocks, but they were changed to a buzz,
the road became a dizziness, and the whole landscape swam. There
was something near the track that looked about as much like
horsemen as the shadow of the same would look in broken,
swift-running water; a few shots were heard, there was a little
rattle of shivered glass; then all the men broke into a shout.

"Did you hear Jennie smile?" asked the captain, as he put
Paterfamilias carefully into his belt again.

{594}

Margaret laughed with delight, and gave her handkerchief a little
flutter out the window. "I can guess how chain-lightning feels,"
she said; "only it can't go on minutes and minutes."


            Chapter XII.

       The Court Of The King.


After their little adventure, our travellers rode triumphantly
into Washington, and Miss Hamilton found her friends glad to
receive her the more so that she came as a boarder, and their
house was nearly empty.

The Blacks had, in their younger days, been humble followers of
Doctor Hamilton; and though their acquaintance with Margaret was
slight, as they felt a kind of duty toward all the connection,
they were proud to receive her.

"I am anxious about friends whom I have not heard from for some
time," she explained; "and I have come here to look round a
little."

"Who do you know in the army?" Mrs. Black inquired, not too
delicately, considering the reserve with which her visitor had
spoken.

Miss Hamilton was not learned in the slippery art of evasion. She
simply ignored the question.

"I am exhausted," she said. "Of course I did not sleep any last
night; and the ride has been fatiguing. I have but one desire,
and that is to rest. Can you show me to my room at once? I feel
as though I should drop asleep as soon as my head touches the
pillow. When I do sleep, please don't wake me."

When she lay down to rest the afternoon sun was gilding the trees
in the square opposite, flaring on the long white-washed walls of
the hospital in their midst, and brightening momentarily the pale
faces pressed close to the window-bars of the jail beyond. When
she woke from the deep and dreamless sleep that seemed to have
almost drawn the breath from her lips, it was night. Some one had
set a star of gas burning in her room, and left a plate of cake
and a glass of wine on the stand at her bedside.

Margaret raised herself like one who has been nearly drowned and
still catches for breath, gathered her benumbed faculties and
recollected where she was. All was quiet within the house; and
without there was stillness of another sort, a silence that was
living and aware, a sense as of thousands waking and watching.
Now and then there came from the hospital across the street some
voice of a sleepless sufferer, the long, low moan of almost
exhausted endurance, the broken cry of delirium, or the hoarse
gasp of pneumonia.

After a while these sounds became deadened, and finally lost in
another that rose gradually, deepening like the roll of the sea
heard at night.

Margaret went to her window and leaned out. The sultry air was
heavily-laden with fragrance from the flower-gardens around, and
in the sky the large stars trembled like over-full drops of a
golden shower descending through the ambient purple dusk.

That sea-roll grew nearer as she listened, and became the
measured tramp of men. Soon they appeared out of the darkness at
the left, marching steadily line after line, and company after
company, to disappear into darkness at the right. They moved like
shadows, save for that multitudinous muffled tread, and save
that, at certain points, a street-light would flash along a line
of rifle-barrels, or catch in a flitting sparkle on a spur or
shoulder-strap. Then, like a dream, they were gone; darkness and
distance had swallowed them up from sight and hearing; and again
there was that strange, live stillness, broken only by the
complaining voices of the sick.

{595}

As Margaret looked, the dim light in one of the hospital-wards
flared up suddenly and showed three men standing by a bed near
one of the windows. They lifted the rigid form that lay there,
and placed it on a stretcher; two of the men bore it out, and the
light was lowered again, After a little while the men appeared
outside bearing that white and silent length between them,
through the dew and the starlight, and were lost from sight
behind the trees. When they returned, they walked side by side;
and what they had carried out they brought not back again.

The watcher's heart sent out a cry: "O Father in heaven! see how
thy creatures suffer."

In the excitement of the last part of her journey, and the
exhaustion following it, she had almost forgotten her object in
coming; but this sight brought it all back. She remembered, too,
that she had been dropping into the old way of taking all the
burden on her own shoulders; and even in crying out for pain, she
recollected the way of comfort. How sweet the restfulness of that
recollection! As though a child, wandering from home, lost,
weary, and terrified, should all at once see the hearth-light
shining before him, and hear the dear familiar voices calling his
name. She thought over the lessons learned during that blessed
retreat, that Mecca toward which henceforth her thoughts would
journey whenever her soul grew faint by the way. The
half-forgotten trust came back. Who but He who had set the
tangles of this great labyrinth could lead the way out of it? Who
but He whose hand had strung the chords of every human heart
could ease their straining, and bring back harmony to discord?
Where but with Him, the centre of all being, could we look for
those who are lost to us on earth?

When, long after sunrise, Mrs. Black entered her visitor's
chamber, she found Margaret kneeling by the window, fast asleep,
with her head resting on the sill.

There was plenty of news and excitement that morning. All
communication with the North was cut off, the President and his
family had come rushing in at midnight from their country-seat,
and there was fighting going on only a few miles out of town. It
was altogether probable that the Confederates would be in the
city before night.

Mrs. Black told all this with such an air of satisfaction in the
midst of her terror that Margaret made some allowance for
embellishment in the story. Evidently the good woman enjoyed a
panic, and was willing to be frightened to the very verge of
endurance for the sake of having it to tell of afterward. She
went about in a sort of delighted agony, gathering up her spoons
and forks, and giving little shrieks at the least unusual sound.

"If they should bombard the city, my dear," she said, "we can go
down cellar. I have an excellent cellar. It is almost certain
that they will come. We must be in a strait when the
treasury-clerks come out. And such a sight! They passed here just
before I went up to call you, all in their shirt-sleeves, and
looking no more like soldiers, dear, than I do this minute. Half
of them carried their rifles over the wrong shoulder, and seemed
scared to death lest they should go off. And no wonder; for the
way the barrels slanted was enough to make you smile, even if
there were a bomb-shell whizzing past your nose.
{596}
The muzzles looked all ways for Sunday, so to speak. There were
little boys with them, too. I don't see where their pas and mas
were, if they've got any. It's a sin and shame. Do eat some more
breakfast, pray! You may as well have a full stomach; for if we
should be obliged to hide in the cellar, we might not dare come
up to get a mouthful for twenty-four hours. I do hope it won't be
a long siege. If they've got to come in, let'em come. I'm sure
they would be too much of gentlemen to molest a houseful of
defenceless females. As for poor Mr. Black, he doesn't count.
Though he is my husband, I have seen braver men, not to speak of
women. I had to threaten him, this morning, within an inch of his
life, to prevent him from running a Confederate flag out of the
window. He keeps one in his trunk, in case it should be needed.
He declared he heard firing in the avenue. Bless me! What is
that?"

"One of the servants has broken a dish."

"The destructive minxes! But where are you going, dear? Over to
the hospital? Oh! they don't admit visitors on Sunday. Even on
week-days you can't get in till after the surgeons have gone
their rounds, and that is never before ten o'clock. It is
military rule, you know; as regular as clock-work. It won't come
ten till sixty minutes after nine o'clock, not if you perish. The
first time I went in there, the soldier on guard came near
running me through with his bayonet, just because I didn't walk
in a certain particular road. I tried to reason with him; but you
might as well reason with stocks and stones. There was the man in
the middle of the road, and there was the point of his bayonet
within an inch of my stomacher; and the upshot of the matter was,
that I had to turn about and walk in a straight road instead of a
curved one, for no earthly reason that I could see. You really
cannot get in to-day. Wait till to-morrow, and I will go over
with you."

Margaret smoothed on her gloves.

"Mrs. Black," she said, "did you ever hear of the man who said
that whenever he saw 'Positively no admittance' posted up
anywhere, he always went in there directly?"

"Well," the lady sighed, "I can't say but you may get in. You are
your grandfather's granddaughter, and he never said fail. Only,
be sure you look your best. You remember the song your mother
used to sing about the chief who offered a boatman a silver pound
to row him and his bride across the stormy ferry; and the
Highland laddie said he would, not for the 'siller bright,' but
for the 'winsome lady.' Many's the time I cried to hear your poor
mother sing that, and how they all perished in the storm, and the
father they were running away from stood on the shore lamenting.
Your grandfather would wipe his eyes on the sly, and wait till
she had finished every word of it; and then he would speak up and
say that she had better be singing the praises of God. May be the
officers over there will be like the Highland boatman, and do for
you what they would n't do for an ugly old woman like me."

Margaret closed her ears to that piercing sentence, "the song
your mother used to sing "--O silent lips!--and going out,
crossed over to the hospital.

As she turned into a curved road that approached the door, a
soldier pacing there presented his bayonet, probably the same one
that had threatened Mrs. Black's plaited linen stomacher.

"You must go the other way," he said with military brevity.

{597}

The smaller the warrior, the greater the martinet. Doubtless this
young man regarded his present adversary with far more fierceness
than he would have shown toward a six-foot Texan grey coat, with
a belt bristling with armor, and two eyes like two blades.

Margaret retreated with precipitance, hiding a smile, and took
the other road.

"Your pass, ma'am," said a second soldier at the step.

"I haven't any," she said pitifully, and looked with appealing
eyes at an officer just inside the door.

He came out immediately.

"What is your pleasure, madam?" he asked, touching his hat.

She told her errand briefly, and handed him the letters she had
brought.

Mrs. Black had not overrated the power of the winsome lady. The
surgeon in charge, for this was he, merely glanced over the
letters to learn the bearer's name and State. He had already
found her face, voice, and gloves such as should, in his opinion,
be admitted anywhere and at all times.

"Please come in," he said courteously. "It is almost inspection
time now, and I must be on duty. But if you will wait in my
office a little while, I shall be happy to escort you through the
wards."

"Thank you! But cannot I go now, by myself?" said Margaret.

He drew himself up stiffly, in high dudgeon at the little value
she set on his escort. "Certainly! You can do just as you
please."

She thanked him again, and went up the hall, utterly unconscious
that she had been greatly honored.

The hall was very long, so long that the door at the furthest end
looked as though only a child could go through without stooping,
and the wards were built out to right and left. She visited every
one, walking up and down the rows of beds, her eager glance
flashing from face to face. There was no face there that she had
ever seen before. With a faint voice she asked for the names of
those who had lately died. The names were as strange as the
faces. Finally she sat down in one of the wards to rest.

The inside of the hospital was altogether less gloomy than the
outside had appeared. They were in a bustle of preparation for
inspection, putting clean white covers on the beds and the
stands, regulating the medicine-table and the book-shelves,
squaring everything, looking out that the convalescents were in
trim, belt-buckles polished, shoes bright, hair smooth, jackets
buttoned up to the chin.

The ward looked fresh and cheerful. The white walls were
festooned with evergreen, green curtains shaded the windows, and
the floor was as white as a daily scouring could make it. Nearly
half of the patients were dressed, and eagerly talking over the
news; and even the sickest there looked on with interest, and
brightened occasionally.

"Fly round here!" cried the ward-master, a fair-faced, laughing
young German. "They've gone into the next ward. Hustle those
clothes out of sight somewhere. Tumble 'em out the window! Kohl,
if you groan while the surgeons are here, I'll give you nothing
but quinine for a week. Can't somebody see to that crazy fellow
up there! He's pulling the wreath down off the wall. Pitch into
him! Tell him that he shan't have a bit of ice to-day if he
doesn't lie still. And there's that other light-head eating the
pills all up. I'll be hanged if he hasn't swallowed twenty-five
copper and opium pills!
{598}
Well, sir, you're dished. Long Tom, mind yourself, and keep your
feet in bed."

"I can't!" whispered Tom, who seemed to be a mere boy, though his
length was something preposterous. "The bed is too short."

"Well, crumple up some way," said the ward-master, laughing.
"I'll have you up next week, fever or no fever. If you lie there
much longer, you'll grow through the other side of the ward."

"It isn't my fault," Tom said pitifully to Miss Hamilton, who sat
near him. "When I went to bed here, five weeks ago, I wasn't any
taller than the ward-master; and now I believe I'm seven feet
long. I believe it was that everlasting quinine!" And poor Tom
burst into tears.

"Here they are!" said the ward-master. "Attention!"

Instantly all was silence. Each convalescent stood at the foot of
his bed, and the nurses were drawn up inside the door. The little
procession of surgeons appeared, marched up one side of the ward
and down the other, and out the door; and the inspection was
over.

As they passed by her, one of them, in drawing his handkerchief
from his pocket, drew with it a card, which, unseen by him,
dropped at Margaret's feet. She took it up, and saw the
photograph of the gentleman who had dropped it, dressed in the
uniform of a Confederate colonel.

"Who was that last surgeon in the line?" she asked of Tom.

"That's our surgeon, Doctor A----. He is a Virginian."

"Who is his guarantee here, do you know?" she inquired.

"He's a friend of Senator Wyly's," Tom said.

An orderly came to the door. "Every man who is able to carry a
rifle get ready to go down to Camp Distribution," he said. "Don't
let any of 'em shirk, Linn. Send some of those fellows down to
the office to be examined. Every man is wanted."

As Margaret went out, she saw Surgeon A---- hasten from one of
the wards, and look along the floor of the hall, as if in search
of something. His face was very pale, she saw, and he looked up
sharply at her as she approached him.

"Perhaps you miss this photograph, Col. A---," she said, offering
it to him.

His face reddened violently as he took it. "Has any one seen it
besides you, madam?" he asked.

"No one."

"Will you give me an opportunity to explain?" he asked eagerly.
"If you would permit me to call on you, or accompany you out
now--"

"By no means," she replied coldly. "I do not wish to hear any
explanation. I am here on business of my own, and shall not,
probably, take any further notice of what I have seen. But if on
second thought I should consider myself obliged to mention it,
you can make your explanation to Mr. Lincoln."

She left him at that, and went home to hear Mrs. Black's
compliments on her success.

There were no more visits that day; but the next morning a close
carriage was sent to the door, and Margaret began her rounds.

In the afternoon she found herself going out Fourteenth street
toward Columbia Hospital. There was a shower, and as the horses
plodded along through the pouring floods of southern rain, she
leaned her face upon her hand and wondered sadly what was to come
of this search of hers, and if that strange, irresistible impulse
on which she had been shot, like Camilla on her spear, over every
obstacle to her coming, had been, after all, but a vain whim.

{599}

Looking up presently, she found that they were in the midst of
what seemed to her an army, soldiers crowding close to the
carriage, and stretching forward and backward as far as she could
see. It was the Sixth corps, one of them told her, going out to
meet Early and Breckinridge.

They were marching in a mob, without order, plodding wearily
through the rain that just served to wash from them the stains of
their last battle. Their faces were browned and sober, their
clothes faded and stained; many, foot-sore with long marches,
carried their shoes in their hands. They were little enough like
the gay troops she had seen march away from home.

When they came to the college hospital, it was found impossible
to reach the side-walk through that crowd, and Margaret ordered
the driver to wait till they should pass. As she leaned back in
her carriage and watched the living stream flow slowly over the
hill, a gentleman came out of the hospital, and, standing on the
sidewalk opposite her, seemed to be looking for some one among
them. Presently his face brightened with a recognizing smile, and
he waved his handkerchief to one who was riding near. As the
horseman drew up between her and the sidewalk, Margaret's heart
seemed to leap into her mouth. He was wrapped in a cloak, and a
wide-brimmed hat, still dripping from the spent shower, shaded
his face; but she knew him at the first glance.

"O Mr. Granger!"

A shout from the convalescents collected outside the tent wards
drowned her glad cry, and the next instant she would not for the
world have repeated it. By a sudden revulsion of feeling, the
face that had flushed with delight now burned with unutterable
shame and humiliation.

For the first time she looked on what she had done as the world
might look upon it--as Mr. Granger himself might look upon it.
Friends or foes, he was a gentleman, and she a lady, and not a
baby. She, wandering from place to place, unbidden, in search of
him, weeping, praying, making a fool of herself, she thought
bitterly, and he sitting his horse there gallantly, safe and
merry, within reach of her hand, showing his white teeth in a
laugh, stroking down his beard with that gesture she knew so
well, taking off his hat to shake the raindrops from it, and loop
up the aigrette at the side!

She had time to remember with a pang of envy the quiet, guarded
women who sit at home, and take no step without first thinking
what the world will say of it.

"If he should think of me at all," she said to herself, "he would
fancy me at home, trailing my dress over his carpets, making
little strokes with a paint-brush, having a care lest I ink my
fingers, or teaching Dora to spell propriety--as I ought to be!
as I ought to be! I need a keeper!"

But still, with her veil drawn close, she looked at him steadily;
for, after all, he was going into battle, and he was her friend.
As she looked, he glanced up at one of the hospital windows, and
immediately his glance became an earnest gaze. He ceased
speaking, and his face showed surprise and perplexity.

"What do you see?" his friend asked.

{600}

"Strange!" he muttered, half to himself. "It is only a
resemblance, of course, but I fancied I saw there a face I know,
looking out at me. It is gone now."

Whatever it was, the sight appeared to sober as well as perplex
him. He took leave of his friend, and, drawing back to join his
regiment, brought his horse round rather roughly against Miss
Hamilton's carriage.

"I beg your pardon, madam!" he said at once, taking off his hat
to the veiled lady he saw there.

He must have thought her scarcely courteous; for she merely
nodded, and immediately turned her face away.

He rode slowly on, looking back once more to the hospital window,
and in a few minutes was out of sight.

"Will you get out now?" asked the driver.

Margaret started.

"Why, yes."

She went in and seated herself in the hall. "I want to rest," she
said to a soldier who stood there. "I don't feel quite well."

A slight, elderly lady in a black dress, and with her bonnet a
little awry, came down the stairs, and stood looking about as
though she expected some one.

"Can you tell me where Miss Blank is to be found?" she asked of
the soldier to whom Margaret had spoken. "She has been out in the
tent wards, and there she comes," he said, nodding toward a young
woman who came in at the door furthest from them, and, with a
face expressive of apprehension, approached the waiting lady.

"You wished to see me?" she asked tremulously.

"Yes," was the reply. "You will be ready to return home
to-morrow, or as soon as communication is reestablished. I will
send your transportation papers to-night. You need not go into
the wards again."

The young woman stared in speechless distress and astonishment,
her eyes filling with tears.

"Is that Miss Dix?" Margaret asked of the soldier.

"Yes," he replied. "She makes short work of it. That is one of
the best nurses, and the best dresser in the hospital."

"Why is she dismissed?"

"Miss Dix has probably heard something about her. She's a good
young woman, but the old lady is mighty particular."

Margaret rose to meet Miss Dix as she came along the hall.

"I am going to stay in Washington a few days," she said, "and I
would like to be useful while I am here. Can I do anything for
you?"

"Who are you?" asked the lady. Margaret presented her
credentials, and Miss Dix glanced them over, then looked sharply
at their owner.

"I am afraid you are too young," she said.

"I am twenty-eight, and I feel a hundred," said Margaret.

"Do you know anything about nursing?"

"As much as ladies usually know."

"Will you go to a disagreeable place?"

"Yes, if it is not out of the city."

"Come, then; my ambulance is at the door."

In two minutes the carriage was dismissed, and Margaret was
seated in the ambulance, and on her way down to the city again.

"You will be very careful who you speak to," the lady began; "you
will dress in the plainest possible manner, wear no ornaments,
and, of course, high necks and long sleeves. Your hair--are those
waves natural?"

"Yes'm!" said Margaret humbly, and was about to add that perhaps
she could straighten them out, but checked herself.

{601}

"Well, dress your hair very snugly, wear clean collars, and don't
let your clothes drag. It looks untidy. Is that dress quite
plain?"

Margaret threw back the thin mantle she wore, and showed a gray
dress of nunlike plainness.

"That will do," the lady said approvingly.

Here they turned into the square, and got out at the door of the
hospital Margaret had visited the day before. She was introduced
to the officer of the day, received an astonished bow from the
surgeon-in-charge in passing, caught a glimpse of Doctor A----,
and was escorted to her ward.

"Be you the new lady nurse?" asked Long Tom.

"So it seems; but I am not quite sure," she said.

"I'm proper glad," said Tom, with an ecstatic grin. "I liked the
looks of you when I saw you yesterday."

"And so here I am 'at the court of the king,'" she thought.



            Chapter XIV.

         Out Of Harm's Way.

Common sense goes a great way in nursing; and when there is added
a sympathetic heart, steady nerves, a soft voice, and a gentle
hand, your nurse is about perfect, though she may not have gone
through a regular course of training.

Ward six considered itself highly favored in having Miss
Hamilton's ministrations, even for a few days. The nauseous doses
she offered were swallowed without a murmur, fevered eyes
followed her light, swift step, and men took pride in showing how
well they could bear pain when such appreciative eyes were
looking on.

Mrs. Black, rushing over to expostulate and entreat, became a
convert. It was certainly very romantic, she said; and since her
young friend was not treated like a common nurse, but had
everything her own way, it was not so bad. And without, perhaps,
having ever heard the name of Rochefoucauld, the good lady added,
"Anything may happen in Washington now."

Moreover, Miss Hamilton would sleep and take her meals at Mrs.
Black's, which was another palliating circumstance.

Mr. Lewis, with a fund of gibes ready, came also to see the new
nurse. But the sight of her silenced him.

Bending over a dying man to catch the last whisper of a message
to those he would never see again; speaking a word of
encouragement to one who lay with his teeth clenched and with
drops of agony standing on his forehead; mediating in the chronic
quarrel between regulars and volunteers; hushing the ward, that
the saving sleep of an almost exhausted patient might not be
broken--in each of these she seemed in her true place. As he
looked on, he began to realize how impertinent are
conventionalities when life and death are in the balance.

"I don't blame you, Margaret," he said seriously, "though I am
glad that you don't think of staying any longer than I do. I will
give you till Friday afternoon. If we start then, we can reach
home by Sunday morning. The track is open, and I am just off for
Baltimore. Good-by."

She accompanied him to the door. "If you should see Mr. Granger,
or write to him," she said, with some confusion, "don't mention
why I came here. I am ashamed of it."

{602}

"Oh! you needn't feel so," he replied soothingly. "We have had a
nice little adventure to pay us for the journey; and you were
breaking your heart with inaction and anxiety."

"Women should break their hearts at home!" she said proudly, her
cheeks glowing scarlet.

That was Wednesday. Thursday morning, as she rose from a five
o'clock breakfast to go over to the hospital, a carriage stopped
at the door, and, looking out, she saw Mr. Lewis coming up the
walk.

O God! The blow had fallen! No need even to look into his white
and smileless face to know that.

He stopped, and spoke through the open window. "Come, Margaret!"

Morning, was it? Morning! She could hardly see to reach the
carriage, and the earth seemed to be heaving under her feet.

As they drove through that strange, feverish world that the sunny
summer day had all at once turned into, she heard a long, heavy
breath that was almost a groan. "O dear!" said Mr. Lewis.

She reached out her hand to him, as one reaches out in the dark
for support. "Tell me!"

"It is a wound in the head," he said; "and any wound there is
bad. I got the dispatch at Baltimore last night, and came right
back. They forwarded it from Boston. Why did not you tell me that
you saw him Monday?"

"Saw him!"

"Then you didn't know him?" Mr. Lewis said. "I thought it strange
you shouldn't mention it. Louis says that when they were going
out past Columbia College, he glanced up at one of the windows,
and saw you leaning out and looking at him. You were very sober,
and made no motion to speak; and after a moment your face seemed
to fade away. It made such an impression on him that he asked to
be carried there and to that room, though it isn't an officers'
hospital. He was almost superstitious about it, till I told him
that you were really here."

It was true then. The intensity of her gaze, and the
concentration of her thoughts upon him at that moment had by some
mystery of nature which we cannot explain, though guesses have
been many, impressed her image on his mind, and thrown the
reflection of it through his eyes, so that where his glance
chanced to fall at that instant, there she had seemed to be.

"You must try to control yourself, Margie," Mr. Lewis went on,
his own lip trembling. "There is danger of delirium. He is afraid
of it, and watches every word he says. He can't talk much. I'll
give you a chance to say all you want to; and whenever I'm
needed, you can call me. I will wait just outside the door. Give
your bonnet and shawl to the lady. There, this is his room, and
that is yours, just across the entry."

Then they went in.

The pleasant chamber was clean, cool, and full of a soft flicker
of light and shade from trees and vines outside. On a narrow,
white bed opposite the windows lay Mr. Granger. Could it be that
he was ill? His eyes were bright, and his face flushed as if with
health. The only sign of hurt was a little square of wet cloth
that lay on the top of his head. But in health, in anything short
of deadly peril, he would have smiled on seeing her after so long
a time, and when she stood in such need of reassuring. His only
welcome was an outstretched hand, and a fixed, earnest gaze.

She seated herself by the bedside. "I have come to help take care
of you, Mr. Granger." Then smiling, faintly, "You don't look very
sick."

{603}

"I was in high health before I got this," he said, motioning
toward his head.

Perhaps he saw in her face some sharp springing of hope; for he
closed his eyes, and added almost in a whisper, "It isn't as wide
as a barn-door, nor as deep as a well; but it will do."

The room swam round before her eyes a moment, but she kept her
seat.

Presently the surgeon came in, and she gave place to him. But as
he removed the cloth from his patient's head, she bent
involuntarily, with the fascination of terror, and looked, and at
the sight, dropped back into her chair again. She had looked upon
nature in her inmost mysterious workshop, to which only death can
open the door. It was almost like having committed a sacrilege.

Mr. Lewis wet a handkerchief with cologne, and put it into her
hand. The others had not noticed her agitation.

When the surgeon left the room, he beckoned Margaret out with
him. "All that you can do is, to keep his head cool," he said.
"Don't let him get excited, or talk much without resting. He has
kept wonderfully calm so far; but it is by pure force of will. I
never saw more resolution."

There was nothing to do, then, but to sit and wait; to make him
feel that he was surrounded by loving care, and to let no sign of
grief disturb his quiet.

She returned to the room, and Mr. Lewis, after bending to hold
the sick man's hand one moment in a silent clasp, went out and
left them together.

After a little while, when she had resumed her seat by him, Mr.
Granger spoke, always in that suppressed voice that told what a
strain there was on every nerve. "I should have asked you to
marry me, Margaret, if I had gone back safe," he said, looking at
her with a wistful, troubled gaze, as if he wished to say more,
but could not trust himself.

"No matter about that now," she replied gently. "You have been a
good friend to me, and that is all I ever wanted."

"We could be married here, if you are willing," he went on. "Mr.
Lewis will see to everything."

Margaret lightly smoothed his feverish hands. "No," she said, "I
do not wish it. I didn't come for that. We are friends; no more.
Let me wet the cloth on your head now. It is nearly dry."

He closed his eyes, and made no answer. If he guessed confusedly
that his proposal, and what it implied, so made, was little less
than an insult, it was out of his power to help it then. And if
for a breath Margaret felt that all her obligations to him were
cancelled, and that she could not even call him friend again, it
was but for a breath. His case was too pitiful for anger. She
could forgive him anything now.

"I shall always stay with Dora, if you wish it," she said softly.
"Do not have any fears for her. I will be faithful. Trust me. I
could gladly do it for her sake, for I never loved any other
child so much. But still more, I will take care of her for
yours."

"I arranged everything before I came away," he said, looking up
again. And his eyes, she saw, were swimming in tears. "I looked
out for both of you. Your home was to be always with her, and Mr.
Lewis to be guardian for both."

Margaret could not trust herself to thank him for this proof of
his care for her.

"Have you seen the chaplain?" she asked, to turn the subject.

{604}

"Yes; but I don't feel like seeing him again. He does me no good,
and his voice confuses me. You are all the minister I
need"--smiling faintly--"and yours is the only voice I can bear."

While he rested, she sat and studied how indeed she should
minister to him.

Mr. Granger had never been baptized; and, though nominally what
is called an orthodox Congregationalist, he held their doctrines
but loosely. He had that abstract religious feeling which is the
heritage of all noble natures, the outlines of Christianity even
before Christianity is adopted, as Madame Swetchine says; but his
experience of pietists had not been such as to tempt him to join
their number. If a man lived a moral life, were kind, just, and
pure, it was about all that could be required of him, he thought.
Such a life he had lived; and now, though he approached death
solemnly, it was with no perceptible tremor, and no painful sense
of contrition.

She watched him as he lay there, smitten down in the midst of his
life and of health. He was quiet, now, except that his hands
never ceased moving, tearing slowly in strips the delicate
handkerchief he found within his reach, pulling shreds from the
palm-leaf fan that lay on the bed, or picking at the blanket. It
was the only sign of agitation he showed. His face was deeply
flushed, his breathing heavy, and his teeth seemed to be set.

Once he raised himself, and looked through the open window at the
treetops, and the city spires and domes. Margaret wondered if
they looked strange to him, and what thoughts he had; but she
never knew.

After waiting as long as she dared, she spoke to him. "Can I talk
to you a little, Mr. Granger, without disturbing you?" she asked.

"Speak," he said; "you never disturb me."

She began, and without any useless words, explained to him the
fundamental doctrines of the church, original sin, the
redemption, the necessity and effects of baptism. What she said
was clear, simple, and condensed. A hundred times during the last
two years she had studied it over for just such need as this.

"You know of course," she concluded, "that I say this because I
want you to be baptized. Are you willing?"

"I would like to do anything that would satisfy you," he said
presently. "But you would not wish me to be a hypocrite? You
cannot think that baptism would benefit me, if I received it only
because you wanted me to. I don't think that I have led a bad
life. I have not knowingly wronged any one. I am sorry for those
sins which, through human frailty, I have committed. But if I
were to live my life over again, I doubt if I should do any
better. No, child, I think it would be a mockery for me to be
baptized now."

She changed the cloth on his head, laid the ice close to his
burning temples, and fanned him in silence a few minutes.

Then she began again, repeating gently the command of our Saviour
regarding baptism, and his charge to the church to baptize and
teach.

"It is impossible to force conviction," he said. "I cannot
profess to believe what I do not."

The words came with difficulty, and his brows contracted as if
some sudden pain shot through them.

"I am not careless of the future, dear," he said after a while.
"I know that it is awful, and uncertain; but it is also
inevitable! It is too late now for me to change. But I wish that
you would pray for me. Let me hear you. Pray your own way. I am
not afraid of your saints."

{605}

Margaret knelt beside the bed, and repeated the Our Father. He
listened reverently, and echoed the Amen. She repeated the Acts,
and there was no response this time; the Creed, and still there
was no answer. She could not rise. In faltering tones she said
the Memorare, with the request, "Obtain for this friend of mine
the gift of faith, that though lost to me he may not be lost to
himself."

Still he was silent. All the pent emotion of her soul was surging
up, and showing the joints in her mail of calmness. He was going
out into what was to him the great unknown, and she, with full
knowledge of the way, could not make him see it. One last, vain
effort of self-control, then she burst forth with a prayer half
drowned in tears.

"O merciful Christ! I cannot live upon the earth unless I know
that he is in heaven. Thou hast said, Knock, and it shall be
opened unto you. With my heart and my voice I knock at the door.
Open to me for thy word's sake! Thou hast said that whatever we
ask in thy name, we shall receive. I ask for faith, for heaven,
for my friend who is dying. Give them for thy word's sake! Thou
hast said that whoever does good to the least of thy children has
done it unto thee. Remember what this man has done for me. I was
miserable, and he comforted me. I was at the point of death, and
he saved me. I was hungry, and he fed me. I was a stranger, and
he took me in. Oh! look with pity on me, who in all my life have
had only one year of happiness, but many full of sorrow; see how
my heart is breaking, and hear me for thy word's sake! for thy
word's sake!"

As her voice failed, a hand touched her head, and she heard Mr.
Granger's voice.

"I cannot make you distrust the truth of God," he said. "I do not
believe; but also, I do not know. I am willing to do all that he
requires. Perhaps he does require this. Such faith as yours must
mean something. Do as you will."

"May I send for a priest right away? And will you be baptized?"

"Dear little friend, yes!" he said.

"O Mr. Granger! God bless you! I am happy. Doesn't he keep his
promises? I will never distrust him again."

His grave looks did not dampen her joy. Of course it was not
necessary that he should have much feeling. The good intention
was enough. She wet his face with ice-water, laid ice to his
head, put the fan in his hand, in her childish, joyful way,
shutting his fingers about it one by one, then went out to send
Mr. Lewis for a priest.

He stared at her. "Why, you look as if he were going to get
well," he said almost indignantly.

"So he is, Mr. Lewis," she answered. "He is going to have the
only real getting well. I shall never have to be anxious about
him any more. He will be out of harm's way."

She went back to the sick-room then, quiet again. "Forgive me if
my gladness jarred on you," she said. "I forgot everything but
that you were now all safe. You will go straight to heaven, you
know. And of course, since it is to be now, then now is the best
time."

{606}

He said nothing, but watched her with steady eyes, wherever she
moved. What thoughts were thronging behind those eyes, she could
never know. Nothing was said till Mr. Lewis came back with the
priest.

It was sunset when he came, and the father staid till late in the
evening. Then he went, promising to say mass the next morning for
his new penitent, and to come early to see him.

Mr. Granger was evidently suffering very much, and Margaret would
not talk to him. Only once, when he opened his eyes, she said,

"You wish Dora to be a Catholic?"

"Yes, surely! O my child!" with a little moan of pain.

When the priest came up in the morning, they had some difficulty
in rousing Mr. Granger; and when at length he comprehended their
wishes, he looked from one to the other with an expression of
incredulity.

"Communion for me!" he repeated.

The priest sat beside him, and as gently as possible prepared him
for the sacrament.

"What! it is really and indeed the body and blood of Jesus Christ
that is offered me as a viaticum?" he asked, now thoroughly
roused.

"God himself has said so; and who shall dispute his word?"

The patient raised himself upright. "After I have spent all my
life in forgetfulness of him, when I turn to him only on my
death-bed, will he come to me now, and give me all himself?"

"Yes," the priest answered. "He forgives generously, as only God
can. He does not wait, he comes to you. 'Behold! I stand at the
door, and knock.'"

The sick man lifted his face; "O wonderful love!" he exclaimed.

The priest smiled, and put on his stole.

"The angels wonder no less than you," he said.

Left alone with him once more, Margaret knelt, praying
continually, but softly too, so as not to disturb one sacred
thought in that soul for the first time united to its Saviour.
When a half-hour had passed, she touched his folded hands. He had
always before opened his eyes at her faintest touch; but now he
did not.

"He has lost consciousness," the surgeon said, when she called
him. "He will never speak again."

"Oh! never again? What? never again?"

Mr. Lewis took her by the hand. "Try to bear it, Maggie," he
said. "Think what comfort you have."

"But he never said good-by to me! I wanted to say something to
him. I had so much to tell him; but I thought of him first!"

Ah! well. When we go down to the valley of the shadow of death
with our loved ones, and find the iron door that admits them shut
in our faces, then indeed we know, if never before, how precious
is faith. And those who can see the pearly gates beyond the iron
one should take shame to themselves if they refuse to be
comforted.

-------

{607}

            Beethoven.

            His Youth.

At eighteen, Louis Beethoven became conscious of new perceptions,
and new capacities for joy. A young kinswoman of his mother, a
beautiful, sprightly girl, whose parents lived in Cologne, came
on a visit to Bonn. The voice and smile of Adelaide called his
genius into full life, and he felt he had power to do as he had
never done. But Adelaide could not understand him, nor appreciate
his melodies, which were now of a bolder and higher, yet a
tenderer cast. He never declared his love in language; but his
brother Carl discovered it, and one evening, Louis overheard him
and Adelaide talking of his boyish passion, and laughing at him.
The girl said she "was half inclined to draw him out, it was such
a capital joke!"

Pale and trembling, while he leaned against the window-seat
concealed by the folds of a curtain, Louis listened to this
colloquy. As his brother and cousin left the room, he rushed past
them to his own apartment, locked himself in, and did not come
forth that night. Afterward he took pains to shun the company of
the heartless fair one; and was always out alone in his walks, or
in his room, where he worked every night till quite exhausted.
The first emotions of chagrin and mortification soon passed away;
but he did not recover his vivacity. His warmest feelings had
been cruelly outraged; the spring of love was never again to
bloom for him; and it seemed, too, that the fair blossoms of
genius also were nipped in the bud. The critics of the time,
fettered as they were to the established form, were shocked at
his departure from their rules. Even Mozart, whose fame stood so
high, whose name was pronounced with such enthusiastic
admiration, what struggles had he not been forced into with these
who would not approve of his so-called innovations! The youth of
nineteen had struck out a bolder path! What marvel, then, that,
instead of encouragement, nothing but censures awaited him? His
master, Neefe, who was accustomed to boast of him as his pride
and joy, now said, coldly and bitterly, his pupil had not
fulfilled his cherished expectations--nay, was so taken up with
his newfangled conceits, that he feared he was for ever lost to
real art.

"Is it so indeed?" asked Louis of himself in his moments of
misgivings and dejection. "Is all a delusion? Have I lived till
now in a false dream?"



Young Beethoven sat in his chamber, leaning his head on his hand,
looking gloomily out of the vine-shaded window. There was a knock
at the door; but wrapped in deep despondency, he heard it not,
nor answered with a "come in."

{608}

The door was opened softly a little ways, and in the crevice
appeared a long and very red nose, and a pair of small, twinkling
eyes, overshadowed by coal-black bushy eyebrows. Gradually became
visible the whole withered, sallow, comical, yet good-humored
face of Master Peter Pirad.

Peter Pirad was a famous kettle drummer, and was much ridiculed
on account of his partiality for that instrument, though he also
excelled on many others. He always insisted that the kettle-drum
was the most melodious, grand, and expressive instrument, and he
would play upon it alone in the orchestra. But he was one of the
best-hearted persons in the world. It was quite impossible to
look upon his tall, gaunt, clumsy figure---which, year in and
year out, appeared in the well-worn yellow woolen coat,
buckskin-colored breeches, and dark worsted stockings, with his
peculiar fashioned felt cap--without a strong inclination to
laugh; yet, ludicrous as was his outward man, none remained long
unconvinced that, spite of his exterior, spite of his numerous
eccentricities, Peter Pirad was one of the most amiable of men.

From his childhood, Louis had been attached to Pirad; in later
years, they had been much together. Pirad, who had been absent
several months from Bonn, and had just returned, was surprised
beyond measure to find his favorite so changed. He entered the
room, and walking up quietly, touched the youth on the shoulder,
saying, in a tone as gentle as he could assume, "Why, Louis! what
the mischief has got into your head, that you would not hear me?"
Louis started, turned round, and, recognizing his old friend,
reached him his hand.

"You see," continued Pirad, "you see I have returned safely and
happily from my visit to Vienna. Ah! Louis! Louis! that's a city
for you. As for taste in art, you would go mad with the Viennese!
As for artists, there are Albrechtsberger, and Haydn, Mozart, and
Salieri--my dear fellow, you _must_ go to Vienna." With that
Pirad threw up his arms, as if beating the kettle-drum, (he
always did so when excited,) and made such comical faces, that
his young companion, spite of his sorrow, could not help bursting
out laughing.

"Saker!" cried Pirad, "that is clever; I like to see that you can
laugh yet, it is a good sign; and now, Louis, pluck up like a
man, and tell me what all this means. Why do I find you in such a
bad humor, as if you had a hole in your skin, or the drums were
broken--out with it? My brave boy, what is the matter with you?"

"Ah!" replied Beethoven, "much more than I can say; I have lost
all hope, all trust in myself. I will tell you all my troubles,
for, indeed, I cannot keep them to myself any longer!" So the
melancholy youth told all to his attentive auditor; his unhappy
passion for his cousin; his master's dissatisfaction with him,
and his own sad misgivings.

When he had ended, Pirad remained silent awhile, his forefinger
laid on his long nose, in an attitude of thoughtfulness. At
length, raising his head, he gave his advice as follows: "This is
a sad story, Louis; but it convinces me of the truth of what I
used to say; your late excellent father--I say it with all
respect to his memory--and your other friends, never knew what
was really in you. As for your disappointment in love, that is
always a business that brings much trouble and little profit.
Women are capricious creatures at best, and no man who has a
respect for himself will be a slave to their humors. I was a
little touched that way myself, when I was something more than
your age; but the kettle-drum soon put such nonsense out of my
head.
{609}
My advice is, that you stick to your music, and let her go. For
what concerns the court-organist, Neefe, I am more vexed; his
absurdity is what I did not precisely expect. I will say nothing
of Herr Yunker; he forgets music in his zeal for counterpoint; as
if he should say he could not see the wood for the tall trees, or
the city for the houses! Have I not heard him assert, ay! with my
own living ears, slanderously assert, that the kettle-drum was a
superfluous instrument? Only think, Louis, the kettle-drum a
superfluous instrument! Donner and--! Did not the great
Haydn--bless him for it!--undertake a noble symphony expressly
with reference to the kettle-drum? What could you do with
'_Dies irae, dies illa_,' without the kettle-drum? I played
it at Vienna in _Don Giovanni_, the chapel-master Mozart
himself directing. In the spirit scene, Louis, where the statue
has ended his first speech, and Don Giovanni in consternation
speaks to his attendants, while the anxious heart of the appalled
sinner is throbbing, the kettle-drum thundering away--" Here
Pirad began to sing with tragical gesticulation. "Yes, Louis, I
beat the kettle-drum with a witness, while an icy thrill crept
through my bones; and for all that the kettle-drum is a useless
instrument! What blockheads there are in this world! To return to
your master--I wonder at his stupidity, and yet I have no cause
to wonder. Now, my creed is, that art is a noble inheritance left
us by our ancestors, which it is our duty to enlarge and increase
by all honest and honorable means. My dear boy, I hold you for an
honest heir, who would not waste your substance; who has not only
power, but will to perform his duty. So take courage, be not cast
down by trifles; and take my advice and go to Vienna. There you
will find your masters: Mozart, Haydn, Albrechtsberger, and
others not so well known. One year, nay, a few months in Vienna,
will do more for you than ten years vegetating in this good city.
You can soon learn, there, what you are capable of; only mind
what Mozart says, when you are playing in his hearing."

The young man started up, his eyes sparkling, his cheeks glowing
with new enthusiasm, and embraced Pirad warmly. "You are right,
my good friend!" he cried. "I will go to Vienna; and shame on any
one who despises your counsel! Yes, I will go to Vienna."

When he told his mother of his resolution, she looked grave, and
wept when all was ready for his departure. But Pirad, with a
sympathizing distortion of countenance, said to her, "Be not
disturbed, my good Madame van Beethoven! Louis shall come back to
you much livelier than he is now; and, madame, you may comfort
yourself with the hope that your son will become a great artist!"

Young Beethoven visited Vienna for the first time in the spring
of the year 1792. He experienced strange emotions as he entered
that great city; perhaps a dim presentiment of what he was in
future years to accomplish and to suffer. He was not so fortunate
this time as to find Haydn there; the artist had set out for
London a few days before. He was disappointed, but the more
anxious to make the acquaintance of Mozart. Albrechtsberger,
Haydn's intimate friend, undertook to introduce him to Mozart.

{610}

They went several times to Mozart's house before they found him
at home. At last, on a rainy day, they were fortunate. They heard
him from the street, playing; our young hero's heart beat wildly
as they went up the steps, for he looked on that dwelling as the
temple of art. When they were in the hall, they saw, through a
side-door that stood open, Mozart, sitting playing the piano;
close by him sat a short, fat man, with a shining red face; and
at the window, Madame Mozart, holding her youngest son, Wolfgang,
on her lap, while the eldest was sitting on the floor at her
feet.

The composer greeted Albrechtsberger cordially, and looked
inquiringly on his young companion. "Herr van Beethoven from
Bonn," said Albrechtsberger, presenting his friend; "an excellent
composer, and skilful musician, who is desirous of making your
acquaintance."

"You are heartily welcome, both of you, and I shall expect you to
remain and dine with me to-day," said Mozart; and taking Louis by
the hand, he led him to the window where his wife sat. "This is
my Constance," he continued, "and these are my boys; this little
fellow is but three months old"--and throwing his arm around
Constance's neck, he stooped and kissed the smiling infant.

Louis looked with surprise on the great artist. He had fancied
him quite different in his exterior; a tall man, of powerful
frame, like Handel. He saw a slight, low figure, wrapped in a
furred coat, notwithstanding the warmth of the season; his pale
face showed the evidences of long-continued ill-health; his
large, bright, speaking eyes alone reminded one of the genius
that had created _Idomeneus_ and _Don Giovanni_.

"So you, too, are a composer?" asked the fat man, coming up to
Beethoven. "Look you, sir, I will tell you what to do; lay
yourself out for the opera; the opera is the great thing!"

Louis looked at him in surprise and silence.

"Master Emanuel Schickaneder, the famous impressario," said
Albrechtsberger, scarcely controlling his disposition to laugh.

"Yes," continued the fat man, assuming an air of importance, "I
tell you I know the public, and know how to get the weak side of
it; if Mozart would only be led by me, he could do well! I say if
you will compose me something--by the way, here is a season
ticket; I shall be happy if you will visit my theatre; to-morrow
night we shall perform the _Magic Flute_, it is an admirable
piece, some of the music is first-rate, some not so good, and I
myself play the Papageno."

"You ought to do something in that line," said Mozart, laughing,
"your singing puts one in mind of an unoiled door-hinge."

The impressario took a pinch of snuff, and answered with an
important air, "I can tell you, sir, the singing is quite a
secondary thing in the opera, for I know the public."

Here several persons, invited guests of the composer, came in;
among them Mozart's pupils, Sutzmayr and Holff, with the Abbé
Stadler and the excellent tenorist, Peyerl. After an hour or so
spent in agreeable conversation, enlivened by an air from Mozart,
they went to the dinner-table. Schickaneder here played his part
well, doing ample justice to the viands and wine. The dinner was
really excellent; and the host, notwithstanding his appearance of
feeble health, was in first-rate spirits, abounding in gayety,
which soon communicated itself to the rest of the company. After
they had dined, and the coffee had been brought in, Mozart took
his new acquaintance apart from the others, and asked if he could
be of any service to him.

{611}

Louis pressed the master's hand, and without hesitation gave his
history, and informed him of his plans; concluding by asking his
advice.

Mozart listened with a benevolent smile; and when he had ended,
said, "Come, you must let me hear you play." With that, he led
him to an admirable instrument in another apartment; opened it,
and invited him to select a piece of music.

"Will you give me a theme?" asked Louis.

The master looked surprised; but without reply wrote some lines
on a leaf of paper, and handed it to the young man. Beethoven
looked over it; it was a difficult chromatic fugue theme, the
intricacy of which demanded much skill and experience. But
without being discouraged, he collected all his powers, and began
to execute it.

Mozart did not conceal the sur prise and pleasure he felt when
Louis first began to play. The youth perceived the impression he
had made, and was stimulated to more spirited efforts.

As he proceeded, the master's pale cheek flushed, his eyes
sparkled; and stepping on tiptoe to the open door, he whispered
to his guests, "Listen, I beg of you! You shall have some thing
worth hearing."

That moment rewarded all the pains, and banished all the
apprehensions of the young aspirant after excellence. Louis went
through his trial-piece with admirable spirit, sprang up, and
went to Mozart; seizing both his hands and pressing them to his
throbbing heart, he murmured, "I also am an artist!"

"You are indeed!" cried Mozart, "and no common one! And what may
be wanting, you will not fail to find, and make your own. The
grand thing, the living spirit, you bore within you from the
beginning, as all do who possess it. Come back soon to Vienna, my
young friend--very soon! Father Haydn, Albrechtsberger, friend
Stadler, and I will receive you with open arms; and if you need
advice or assistance, we will give it you to the best of our
ability."

The other guests crowded round Beethoven, and hailed him as a
worthy pupil of art! Even the silly impressario looked at him
with vastly increased respect, and said, "I can tell you, I know
the public-well, we will talk more of the matter this evening
over a glass of wine."

"I also am an artist!" repeated Louis to himself, when he
returned late to his lodgings.

Much improved in spirits, and reinspired with confidence in
himself, he returned to Bonn, and ere long put in practice his
scheme of paying Vienna a second visit.

This he accomplished at the elector's expense, being sent by him
to complete his studies under the direction of Haydn. That great
man failed to perceive how fine a genius had been intrusted to
him. Nature had endowed them with opposite qualities; the
inspiration of Haydn was under the dominion of order and method;
that of Beethoven sported with them both, and set both at
defiance.

When Haydn was questioned of the merits of his pupil, he would
answer with a shrug of his shoulders--"He executes extremely
well." If his early productions were cited as giving evidence of
talent and fire, he would reply, "He touches the instrument
admirably." To Mozart belonged the praise of having recognized at
once, and proclaimed to his friends, the wonderful powers of the
young composer.

-------

{612}

           Sauntering.

             NO. 11.


Among the churches of Paris which I visited in my saunterings,
whose very stones seemed to have a tongue and cry aloud, was the
interesting one of St. Germain des Près.

  "Each shrine and tomb within thee seems to cry."

Here were buried Mabillon and Descartes, and also King Casimir of
Poland, who laid aside his crown for a cowl in 1668, and died
abbot of the monastery in 1672. He is represented kneeling on his
tomb offering his crown to heaven. Two of the Douglases are
likewise buried here, with their carved effigies lying on their
tombs clad in armor. One was the seventeenth earl, who died in
1611. He had been bred a Protestant, but, going to France in the
time of Henry III., was converted to the faith of his fathers,
those old knights of the Bleeding Heart, by the discourses at the
Sorbonne. He returned to Scotland after his conversion, but was
persecuted there on account of his religion, and had the choice
of prison or banishment. So he chose to be exiled, and went back
to France, where he ended his days in practices of piety. He used
to attend the canonical hours at the abbey of St. Germain des
Près, and even rose for the midnight office. It was no unusual
thing in the middle ages for the laity to assist at the night
offices, and the church encouraged the practice. There was a
confraternity in Paris, in the thirteenth century, composed of
devout persons who used to attend the midnight service. This was
not confined to men, but even ladies did the same. Many people
used to pass whole nights in prayer in the churches, as, for
example, King Louis IX. and Sir Thomas More.

There is in this church a statue of the Blessed Virgin, under a
Gothic canopy all of stone, at the west end of the edifice, and
looking up the right aisle. It pleased me so much that I never
passed the church afterward without turning aside for a moment to
say my Ave before it. Tapers were always burning before it, and
there was always some one in prayer, who, like me, would
doubtless forget for a few moments the cares and vanities of life
at the feet of the Mother of Sorrows. This statue was at St.
Denis before the revolution, having been given to that church by
Queen Jeanne D'Evereux.

King Childebert's tomb formerly occupied a conspicuous place in
this church, but it is now at St. Denis, where he is represented
holding a church in his hands, and with shoes which have very
sharp and abrupt points at the ends, like an acuminate leaf. He
was the original founder of this church and the abbey once
adjoining. It was called the Golden Church, because the walls
outside were covered with plates of brass, gilt, and inside with
pictures on a gold ground. It took its name from St. Germain,
Bishop of Paris, who was buried here, and was the spiritual
adviser of Childebert. St. Germaine l'Auxerrois was named from
the sainted bishop of Auxerre of that name, renowned for his
instrumentality in checking Pelagianism in England. He visited
that country twice for that purpose. And at the head of the
Britons he was the instrument of the great Alleluia victory in
430.

{613}

Whatever other people discover, I found a great deal of piety in
Paris. The numerous churches and chapels are frequented at an
early hour for the first masses; and all through the day is a
succession of worshippers. I particularly loved the morning mass
in the Lady Chapel at St. Sulpice, at which a crowd of the common
people used to assist and sing charming cantiques in honor of the
Madonna or the Blessed Sacrament. And at Notre Dame des
Victoires, one of the most popular churches in the city, and
renowned throughout the world for its arch-confraternity to which
so many of us belong, there is no end to the stream of people.
The wonderful answers to prayer and the many miracles wrought
there draw needy and heavily-laden hearts, not only from all
parts of the kingdom, but of the world. The altar of Notre Dame
des Victoires looks precisely as it is represented in pictures.
The front and sides are of crystal, through which are seen the
relics of St. Aurelia, from the Roman catacombs. Seven large
hanging lamps burn before it, and an innumerable quantity of
tapers. On the walls are _ex voto_ and many marble tablets
with inscriptions of gratitude to Mary; such as: "_J'ai invoqué
Marie, et elle m'a exaucé._" "_Reconnaissance à Marie_,"
etc. It is extremely interesting and curious to examine all
these, and they wonderfully kindle our faith and fervor.

Among them is one of particular interest---a silver heart set in
a tablet of marble fastened to one of the pillars of the grand
nave. On it are the arms of Poland and a votive inscription. This
heart contains a portion of the soil of Poland impregnated with
the blood of her martyred people--hung here before her whom they
style their queen, as a perpetual cry to Mary from the bleeding
heart of crushed and Catholic Poland. This was placed here on the
two hundredth anniversary of the consecration of that country to
the Blessed Virgin Mary, by King John Casimir, on the first of
April, 1656. On the same day, 1856, all the Polish exiles in
Paris assembled at Notre Dame des Victoires, to renew their vows
to Mary and make their offering, which was received and blessed
by M. l'Abbé Desgenettes, the venerable curé, and founder of the
renowned arch-confraternity of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. A
lamp burns perpetually before this touching memorial, emblem of
the faith, hope, and charity of the donors.

In the national prayer of the Poles is the following touching
invocation:

  "Give back, O Lord! to our Poland her ancient splendor. Look
  down on our fields, soaked with blood! When shall peace and
  happiness blossom among us? God of wrath, cease to punish us.
  At thy altar we raise our prayer; deign to restore us, O Lord!
  our free country."

This prayer is a _Parce nobis_ which will be echoed by every
one who sympathizes with the down-trodden and oppressed.

Coming out of the church of Notre Dame des Victoires I heard the
words, "Quelques sous, pour l'amour de la Sainte Vierge," and
looking around I saw an old man holding out his hat in the most
deferential of attitudes--one of the few beggars I met in the
city. I could not resist an appeal made in the holy name of Mary,
and on the threshold of one of her favorite sanctuaries. I
thought of M. Olier, the revered founder of the Sulpicians, who
made a vow never to refuse anything asked in the name of the
Blessed Virgin--a resolution that would not often be put to the
test in the United States, but one which in Catholic countries is
less easy to be kept, where the name of Mary is so often on the
lips.
{614}
M. Olier never left his residence without encountering a crowd of
cunning beggars crying for alms in the name of the Sainte Vierge,
and, when he had nothing more, he would give them his
handkerchief or anything else he had in his pocket.

Some do not approve of indiscriminate charity; but if God were to
bestow his bounties only on the deserving, where should we all
be? Freely ye have received; freely give.

The Sainte Chapelle has peculiar attractions. It was built in the
middle of the thirteenth century for the reception of the
precious relics connected with the Passion of our Lord, given by
Baldwin II., Emperor of Constantinople, to Louis IX., in 1238.
There is a nave with four windows on each side, and a
semi-circular choir with seven windows, all filled with beautiful
old stained glass, representing the principal events of the life
of St. Louis and of the first two crusades.

Among the relics enshrined here was the holy crown of thorns. The
king sent two Dominican friars, James and Andrew, to
Constantinople for it. When it approached Paris, St. Louis, Queen
Blanche his mother, with a great many of the court, went out
beyond Sens to meet it. Entering Paris, the king and his brother
Robert, clad in woollen and with feet bare, bore the shrine on
their shoulders to the church. The bishops and clergy followed
with bare feet. The streets through which they passed were
sumptuously adorned. In 1793, the holy crown was transferred to
the Hotel des Monnaies, where it was taken from its reliquary and
given with other relics to the commission of arts under the care
of Secretary Oudry, from whom the Abbé Barthélemi obtained it in
1794. He was one of the conservateurs of the antique medals in
the Bibliothèque Nationale, where the sacred relic remained till
1804, when the Cardinal de Belloy, Archbishop of Paris, reclaimed
the relics from the ministre des cultes. Every proper means was
taken to identify them, which being satisfactorily done, the holy
crown was transported with great pomp to Notre Dame, August 10,
1806.

A portion of the holy cross, once in the Sainte Chapelle, was
saved in 1793 by M. Jean Bonvoisin, a member of the commission
des arts and a painter. He gave it to his mother, who preserved
it with veneration during the revolution and restored it to the
chapter of Paris, in 1804, after M. Bonvoisin and his mother had
sworn to the truth of these facts in order to authenticate the
relic. It was then allowed to be exposed in the reliquary of
crystal in which we see it.

There were at Paris other portions of the holy and true cross on
which our Saviour was crucified. One was the Vraie Croix
d'Anseau, so called because it was sent in 1109 to the archbishop
and chapter of Paris by Anselle or Anseau, _grand-chantre_
of the church of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem, who had
obtained it from the superior of the Georgian nuns in that city,
the widow of David, king of Georgia. In 1793, M. Guyot de St.
Hélène obtained permission to keep the cross of Anseau. He
divided it with Abbé Duflost, guardian of the four crosses made
of the part he kept, of which three only have been restored to
Notre Dame. M. Guyot took the precaution to have them
authenticated, and they were restored to the veneration of the
faithful in 1803.

{615}

Another portion of the true cross was called the Palatine cross,
because it belonged to Anna Gonzaga of Cleves, a Palatine
princess, who left it by her will to the Abbey of St. Germain des
Près, attesting that she had seen it in the flames without being
burnt. This relic was enclosed in a cross of precious stones,
double, like the cross of Jerusalem. This cross had belonged to
Manuel Comnenus, Emperor of Constantinople, who presented it to a
prince of Poland. It is eight inches high, without measuring the
foot of _vermeil_ of about the same height, ornamented with
precious stones. It has two cross-pieces, like the crosses of
Jerusalem, which are filled with the wood of the true cross. It
is bordered with diamonds and amethysts. The Palatine princess
received it from John Casimir, King of Poland, who took it with
him when he retired to France. It was preserved by a curé in
1793, and restored, in 1828, to Notre Dame.

There are two portions of the holy nails at Notre Dame de
Paris--one formerly at the abbey of St. Denis, and the other at
St. Germain des Près. The first was brought by Charles the Bald
from Aix-la-Chapelle, it having been given Charlemagne by the
Patriarch of Jerusalem.

In 1793, M. Le Lièvre, a member of the Institute, begged
permission to take it from the commission des arts to examine and
analyze it as a specimen of mineralogy. He thus saved it from
profanation, and restored it to the Archbishop of Paris in 1824.

The second portion was given to St. Germain des Près by the
Princess Palatine, who had received it from John Casimir of
Poland.

There are many curious old legends respecting the wood of the
cross. Sir John Mandeville says it was made of the same tree Eve
plucked the apple from. When Adam was sick, he told Seth to go to
the angel that guarded paradise, to send him some oil of mercy to
anoint his limbs with. Seth went, but the angel would not admit
him, or give him the oil of mercy. He gave him, however, three
leaves from the fatal tree, to be put under Adam's tongue as soon
as he was dead. From these sprang the tree of which the cross was
made.

One of the first portions of the holy cross received in France
was sent by the Emperor Justin to St. Radegonde. It was adorned
with gold and precious stones. When it arrived with other relics,
and a copy of the four Gospels richly ornamented, the archbishop
of Tours and a great procession of people went out with lights,
incense, and sound of holy chant to bear them into the city of
Poitiers, where they were placed in the monastery of the Holy
Cross founded by St. Radegonde. The great Fortunatus composed in
honor of the occasion the Vexilla Regis, now a part of the divine
office. I quote two verses of a fine translation of this
well-known hymn:

  "O tree of beauty, tree of light!
   O tree with royal purple dight!
   Elect on whose triumphal breast
   Those holy limbs should find their rest!

  "On whose dear arms, so widely flung,
   The weight of this world's ransom hung,
   The price of human kind to pay,
   And spoil the spoiler of his prey!"

One pleasant morning I took the cars to visit St. Denis, the old
burial-place of the kings of France. As Michelet says, "This
church of tombs is not a sad and pagan necropolis, but glorious
and triumphant; brilliant with faith and hope; vast and without
shade, like the soul of the saint who built it; light and airy,
as if not to weigh on the dead or hinder their spring upward to
the starry spheres."

{616}

Mabillon was at one time the visitor's guide to the tombs of St.
Denis. I do not know whether I should prefer his learned details
and sage reflections over the ashes of the illustrious dead, or
be left as I was to wander alone with my own thoughts through the
church of the crypts. What a great chapter of history may be read
in this sepulchre of kings! What a commentary on the text,
"_Dieu seul est grand,_" is that stained page of the
revolution, when the bones of the mighty dead were torn from
their magnificent tombs and cast into a trench! It was then earth
to earth and ashes to ashes, like the meanest of us. What a long
stride may be made here from King Dagobert's tomb at the
entrance, all sculptured with legendary lore, to the clere-story
window, all emblazoned with Napoleon's glory; from the recumbent
Du Guesclin to the tomb of Turenne, and from the chair of St.
Eloi to the stall of Napoleon III.! A fit place to moralize,
among these statues of kneeling kings and queens, with their
hands folded as if they had gone to sleep in prayer.

  "For heaven's sake, let us sit upon the ground,
   And tell sad stories of the death of kings."

I sought out the tomb of one of my favorite knights of the middle
ages--that of Bertrand du Guesclin, who, by his devotion to his
country and his prowess, merited a place here among kings and to
have his ashes mingled with theirs in 1793. There are four of
these knights of the olden time in this chapel, all in stone,
lying in armor on their tombs. I sat down at the feet of Du
Guesclin to read my monographie before going around the church.

My visit was in the octave of the festival of St. Denis and his
companions, and their relics were exposed on an altar covered
with crimson velvet. Huge wax tapers burned around them, and the
chancel was hung around with old tapestry after the designs of
Raphael--

  "Whose glittering tissues bore emblazoned
   Holy memorials, acts of zeal and love
   Recorded eminent."

This church is a monument of the genius and piety of Suger, one
of the most noble and venerable figures in French history, the
Abbot of St. Denis, and a statesman. He has been styled "the true
founder of the Capetian dynasty." He was one of those eminent men
so often found in the church of the middle ages who were raised
from obscurity to positions of authority. In his humility, when
regent of France, he often alluded to his lowly origin, and once
in the following words: "Recalling in what manner the strong hand
of God has raised me from the dunghill and made me to sit among
the princes of the church and of the kingdom."

The princes of France used to be educated in the abbey of St.
Denis, and it was here Louis VI. formed a lasting friendship for
Suger, which led him afterward to make him his prime minister.

The monk Suger was on his way home from Italy in 1122 when he
heard of his election as abbot of St. Denis. He burst into tears
through grief for the death of good old abbot Adam, who had cared
for him in his youth. That very morning he had risen to say
matins before leaving the hostelry where he lodged, and,
finishing the office before it was light, he threw himself again
on his couch to await the day. Falling into a doze, he dreamed he
was in a skiff on the wide raging sea, at the mercy of the waves,
and he prayed God to spare and to conduct him into port. He felt,
on awakening, as if threatened with some great danger, but, as he
afterward said, he trusted the goodness of God would deliver him
from it.
{617}
After travelling a few leagues, he met the deputation from St.
Denis announcing his election as abbot.

When Louis le Jeune, with a great number of nobles, decided to go
to the Holy Land, it was resolved to choose a regent to govern
the kingdom during his absence. The Holy Spirit was invoked to
guide the decisions of the nobles and bishops. St. Bernard
delivered a discourse on the qualities a regent should possess.
The Count de Nevers and Abbot Suger were chosen. The former
declined the office, wishing to enter the Carthusian order. Suger
accepted this office with extreme reluctance, and only at the
command of the pope. He showed himself an able statesman. St.
Bernard reproached him for the state in which he lived while at
court, but he proved his heart was not in such a life by resuming
all his austerities when he returned to his monastery.

He rebuilt the abbey church of St. Denis in a little more than
three years. He assembled the most skilful workmen and sculptors
from all parts. But he himself was the chief architect. The very
people around wished to have a share in the work, believing it
would draw down on them the blessing of Heaven. They brought him
marble from Pontoise, and wood from the forest of Chevreuse,
sixty leagues distant. But he himself selected the trees to be
cut down. Bishops, nobles, and the king assisted in laying the
foundations, each one laying a stone while the monks chanted,
"_Fundamenta ejus in montibus sanctis._" While they were
singing in the course of the service, "_Lapides pretiosi omnes
muri tui,_" the king took a ring of great value from his
finger and threw it on the foundations, and all the nobles
followed his example.

When the church was consecrated, the king and a host of church
dignitaries were present. Thibaud, Archbishop of Canterbury,
consecrated the high altar, and twenty other altars were
consecrated by as many different bishops.

Suger had a little cell built near the church for his own use. It
was fifteen feet long and ten wide. When he built for God his
ideas were full of grandeur, but for himself nothing was too
lowly. This little cell beside the magnificent church was a
continual act of humility before the majesty of the Most High.
"Whatever is dear and most precious should be made subservient to
the administration of the thrice holy Eucharist," said he. We
read how Peter the Venerable, Abbot of Cluny, came to visit St.
Denis. After admiring the grandeur of the church, they came to
the cell. "Behold a man who condemns us all!" exclaimed Peter
with a sigh. The cell had neither tapestry nor curtains. He slept
on straw, and his table was set with strictest regard to monastic
severity. He never rode in a carriage, but always on horseback,
even in old age.

When Abbot Suger felt his end approaching, he went, supported by
two monks, into the chapter room where the whole community was
assembled, and addressed them in the most solemn and impressive
manner on the judgments of God. Then he knelt before them all,
and with tears besought their pardon for all the faults of his
administration during thirty years. The monks only answered with
their tears. He laid down his crosier, declaring himself unworthy
the office of abbot, and begged them to elect his successor, that
he might have the happiness of dying a simple monk. There is a
touching letter from St. Bernard written at this time, which
commences thus:

{618}

  "Friar Bernard to his very dear and intimate friend Suger, by
  the grace of God abbot of St. Denis, wishing him the glory that
  springs from a good conscience, and the grace which is a gift
  of God. Fear not, O man of God! to put off the earthly man
  --that man of sin which torments, oppresses, persecutes
  you--the weight of which sinks you down to earth and drags you
  almost to the abyss! What have you in part with this mortal
  frame--you who are about to be clothed with glorious
  immortality?"

Toward Christmas Suger grew so weak that he rejoiced at the
prospect of his deliverance, but fearing his death would
interrupt the festivities of that holy time, he prayed God to
prolong his life till they were over. His prayer was heard. He
died on the twelfth of January, having been abbot of St. Denis
twenty-nine years and ten months, from 1122 to 1152. His tomb
bore the simple inscription:

  "Cy gist l'Abbé Suger."

The charter for the foundation of the abbey of St. Denis was
given by Clovis. It was written on papyrus, and among others the
signature of St. Eloi was attached to it. Pepin and Charlemagne
were great benefactors of the abbey. Pepin was buried before the
grand portal of the old church with his face down, wishing by his
prostrate position to atone for the excesses of his father
Charles Martel. Charlemagne with filial reverence built a porch
to the church, as a covering over his father's tomb, and that he
might not lie without the church. In rebuilding it, Suger had the
porch removed and the body transferred into the interior.

The treasury of the abbey was once exceedingly rich. The old
kings of France left their crowns to it, and on grand festivals
they were suspended before the high altar. Here were the cross
and sceptre of Charlemagne, and the crown and ring of the holy
Louis IX. Philip Augustus gave the abbey in his will all his
jewels and crosses of gold, desiring twenty monks to say masses
for his soul. The chess-board and chess-men of Charlemagne were
kept here for ages. Joubert, the Coleridge of France, says:

  "The pomps and magnificence with which the church is reproached
  are in truth the result and proof of her incomparable
  excellence. Whence came, let me ask, this power of hers and
  these excessive riches, except from the enchantment into which
  she threw all the world? Ravished with her beauty, millions of
  men from age to age kept loading her with gifts, bequests, and
  cessions. She had the talent of making herself loved and the
  talent of making men happy. It is that which wrought prodigies
  for her, it is thence she drew her power."

Sixty great wax candles used to burn around the high altar of St.
Denis on great festivals. Dagobert left one hundred livres a year
to obtain oil for lights, and Pepin allowed six carts to bring it
all the way from Marseilles without toll.

In the middle ages there were fairs near the abbey which lasted
for a month. Merchants came from Italy, Spain, and all parts of
Europe, and, to encourage them to be mindful of their souls as
well as of their purses, indulgences were granted to all who
visited the church.



These are a few notes of my saunterings. Each one of these holy
places, as well as every church in those old lands, has its
history which is interesting, and its legends that are poetical
and full of meaning. They would fill volumes. Travelling is like
eating; what gives pleasure to one only aggravates the bile of
another. Some only find tyranny in the authority of the church, a
love of pomp and display in her splendor, and superstition in her
piety. Thoreau says, "Where an angel treads, it will be paradise
all the way; but where Satan travels, it will be burning marl and
cinders."

-------

{619}

       Spiritualism and Materialism.

Professor Huxley, as we saw in a late number of this magazine, in
the article on _The Physical Basis of Life_, while rejecting
spiritualism, gives his opinion that materialism is a
philosophical error, on the ground of our ignorance of what
matter is, or is not. There is some truth in the assertion of our
ignorance of the essence or real nature of matter or material
existence, though the professor had no logical right to assert
it, after having adopted a materialistic terminology, and done
his best to prove the material origin of life, thought, feeling,
and the various mental phenomena. Yet we are far from regarding
what is called materialism as the fundamental error of this age,
nor do we believe that there is any necessary or irrepressible
antagonism between spirit and matter, either intellectual or
moral. In our belief, a profound philosophy, though it does not
identify spirit and matter, shows their dialectic harmony, as
revelation asserts it in asserting the resurrection of the flesh,
and the indissoluble reunion of body and soul in the future life.

The fundamental error of this age is the denial of creation, and,
theologically expressed, is, with the vulgar, atheism, and with
the cultivated and refined, pantheism. Atheism is the denial of
unity, and pantheism the denial of plurality or diversity, and
both alike deny creation, and seek to explain the universe by the
principle of self-generation or self-development. What is really
denied is God THE CREATOR.

There are, no doubt, moral causes that have led in part to this
denial, but with them we have at present nothing to do. The
assertion of moral causes is more effective in preventing men
from abandoning the truth and falling into error than in
recovering and leading back to the truth those who have lost it,
or know not where to find it. We lose our labor when we begin our
efforts, as philosophers, to convert those who are in error by
assuring them that they have erred only through moral perversity
or hatred of the true and the good, the just and the holy,
especially in an age when conscience is fast asleep. We aim at
convincing, not at convicting, and therefore take up only the
intellectual causes which lead to the denial of creation. Among
these causes, we shall, no doubt, find materialism and a
pseudo-spiritualism both playing their part; but the real causes,
we apprehend, are in the fact that the philosophic tradition,
which has come down to us from gentilism, has never been fully
harmonized with the Christian tradition, which has come down to
us through the church.

Gentilism had lost sight of God the Creator, and confounded
creation with generation, emanation, or formation. Why the
gentiles were led into this error would be an interesting chapter
in the history of the wanderings of the human mind; but we have
no space at present for the inquiry. It is enough, for our
present purpose, to establish the fact that the gentiles did fall
into it. The conception of creation is found in none of the
heathen mythologies, learned or unlearned, of which we have any
knowledge; and that they do not recognize a creative God, may be
inferred from the fact that in them all, so far as known, was
worshipped, under obscure symbols, the generative forces or
functions of nature.
{620}
In no gentile philosophy, not even in Plato or Aristotle, do you
find any conception of God the Creator. Père Gratry, indeed,
thinks he finds the fact of creation recognized by Plato,
especially in the _Timaeus_; but though we have read time
and again that most important of Plato's dialogues, we have never
found the fact of creation in it; all we can find in it bearing
on this point is what Plato, as we understand him, uniformly
teaches, the identity of the idea with the essence or _causa
essentialis_ of the thing. As, for instance, the idea of a man
is the real, essential man himself; and is simply the idea in the
divine mind, impressed on a preexisting matter, as the seal upon
wax. God creates neither the idea nor the matter. The idea is
himself; the matter is eternal. Aristotle does not essentially
differ from Plato on this point. The individual existence,
according to him, is composed of matter and form; the form alone
is substantial, and matter is simply its passive recipient. The
substantial forms are supplied, but not created by the divine
intelligence. In no form of heathenism that existed before the
Christian era have we found any conception of creation. The
conception or tradition of creation was retained only by the
patriarchs and the synagogue, and has been restored to the
converted gentiles by the Christian church alone.

St. Augustine, and after him the great medieval
doctors--especially the greatest of them all, the Angel of the
schools--labored assiduously, and up to a certain point
successfully, to amend the least debased gentile philosophy so as
to make it harmonize with Christian theology and tradition. They
took from gentile philosophy the elements it had retained from
the ancient wisdom, supplied their defects with elements taken
from the Christian tradition, and formed a really Christian
philosophy, which still subsists in union with theology.

This work of harmonizing faith and philosophy, or, perhaps, more
correctly, of constructing a philosophy in harmony with faith and
theology, was nearly, if not quite completed by the great western
scholastics or medieval doctors; but, unhappily, the East,
separated from the centre of unity, or holding to it only loosely
and by fits and starts, did not share in the great intellectual
movement of the West. It made little or no progress in
harmonizing gentile philosophy and Christian theology. It
retained and studied the gentile philosophers, especially of the
Platonic and Neoplatonic schools; and when the Greek scholars,
after the taking of Constantinople by the Turks, in 1453, sought
refuge in the West, they brought with them, not only their
schism, but their unmitigated gentile philosophy, corrupted the
western schools, and unsettled to a fearful extent the confidence
of scholars in the scholastic philosophy. We owe the false
systems of spiritualism and materialism, of atheism and
pantheism, to what is called the Revival of Letters in the
fifteenth century, or the Greek invasion of western Christendom.

The scholastics, especially St. Thomas, had transformed the
peripatetic philosophy into a Christian philosophy; but the other
Greek schools had remained pagan; and it was precisely these
other schools, especially the Platonic, and Neoplatonic, or
Alexandrian eclecticism, that now revived in their
unchristianized form, and were opposed to the Aristotelian
philosophy as modified by the schoolmen.
{621}
Some of the early fathers were more inclined to Plato than to
Aristotle, but none of these, not Clemens Alexandrinus, Origen,
or even St. Augustine, had harmonized throughout Plato's
philosophy with Christianity, and we should greatly wrong St.
Augustine, at least, if we called him a systematic Platonist.

With the study of Plato was revived in western Europe a false and
exaggerated spiritualism, and a philosophy which denied creation
as a truth of philosophy, and admitted it only as a doctrine of
revelation. The authority of the scholastic philosophy was
weakened, a decided tendency in pantheistic direction to thought
was given, and the way was prepared for Giordano Bruno, as well
as for the Protestant apostasy. We say _apostasy_, because
Luther's movement was really an apostasy, as its historical
developments have amply proved. With Plato was revived the
Academy with its scepticism, Sextus Empiricus, and after him
Epicurus; and before the close of the sixteenth century, Europe
was overrun with false mystics, sceptics, pantheists, and
atheists, who abounded all through the seventeenth century, in
spite of a very decided reaction in favor of faith and the
church. What is worthy of special note is, that in all this
period of two centuries and a half it was no uncommon thing to
find men who, as philosophers, denied the immortality of the
soul, which as believers they asserted; or combining a childlike
faith with nearly universal scepticism, as we see in Montaigne.

Gradually, however, men began to see that, while they
acknowledged a discrepancy between what they held as philosophy
and the Christian faith, they could not retain both; that they
must give up the one or the other. England, in the latter half of
the seventeenth century, swarmed with free thinkers who denied
all divine revelation; and France, in the eighteenth century,
rejected the church, rejected the Bible, suppressed Christian
worship, rebuilt the Pantheon, and voted death to be an eternal
sleep. But the eighteenth century was born of the seventeenth, as
the seventeenth was born of the sixteenth, as the sixteenth was
born of the revival of Greek letters and philosophy, thoroughly
impregnated with paganism, supposed by unthinking men to be the
most glorious event in modern history, saving, always, Luther's
Reformation.

In the seventeenth century, Descartes undertook to reform and
reconstruct philosophy after a new method. He undertook to erect
philosophy into a complete science in the rational order,
independent of revelation. If he recognized the creative act of
God, or God as creator, it was as a theologian, not as a
philosopher; for certainly he does not start with the creative
act as a first principle, nor does he, nor can he, arrive at it
by his method. God as creator cannot be deduced from _cogito,
ergo sum;_ for, without presupposing God as my creator, I
cannot assert that I exist. Gentilism had so far revived that it
was able to take possession of philosophy the moment it was
detached from Christian theology and declared an independent
science; and as that has no conception of creation, the tradition
preserved by Jews and Christians was at once relegated from
philosophy to theologian, from science to faith. Hence we fail to
find creation recognized as a philosophical truth in the system
of his disciple Malebranche, a profounder philosopher than
Descartes himself. The prince of modern sophists, Spinoza,
adopting as his starting point the definition of substance given
by Descartes, demonstrates but too easily that there can be only
one substance, and that there can be no creation, or that nothing
does or can exist except the one substance and its attributes,
modes, or affections. Calling the one substance God, he arrived
at once at pantheism, now so prevalent.

{622}

That Descartes felt a difficulty in asserting creation in its
proper sense, may be inferred from the fact that he always calls
the soul _la pensée_, thought; never, if we recollect
aright, a substance that thinks, which was itself a large stride
toward pantheism, for pantheism consists precisely in denying all
substantive existences except the one only substance, which is
God. Spinoza developed his principles with a logic vastly
superior to his own, and brought out errors which he probably did
not foresee. Indeed, we do not pretend that Descartes intended to
favor or had any suspicion that he was favoring pantheism; but he
most certainly did not recognize any principle that would enable
his disciples to oppose it, and in former days, before we knew
the church, we ourselves found, or thought we found, pantheism
flowing logically from his premises, and we escaped it only by
rejecting the Cartesian philosophy.

Descartes revived in modern philosophy that antagonism between
spirit and matter which was unknown to the scholastic philosophy,
and which renders the mutual commerce of soul and body
inexplicable. The scholastic doctors had recognized, indeed,
matter and form; but with them matter was simply possibility,
existing only _in potentia ad formam_, and was never
supposed to be the basis or substratum of any existence whatever.
The real existence was in the form, the _forma_ or the
_idea_. They distinguished, certainly, between corporeal and
incorporeal existences; but not, as the moderns do, between
spiritual and material existences, and the question between
spiritualism and materialism, as we have it to-day, did not and
could not come up with them. The distinction with them was
between sensibles and intelligibles, the only distinction that
philosophy by her own light knows. _Spirit_ was a term very
nearly restricted to God, and _spiritual_ meant partaking of
spirit, living according to the spirit; that is, living a godly
life begotten by the Holy Spirit, as in the inspired writings of
St. Paul.

Even the ancients did not distinguish, in the modern sense,
between spirit and matter. Their gods were corporeal, but
ordinarily impassible. The spirit was not a distinct existence,
but was the universal principle of life, thought, and action, and
the spirit of man was an emanation from the universal spirit,
which at death flowed back and was reabsorbed in the ocean from
which it emanated. Their ghosts were not disembodied spirits, as
ours are, were not departed spirits, but the umbra or shade--a
thin, aerial apparition, bearing the exact resemblance of the
body, and had formed during life, if I may so speak, its inner
lining, or the immediate envelope of the spirit. It is the body
that after death still invests the soul, according to Swedenborg,
who denies the resurrection of the flesh. According to ancient
Greek and Roman gentilism it was not spirit, nor body, but
something between the two. It hovered over and around the dead
body, and it was to allay it, and enable it to rest in peace that
the funeral rites or obsequies of the dead were performed, and
judged to be so indispensable. The Marquis de Mirville, in his
work on _The Fluidity of Spirits_, seems to think the umbra
was not a pure imagination, and is inclined to assert it, and to
make it the basis of the explanation of many of the so-called
spirit-phenomena.
{623}
He supposes it is capable of transporting the soul, or of being
transported by the soul, out of the body, and to a great distance
from it, and that the body itself will bear the marks of the
wounds that may be given it. In this way he also explains the
prodigies of bilocation.

But however this may be, the ghost of heathen superstition is
never the spirit returned to earth, nor is it the spirit that is
doomed to Tartarus, or that is received into the Elysian Fields,
the heathen paradise. Hades, which includes both Tartarus and
Elysium, is a land of shadows, inhabited by shades that are
neither spirit nor body; for the heathen knew nothing, and
believed nothing, of the resurrection of the flesh, and the
reunion of soul and body in a future life. The spirit at death
returns to its fountain, and the body, dissolved, loses itself in
the several elements from which it was taken, and only the shade
or shadow of the living man survives. Even in Elysium, the ghosts
that sport on the flowery banks of the river, repose in the green
bowers, or pursue in the fields the mimic games and pastimes that
they loved, are pale, thin, and shadowy. The whole is a mimic
scene, if we may trust either Homer or Virgil, and is far less
real and less attractive than the happy hunting grounds of the
red men of our continent, to which the good, that is, the brave
Indian is transported when he dies. The only distinction we find,
with the heathen, between spirit and matter, is, the distinction
between the divine substance, or intelligence, and an eternally
existing matter, as the stuff of which bodies or corporeal
existences, the only existences recognized, are formed or
generated.

But Descartes distinguished them so broadly that he seemed to
make them each independent of the other. Why, then, was either
necessary to the life and activity of the other? And we see in
Descartes no use that the soul is or can be to the body, or the
body to the soul. Hence, philosophy, starting from Descartes,
branched out in two opposite directions, the one toward the
denial of matter, and the other toward the denial of spirit; or,
as more commonly expressed, into idealism and materialism, but as
it would be more proper to say, into intellectism and sensism.
The spiritualism of Descartes, so far as it had been known in the
history of philosophy, was only the Neoplatonic mysticism, which
substitutes the direct and immediate vision, so to speak, of the
intelligible, for its apprehension through sensible symbols and
the exercise of the reasoning faculty. From this it was an easy
step to the denial of an external and material world, as was
proved by Berkeley, who held the external world to consist simply
of pictures painted on the retina of the eye by the creative act
of God; and before him by Collier, who maintained that only mind
exists. It was an equally short and easy step to take the other
direction, assert the sufficiency of the corporeal or material,
and deny the existence of spirit or the incorporeal, since the
senses take cognizance of the corporeal and the corporeal only.
Either step was favored by the ancient philosophy revived and set
up against the scholastic philosophy. It was hardly possible to
follow out the exaggerated and exclusive spiritualism of the one
class without running into mystic pantheism, or the independence
of the corporeal or material, without falling into material
pantheism or atheism. These two errors, or rather these two
phases of one and the same error, are the fundamental or mother
error of this age--perhaps, in principle, of all ages--and is
receiving an able refutation by one of our collaborateurs in the
essay on Catholicity and Pantheism now in the course of
publication in this magazine.

{624}

It is no part of our purpose now to refute this error; we have
traced it from gentilism, shown that it is essentially pagan, and
owes its prevalence in the modern world to the revival of Greek
letters and philosophy in the fifteenth century, the discredit
into which the study of Plato and the Neoplatonists threw the
scholastic philosophy, and especially to the divorce of
philosophy from theology, declared by Descartes in the
seventeenth century. Yet we do not accept either exclusive
materialism or exclusive spiritualism, and the question itself
hardly has place in our philosophy, as it hardly had place in
that of St. Thomas. It became a question only when philosophy was
detached from theology, of which it forms the rational as
distinguishable but not separable from the revealed element, and
reduced to a mere _Wissenchaftslehre_, or rather a simple
methodology. True philosophy joined with theology is the response
to the question, What is, or exists? What are the principles and
causes of things? What are our relations to those principles and
causes? What is the law under which we are placed? and what are
the means and conditions within our reach, natural or gracious,
of fulfilling our destiny, or of attaining to our supreme good?
Not a response to the question, for the most part an idle
question, How do we know, or how do we know that we know?

Many of the most difficult problems for philosophers, and which
we confess our inability to solve, may be eluded by a flank
movement, to use a military phrase. Such is the question of the
origin of ideas, of certitude, and the passage from the
subjective to the objective, and this very question of
spiritualism and materialism. All these are problems which no
philosopher yet has solved from the point of view of exclusive
psychology, or of exclusive ontology, or of any philosophy that
leaves them to be asked. But we are much mistaken if they do not
cease to be problems at all, when one starts with the principles
of things, or if they do not solve themselves. We do not find
them, in the modern sense, raised by Plato or Aristotle, nor by
St. Augustine or St. Thomas. When we have the right stand-point,
if Mr. Richard Grant White will allow us the term, and see things
from the point of view of the real order, these problems do not
present themselves, and are wholly superseded. Professor Huxley
is right enough when he tells us that we know the nature and
essence neither of spirit nor of matter. I know from revelation
that there is a spirit in man, and that the inspiration of the
Almighty giveth him understanding, but I know neither by
revelation nor by reason what spirit is. God is a spirit; but if
man is a spirit, it must be in a very different sense from that
in which God is a spirit. Although the human spirit may have a
certain likeness to the Divine spirit, it yet cannot be divine,
for it is created; and they who call it divine, a spark of
divinity, or a particle of God, either do not mean, or do not
_know_ what they literally assert. They only repeat the old
gentile doctrine of the substantial identity of the spirit with
divinity, from whom it emanates, and to whom it returns, to be
reabsorbed in him--a pantheistic conception. All we can say of
spiritual existences is, that they are incorporeal intelligences;
and all we can say of man is, that he has both a corporeal and an
incorporeal nature; and perhaps without revelation we should be
able to say not even so much.

{625}

We know, again, just as little of matter. What is matter? Who can
answer? Nay, what is body? Who can tell? Body, we are told, is
composed of material elements. Be it so. What are those elements?
Into what is matter resolvable in the last analysis? Into
indestructible and indissoluble atoms, says Epicurus; into
entelecheia, or self-acting forces, says Aristotle; into
extension, says Descartes; into monads, each acting from its
centre, and representing the entire universe from its own point
of view, says Leibnitz; into centres of attraction and
gravitation, says Father Boscovich; into pictures painted on the
retina of the eye by the Creator, says Berkeley, the Protestant
bishop of Cloyne, and so on. We may ask and ask, but can get no
final answer.

Take, instead of matter, an organic body; who can tell us what it
is? It is extended, occupies space, say the Cartesians. But is
this certain? Leibnitz disputes it, and it is not easy to attach
any precise meaning to the assertion "it occupies space," if we
have any just notion of space and time, the _pons asinorum_
of psychologists. What is called actual or real space is the
relation of co-existence of creatures; and is simply nothing
abstracted from the related. It would be a great convenience if
philosophers would learn that nothing is nothing, and that only
God can create something from nothing. Space being nothing but
relation, to say of a thing that it occupies space, is only
saying that it exists, and exists in a certain relation to other
objects. This relation may be either sensible or intelligible; it
is sensible, or what is called sensible space, when the objects
related are sensible. Extension is neither the essence nor a
property of matter, but the sensible relation of an object either
to some other objects or to our sensible perception. It is, as
Leibnitz very well shows, only the relation of continuity. Whirl
a wheel with great force and rapidity, and you will be unable to
distinguish its several spokes, and it will seem to be all of one
continuous and solid piece. Intelligible space as distinguished
from sensible space is the logical relation of things, or, as
more commonly called, the relation of cause and effect. When we
conform our notions of space to the real order, and understand
that the sensible simply copies, imitates, or symbolizes the
intelligible, we shall see that we have no authority for saying
extension is even a property of body or of matter.

That extension is simply the sensible relation of body, not its
essence, nor even a property of matter, is evident from what
physiologists tell us of organic or living bodies. There can be
no reasonable doubt that the body I now have is the same
identical body with which I was born, and yet it contains,
probably, not a single molecule or particle of sensible matter it
originally had. As I am an old man, all the particles or
molecules of my body have probably been changed some ten or
twenty times over; yet my body remains unchanged. It is evident,
then, since the molecular changes do not affect its identity,
that those particles or molecules of matter which my body
assimilates from the food I take to repair the waste that is
constantly going on, or to supply the loss of those particles or
molecules constantly exuded or thrown off, do not compose, make
up, or constitute the real body. This fact is commended to the
consideration of those learned men, like the late Professor
George Bush, who deny the resurrection of the body, on the ground
that these molecular changes which have been going on during life
render it a physical impossibility. This fact also may have some
bearing on the Catholic mystery of Transubstantiation.
{626}
St. Augustine distinguishes between the visible body and the
intelligible body--the body that is seen and the body that is
understood--and tells us that it is the intelligible, or, as he
sometimes says, the spiritual, not the visible or sensible, body
of our Lord that is present in the Blessed Eucharist. In fact,
there is no change in the sensible body of the bread and the
wine, in Transubstantiation. The sensible body remains the same
after consecration that it was before. The change is in the
essence or substance, or the intelligible body, and hence the
appropriateness of the term _transubstantiation_ to express
the change which takes place at the words of consecration. Only
the intelligible body, that is, what is non-sensible in the
elements bread and wine, is transubstantiated, and yet their real
body is changed, and the real body of our Lord takes its place.
The nonsensible or invisible body, the intelligible body, is
then, in either case, assumed by the sacred mystery to be the
real body; and hence, supposing us right in our assumption that
our body remains always the same in spite of the molecular
changes--which was evidently the doctrine of St. Augustine--there
is nothing in science or the profoundest philosophy to show that
either transubstantiation or the resurrection of the flesh is
impossible, or that God may not effect either consistently with
his own immutable nature, if he sees proper to do it. Nothing
aids the philosopher so much as the study of the great doctrines
and mysteries of Christianity, as held and taught by the church.

The distinction between seeing and intellectually apprehending,
and therefore between the visible body and the intelligible body,
asserted and always carefully observed by St. Augustine when
treating of the Blessed Eucharist, belongs to a profounder
philosophy than is now generally cultivated. Our prevailing
philosophy, especially outside of the church, recognizes no such
distinction. It is true, we are told, that the senses perceive
only the sensible properties or qualities of things; that they
never perceive the essence or substance; but then the essence or
substance is supposed to be a mere abstraction with no
intelligible properties or qualities, or a mere substratum of
sensible properties and qualities. The sensible exhausts it, and
beyond what the senses proclaim the substance has no quality or
property, and is and can be the subject of no predicate. This is
a great mistake. The sensible properties and qualities are real,
that is, are not false or illusory; but they are real only in the
sensible order, or the _mimesis_, as Gioberti, after Plato
and some of the Greek fathers, calls it in his posthumous works.
The intelligible substance is the thing itself, and has its own
intelligible properties and qualities, which the sensible only
copies, imitates, or mimics. All through nature there runs, above
the sensible, the intelligible, in which is the highest created
reality, with its own attributes and qualities, which must be
known before we can claim to know anything as it really is or
exists. We do not know this in the case of body or matter; we do
not and cannot know what either really is, and can really know of
either only its sensible properties.

We know that if matter exists at all, it must have an essence or
substance; but what the substance really is human science has not
learned and cannot learn. We really know, then, of matter in
itself no more than we do of spirit, except that matter has its
sensible copy, which spirit has not.
{627}
Matter, as to its substance, is supersensible, and as to the
essence or nature of its substance is superintelligible, as is
spirit; and we only know that it has a substance; and of
substance itself, we can only say, if it exists, it is a _vis
activa_, as opposed to _nuda potentia_, which is a mere
possibility, and no existence at all. Such being the case, we
agree with Professor Huxley, that neither spiritualism nor
materialism is, in his sense, admissible, and that each is a
philosophical error, or, at least, an unprovable hypothesis.

But here our agreement ends and our divergence begins. The Holy
See has required the traditionalists to maintain that the
existence of God, the immateriality of the soul, and the liberty
of man can be proved with certainty by reason. We have always
found the definitions of the church our best guide in the study
of philosophy, and that we can never run athwart her teaching
without finding ourselves at odds with reason and truth. We are
always sure that when our theology is unsound our philosophy will
be bad. There is a distinction already noted between spirit and
matter, which is decisive of the whole question, as far as it is
a question at all. Matter has, and spirit has not, sensible
properties or qualities. These sensible properties or qualities
do not constitute the essence or substance of matter, which we
have seen is not sensible, but they distinguish it from spirit,
which is non-sensible. This difference, in regard to sensible
qualities and properties, proves that there must be a difference
of substance, that the material substance and the immaterial
substance are not, and cannot be one and the same substance,
although we know not what is the essence or nature of either.

We take matter here in the sense of that which has properties or
qualities perceptible by the senses, and spirit or spiritual
substance as an existence that has no such properties or
qualities. The Holy See says the _immateriality_, not
_spirituality_, of the soul, is to be proved by reason. The
spirituality of the soul, except in the sense of immateriality,
cannot be proved or known by philosophy, but is simply a doctrine
of divine revelation, and is known only by that analogical
knowledge called faith. All that we can prove or assert by
natural reason, is, that the soul is immaterial, or not material
in the sense that matter has for its sign the mimesis, or
sensible properties or qualities. We repeat, the sensible is not
the material substance, but is its natural sign. So that, where
the sign is wanting, we know the substance is not present and
active. On the other hand, where there is a force undeniably
present and operating without the sign, we know at once that it
is an immaterial force or substance.

That the soul is not material, therefore is an immaterial
substance, we know; because it has none of the sensible signs or
properties of matter. We cannot see, hear, touch, smell, nor
taste it. The very facts materialists allege to prove it
material, prove conclusively, that, if anything, it is
immaterial. The soul has none of the attributes or qualities that
are included, and has others which evidently are not included, in
the definition of matter. Matter, as to its substance, is a
_vis activa_, for whatever exists at all is an active force;
but it is not a force or substance that thinks, feels, wills, or
reasons. It has no sensibility, no mind, no intelligence, no
heart, no soul. But animals have sensibility and intelligence;
have they immaterial souls? Why not? We have no serious
difficulty in admitting that animals have souls, only not
rational and immortal souls.
{628}
Soul, in them, is not spirit, but it may be immaterial. Indeed,
we can go further, and concede an immaterial soul, not only to
animals but to plants, though, of course, not an intelligent or
even a sensitive soul; for if plants, or at least some plants,
are contractile and slightly mimic sensibility in animals,
nothing proves that they are sensitive. We have no proof that any
living organism, vegetable, animal, or human, is or can be a
purely material product. Professor Huxley has completely failed,
as we have shown, in his effort to sustain his theory of a
physical or material basis of life, and physiologists profess to
have demonstrated by their experiments and discoveries that no
organism can originate in inorganic matter, or in any possible
mechanical, chemical, or electrical arrangement of material
atoms, and is and can be produced, unless by direct and immediate
creation of God, only by generation from a preexisting male and
female organism. This is true alike of plants, animals, and man.
Nothing hinders you, then, from calling, if you so wish, the
universal basis of life _anima_ or soul, and asserting, the
psychical basis, in opposition to Professor Huxley's physical
basis, of life; only you must take care and not assert that
plants and animals have human souls, or that soul in them is the
same that it is in man.

There are grave thinkers who are not satisfied with the doctrine
that ascribes the apparent and even striking marks of mind in
animals to instinct, a term which serves to cover our ignorance,
but tells us nothing; still less are they satisfied with the
Cartesian doctrine that the animal is simply a piece of mechanism
moved or moving only by mechanical springs and wheels like a
clock or watch. Theologians are reluctant chiefly, we suppose, to
admit that animals have souls, because they are accustomed to
regard all souls, as to their substance, the same, and because it
has seemed to them that the admission would bring animals too
near to men, and not preserve the essential difference between
the animal nature and the human. But we see no difficulty in
admitting as many different sorts or orders of souls as there are
different orders, genera, and species of living organisms. God is
spirit, and the angels are spirits; are the angels therefore
identical in substance with God? The human soul is spiritual; is
there no difference in substance between human souls and angels?
We know that men sometimes speak of a departed wife, child, or
friend as being now an angel in heaven; but they are not to be
understand literally, any more than the young man in love with a
charming young lady who does not absolutely refuse his addresses,
when he calls her--a sinful mortal, not unlikely--an angel. In
the resurrection men are _like_ the angels of God, in the
respect that they neither marry nor are given in marriage; but
the spirits of the just made perfect, that stand before the
throne, are not angels; they are still human in their nature. If,
then, we may admit spirits of different nature and substance, why
not souls, and, therefore, vegetable souls, animal souls, and
human souls, agreeing only in the fact that they are immaterial,
or not material substances or forces?

It perhaps may be thought that to admit different orders of souls
to correspond to the different orders, genera, and species of
organisms, would imply that the human soul is generated with the
body; contrary to the general doctrine of theologians, that the
soul is created immediately _ad hoc_.
{629}
The Holy See censured Professor Frohshamer's doctrine on the
subject; but the point condemned was, as we understand it, that
the professor claimed _creative_ power for man. But it is
not necessary to suppose, even if plants and animals have souls,
that the human soul is generated with the body, in any sense
inconsistent with faith. The church has defined that "anima est
forma corporis," that is, as we understand it, the soul is the
vital or informing principle, the life of the body, without which
the body is dead matter. The organism generated is a living not a
dead organism, and therefore if the soul is directly and
immediately created _ad hoc_, the creative act must be
consentaneous with the act of generation, a fact which demands a
serious modification of the medical jurisprudence now taught in
our medical schools. Some have asserted for man alone a vegetable
soul, an animal soul, and a spiritual soul, but this is
inadmissible; man has simply a human soul, though capable of
yielding to the grovelling demands of the flesh as well as to the
higher promptings of the spirit.

But we have suffered ourselves to be drawn nearer to the borders
of the land of impenetrable mysteries than we intended, and we
retrace our steps as hastily as possible. Our readers will
understand that what we have said of the souls of plants and
animals is said only as a possible concession, but not set forth
as a doctrine we do or design to maintain; for it lies too near
the province of revelation to be settled by philosophy. All we
mean is that we see on the part of reason no serious objection to
it. Perhaps it may be thought that we lose, by the concession,
the argument for the immortality of the soul drawn from its
simplicity; but, even if so, we are not deprived of other, and to
our mind, much stronger arguments. But it may be said all our
talk about souls is wide of the mark, for we have not yet proved
that man is or has a soul distinguishable from the body, and
which does or can survive its dissolution, and that our argument
only proves that, if a man has a soul, it is immaterial. The
materialist denies that there is any soul in man distinct from
the body, and maintains that the mental phenomena, which we
ascribe to an immaterial soul, are the effects of material
organization. But that is for him to prove, not for us to
disprove. Organization can give to matter no new properties or
qualities, as aggregation can give only the sum of the
individuals aggregated. Matter we have taken all along, as all
the world takes it, as a substance that has properties and
qualities perceptible by the senses, and it has no meaning except
so far as so perceptible. Any active force that has no mimesis or
sensible qualities, properties, or attributes, is an immaterial,
not a material substance. That man is or has an active force that
feels, thinks, reasons, wills, we know as well as we know
anything; indeed, better than we know anything else. These acts
or operations are not operations of a material substance. We know
that they are not, from the fact that they are not sensible
properties or qualities, and therefore there must be in man an
active force or substance that is not material, but immaterial.
Material substance is, we grant, a _vis activa_; but if it
has properties or qualities, it has no faculties. It acts, but it
acts only _ad finem_, or to an end, never _propter
finem_, or for an end foreseen and deliberately willed or
chosen. But the force that man has or is, has faculties, not
simply properties or qualities, and can and does act
deliberately, with foresight and choice, for an end. Hence, it is
not and cannot be a substance included in the definition of
matter.

{630}

That this immaterial soul, now united to body and active only in
union with matter, survives the dissolution of the body and is
immortal, is another question, and is not proved, in our
judgment, by proving its immateriality. There is an important
text in Ecclesiastes, 3:21, which would seem to have some bearing
on the assumption that the immortality of the soul is really a
truth of philosophy as well as of revelation.

  "Who knoweth if the spirit of the children of Adam ascend
  upward, and if the spirit of the beasts descend downward?"

The doubt is not as to the immortality of the soul, but as to the
ability of reason without revelation to demonstrate it.
Certainly, reason can demonstrate its possibility, and that
nothing warrants its denial. The doctrine, in some form, has
always been believed by the human race, whether savage or
civilized, barbarous or refined, and has been denied only by
exceptional individuals in exceptional epochs. This proves either
that it is a dictate of universal reason, or a doctrine of a
revelation made to man in the beginning, before the dispersion of
the human race commenced. In either case the reason for believing
the doctrine would be sufficient; but we are disposed to take the
latter alternative, and to hold that the belief in the
immortality of the soul, or of an existence after death,
originated in revelation made to our first parents, and has been
perpetuated and diffused by tradition, pure and integral with the
patriarchs, the synagogue, and the church; but mutilated,
corrupted, and travestied with the cultivated as well as with the
uncultivated heathen. With the heathen Satan played his pranks
with the tradition, as he is doing with it with the spiritists in
our own times.

But if the belief originated in revelation and is a doctrine of
faith rather than of science, yet is it not repugnant to science,
and reason has much to urge in its support. The immateriality of
the soul implies its unity and simplicity, and therefore it can
not undergo dissolution, which is the death of the body. Its
dissolution is impossible, because it is a monad, having
attributes and qualities, but not made up by the combination of
parts. It is the form of the body, that is, it vivifies the
organic or central cell, and gives to the organism its life,
instead of drawing its own life from it. Science, then, has
nothing from which to infer that it ceases to exist when the body
dies. The death of the body does not necessarily imply its
destruction. True, we have here only negative proofs, but
negative proofs are all that is needed, in the case of a doctrine
of tradition, to satisfy the most exacting reason. The soul may
be extinguished with the body, but we cannot say that it is
without proof. Left to our unassisted reason, we could not say
that the soul of the animal expires with its body. Indeed, the
Indian does not believe it, and therefore buries with the hunter
his favorite dog, to accompany him in the happy hunting grounds.

The real matter to be proved is not that the soul can or does
survive the body, but that it dies with the body. We have seen
that it is distinguishable from the body, does not draw its life
from the body, but imparts life to it; how then conclude that it
dies with it? We have not a particle of proof, and not a single
fact from which we can logically infer that it does so die. What
right then has any one to say that it does? The laboring oar is
in the hands of those who assert that the soul dies with the
body, and it is for them to prove what they assert, not for us to
disprove it.
{631}
The real affirmative in the case is not made by those who assert
the immortality of the soul, but by those who assert its
mortality. The very term _immortal_ is negative, and simply
denies mortality. Life is always presumptive of the continuance
of life, and the continuance of the life of the soul must be
presumed in the absence of all proofs of its death.

We have seen that the immateriality, unity, and simplicity of the
soul prove that it does not necessarily die with the body, but
that it _may_ survive it. The fact that God has written his
promise of a future life in the very nature and destiny of the
soul, is for us a sufficient proof that the soul does not die
with the body. That God is, and is the first and final cause of
all existences, is a truth of science as well as of revelation.
He has created all things by himself, and for himself. He then
must be their last end, and therefore their supreme good,
according to their several natures. He has created man with a
nature that nothing short of the possession of himself as his
supreme good can satisfy. In so creating man, he promises him in
his nature the realization of this good, that is, the possession
of himself as final cause, unless forfeited and rendered
impossible by man's own fault. To return to God as his supreme
good without being absorbed in him, is man's destiny promised in
his very constitution. But this destiny is not realized nor
realizable in this life, and therefore there must be another life
to fulfil what he promises, for no promise of God, however made,
can fail. This argument we regard as conclusive.

The resurrection of the flesh, the reunion of the soul and body,
future happiness as a reward of virtue, and the misery of those
who through their own fault fail of their destiny, as a
punishment for sin, etc., are matters of revelation or theology
as distinguished from philosophy, and do not require to be
treated here, any further than to say, if reason has little to
say for them, it has nothing to say against them. They belong to
the mysteries of faith which, though never contrary to reason,
are above it, in an order transcending its domain.

We have thus far treated spiritualism and materialism from the
point of view of philosophy, not from that of psychology, or of
our faculties. The two doctrines, as they prevail to-day, are
simply psychological doctrines. The partisans of the one say that
the soul has no faculty of knowing any but material objects, and
therefore assert materialism; the partisans of the other say that
the soul has a faculty by which she apprehends immediately
immaterial or spiritual objects or truths, and hence they assert
what goes by the name of spiritualism, which may or may not deny
the existence of matter. Descartes and Cousin assert the
cognition of both spirit and matter, but as independent each of
the other; Collier and Berkeley deny that we have any cognition
of matter, and therefore deny its existence, save in the mind.
The truth, we hold, lies with neither. The soul has no direct
intuition of the immaterial or intelligible. We use
_intuition_ here in the ordinary sense, as an act of the
soul--knowing by looking on, or immediately beholding; that is,
in the sense of intelligible as distinguished from sensible
perceptions--intellection, as some say, as distinguished from
sensation. This empirical intuition, as we call it, is very
distinct from that intuition _a priori_ by which the ideal
formula is affirmed, for that is the act of the divine Being
himself, creating the mind, and becoming himself the light
thereof.
{632}
But that constitutes the mind, and is its object, not its act. No
doubt, the intellectual principles of all reality and of all
science are affirmed in that intuition _a priori_, and hence
these principles are ever present to the soul as the basis of all
intelligible as well as of all sensible experience. Yet they are
asserted by the mind's own act only as sensibly represented,
according to the peripatetic maxim, "Nihil est in intellectu,
quod non prius fuerit in sensu." The mind has three faculties,
sensibility, intellect, and will, but it is itself one, a single
_vis_ or force, and never acts with one faculty alone,
whether it feels, thinks, or wills; and, united as it is in this
life with the body, it never acts as body alone or as spirit
alone. There are then no intellections without sensation, nor
sensations without intellection; purely noetic truth, therefore,
can never be grasped save through a sensible medium.

We have already explained this with regard to material objects,
in which the substance, though supersensible, has its sensible
sign, through which the mind reaches it. But immaterial or ideal
objects are, as we have seen, precisely those which have no
sensible sign of their own--properties or qualities perceptible
by the senses. For this order of truth the only sensible
representation is language, which is the sensible sign or symbol
of immaterial or ideal truth. We arrive at this order of reality
or truth only through the medium of language which embodies it;
that is to say, only through the medium of tradition, or of a
teacher. So far we accord with the traditionalists. We do not
believe that, if God had left men in the beginning without any
instruction or language in which the ideas are embodied, they
would ever have been able to assert the existence of God, the
immateriality of the soul, and the liberty or free will of
man--the three great ideal truths which the Holy See requires us
to maintain can be _proved_ with certainty by reason; and we
do not hold that, like the revealed mysteries, they are
suprarational truth, and to be taken only on the authority of a
supernatural revelation. If God had not infused the knowledge of
them into the first of the race along with language, which he
also infused into Adam, we should never by our reason and
instincts alone have found them out, or distinctly apprehended
them; but being taught them, or finding them expressed in
language, we are able to verify or prove them with certainty by
our natural reason, in which respect we accord with those whom
the traditionalists call rationalists.

We have studiously avoided, as far as possible, the metaphysics
of the subject we have been considering, and perhaps have, in
consequence, kept too near its surface; but we think we have
established our main point, that neither spiritualism nor
materialism, taken exclusively, is philosophically defensible. We
are able to distinguish between spirit and matter, but we can
deny the existence or the activity, according to its own nature,
of neither. We know matter by its sensible properties or
qualities, We know spirit only as sensibly represented by
language. Let language be corrupted, and our knowledge of ideal
or non-sensible truth, or philosophy, will also be corrupted,
mutilated, or perverted. This will be still more the case with
the superintelligible truth supernaturally revealed, which is
apprehensible only through the medium of language. Hence, St.
Paul is careful to admonish St. Timothy to hold fast "the form of
sound words," and hence, too, the necessity, if God makes us a
revelation of spiritual things, that he should provide an
infallible living teacher to preserve the infallibility of the
language in which it is made.
{633}
We may see here, too, the reason why the infallible church is
hardly less necessary to the philosopher than to the theologian.
Where faith and theology are preserved in their purity and
integrity, philosophy will not be able to stray far from the
truth, and where philosophy is sound, the sciences will not long
be unsound. The aberrations of philosophy are due almost solely
to the neglect of philosophers to study it in its relation with
the dogmatic teaching of the church.

Some of our dear and revered friends in France and elsewhere are
seeking, as the cure for the materialism which is now so
prevalent, to revive the spiritualism of the seventeenth century.
But the materialism they combat is only the reaction of the mind
against that exaggerated spiritualism which they would revive.
Where there are two real forces, each equally evident and equally
indestructible, you can only alternate between them, till you
find the term of their synthesis, and are able to reconcile and
harmonize them. The spiritualism defended by Cousin in France has
resulted only in the recrudescence of materialism. The trouble
now is, that matter and spirit are presented in our modern
systems as antagonistic and naturally irreconcilable forces. The
duty of philosophers is not to labor to pit one against the
other, or to give the one the victory over the other; but to save
both, and to find out the middle term which unites them. We know
there must be somewhere that middle term; for both extremes are
creations of God, who makes all things by number, weight, and
measure, and creates always after the logic of his own essential
nature. All his works, then, must be logical and dialectically
harmonious.

Whether we have indicated this middle term or not, we have
clearly shown, we think, that it is a mistake to suppose the two
terms are not in reality mutually irreconcilable. Nothing proves
that, as creatures of God, each in its own order and place is not
as sacred and necessary as the other. We do not know the nature
or essence of either, nor can we say in what, as to this nature
and essence, the precise difference between them consists; but we
know that in our present life both are united, and that neither
acts without the other. All true philosophy must then present
them not as opposing, but as harmonious and concurring forces.

We do not for ourselves ever apply the term spiritualism to a
purely intellectual philosophy. We do not regard the words spirit
and soul as precisely synonymous. St. Paul, Heb. iv. 12, says,
"The word of God is living and effectual, ... reaching unto the
division of the soul and the spirit," or, as the Protestant
version has it, "quick and powerful, ... piercing even to the
dividing asunder of soul and spirit." There is evidently, then,
however closely related they may be, a distinction between the
soul and the spirit. Hence there may be soul that is not spirit,
which was generally held by the ancients. The Greeks had their
[Greek text] and [Greek text], and the Latins their _anima_
and _spiritus_. The term spirit, when applied to man, seems
to us to designate the moral powers rather than the intellectual,
and the moral powers or faculties are those which specially
distinguish man from animals. St. Paul applies the term spiritual
uniformly in a moral sense, and usually, if not always, to men
born again of the Holy Ghost, or the regenerated, and to the
influences and gifts of the Holy Spirit; that is, to designate
the supernatural character, gifts, graces, and virtues of those
who have been translated into the kingdom of God and are
fellow-citizens of the commonwealth of Christ, or the Christian
republic.
{634}
Hence, we shrink from calling any intellectual philosophy
spiritualism. If it touches philosophy, as it undoubtedly
does--since grace supposes nature, and a man must be born into
the natural order before he can be born again into the
supernatural order, or regenerated by the Spirit--it rises into
the region of supernatural sanctity, into which no man by his
natural powers can enter; for it is a sanctity that places one on
the plane of a supernatural destiny.

But even taken in this higher sense, there is no antagonism
between spirit and matter. There is certainly a struggle, a
warfare that remains through life; but the struggle is not
between the soul and the body; it is, as is said, between the
higher and inferior powers of the soul, between the spirit and
concupiscence, between the law of the mind, which bids us labor
for spiritual good which will last for ever, and the law in the
members, which looks only to the good of the body, in its earthly
relations. The saints, who chastise, mortify, macerate the body
by their fastings, vigils, and scourgings, do not do it on the
principle that the body is evil, or that matter is the source of
evil. There is a total difference in principle between Christian
asceticism and that of the Platonists, who hold that evil
originates in the intractableness of matter, that holds the soul
imprisoned as in a dungeon, and from which it sighs and struggles
for deliverance. The Christian knows that our Lord himself
assumed flesh and retains for ever his glorified body. He
believes in the resurrection of the body and its future
everlasting reunion with the soul. Christ, dying in a material
body, has redeemed both matter and spirit. Hence we venerate the
relics of our Lord and his saints, and believe matter may be
hallowed. In our Lord all opposites are reconciled, and universal
peace is established.

----------

     Translated From The German Of
        Conrad Von Bolanden.

             Angela.

             Chapter I.

	     Crinoline.

An express train was just on the eve of leaving the railway
station in Munich. Two fashionably dressed gentlemen stood at the
open door of a railway carriage, in conversation with a third,
who sat within. These two young men bore on their features the
marks of youthful dissipation, indicating that they had not been
sparing of pleasures. The one in the carriage had a handsome,
florid countenance, two clear, expressive eyes, and thick locks
of hair, which he now and then stroked back from his fine
forehead. He scarcely observed the conversation of the two
friends, who spoke of balls, dogs, horses, theatres, and
ballet-girls.

In the same carriage sat another traveller, evidently the father
of the young man. He was reading the newspaper--that is, the
report of the money market--while his fleshy left hand dallied
with the heavy gold rings of his watch-chain. He had paid no
attention to the conversation till an observation of his son
brought him to serious reflection.

{635}

"By the by," said one of the young men quickly, "I was nearly
forgetting to tell you the news, Richard! Do you know that Baron
Linden is engaged?"

"Engaged? To whom?" said Richard carelessly.

"To Bertha von Harburg. I received a card this morning, and
immediately wrote a famous letter of congratulation."

Richard looked down earnestly and shook his head.

"I commiserate the genial baron," said he. "What could he be
thinking of, to rush headlong into this misfortune?"

The father looked in surprise at his son; the hand holding the
paper sank on his knee.

"Permit me, gentlemen," said the conductor; the doors were
closed, the friends nodded good-by, and the train moved off.

"Your observation about Linden's marriage astonishes me, Richard.
But perhaps you were only jesting."

"By no means," said Richard. "Never more earnest in my life. I
expressed my conviction, and my conviction is the result of
careful observation and mature reflection."

The father's astonishment increased.

"Observation--reflection---fudge!" said the father impatiently,
as he folded the paper and shoved it into his pocket. "How can a
young man of twenty-two talk of experience and observation!
Enthusiastic nonsense! Marriage is a necessity of human life. And
you will yet submit to this necessity."

"True, if marriage be a necessity, then I suppose I must bow to
the yoke of destiny. But, father, this necessity does not exist.
There are intelligent men enough who do not bind themselves to
woman's caprices."

"Oh! certainly, there are some strange screech-owls in the
worlds--some enthusiasts. But certainly you do not wish to be one
of them. You, who have such great expectations. You, the only son
of a wealthy house. You, who have a yearly income of thousands to
spend."

"The income can be enjoyed more pleasantly, free and single,
father."

"Free and single--and enjoyed! Zounds! you almost tempt me to
think ill of you. Happily, I know you well. I know your strict
morality, your solidity, your moderate pretensions. All these
amiable qualities please me. But this view of marriage I did not
expect; you must put away this sickly notion."

The young man made no answer, but leaned back in his seat with a
disdainful smile.

Herr Frank gazed thoughtfully through the window. He reflected on
the determined character of his son, whose disposition, even when
a child, shut him out from the world, and who led an interior,
meditative life. Strict regularity and exact employment of time
were natural to him. At school, he held the first place in all
branches. His ambition and effort was to excel all others in
knowledge. His singular questions, which indicated a keen
observation and capacity, had often excited the surprise of his
father. And while the companions of the youth hailed with delight
the time which released them from the benches of the school and
from their studies, Richard cheerfully bound himself to his
accustomed task, to appease his longing for knowledge.
Approaching manhood had not changed him in this regard.
{636}
He was punctual to the hours of business, and labored with zeal
and interest, to the great joy of his father. He recreated
himself with music and painting, or by a walk in the open
country, for whose beauties he had a keen appreciation. The few
shades of his character were, a proud haughtiness, an unyielding
perseverance in his determinations, and a strength of conviction
difficult to overcome. But perhaps these shades were, after all,
great qualities, which were to brighten up and polish his
maturity. This obstinacy the father was now considering, and, in
reference to his singular view of marriage, it filled him with
great anxiety.

"But, Richard," began Herr Frank again, "how did you come to this
singular conclusion?"

"By observation and reflection--and also by experience, although
you deny my years this right."

"What have you experienced and observed?"

"I have observed woman as she is, and found that such a creature
would only make me miserable. What occupies their minds?
Fineries, pleasures, and trifles. The pivot of their existence
turns on dress, ornaments, balls, and the like. We live in an age
of crinoline, and you know how I abominate that dress; I admit my
aversion is abnormal, perhaps exaggerated, but I cannot overcome
it. When I see a woman going through the streets with swelling
hoops, the most whimsical fancies come into my mind. It reminds
me of an inflated balloon, whose clumsy swell disfigures the most
beautiful form. It reminds me of a drunken gawk, who swaggers
along and carries the foolish gewgaw for a show. The costume is
indeed expressive. It reveals the interior disposition. Crinoline
is to me the type of the woman of our day--an empty, vain,
inflated something. And this type repels me."

"Then you believe our women to be vain, pleasure-seeking, and
destitute of true womanhood, because they wear crinoline?"

"No, the reverse. An overweening propensity to show and frivolity
characterizes our women, and therefore they wear crinoline in
spite of the protestations of the men."

"Bah! Nonsense; you lay too much stress on fashion. I know many
women myself who complain of this fashion."

"And afterward follow it. This precisely confirms my opinion.
Women have no longer sufficient moral force to disregard a
disagreeable restraint. Their vanity is still stronger than their
inclinations to a natural enjoyment of life."

"Do you want a wife who would be sparing and saving; who, by her
frugality, would increase your wealth; who, by her social
seclusion, would not molest your cash-box?"

"No; I want no wife," answered the young man somewhat pettishly.
"And I am not alone in this. The young men are beginning to
awaken. A sound, natural feeling revolts against the vitiated
taste of the women. Alliances are forming everywhere. The last
paper announced that, at Marseilles, six thousand young men have,
with joined hands, vowed never to marry until the women renounce
their ruinous costumes and costly idleness, and return to a plain
style of dress and frugal habits. I object to this propensity to
ease and pleasure--this desire of our women for finery and the
gratification of vanity. Not because this inclination is
expensive, but because it is objectionable. Every creature has an
object. But, if we consider the women of our day, we might well
ask, for what are they here?"

{637}

"For what are women here, foolish man?" interrupted Herr Frank.
"Are they to go about without any costume, like Eve before the
fall? Are they to know the trials of life, and not its joys? Are
they to exist like the women of the sultan, shut up in a harem?
For what are they here? I will tell you. They are here to make
life cheerful. Does not Schiller say,

  "'Honor to woman! she scatters rife
    Heavenly roses,'mid earthly life;
      Love she weaves in gladdening bands;
    Chastity's veil her charm attires;
    Beautiful thoughts' eternal fires,
      Watchful, she feeds with holy hands.'"

Richard smiled.

"Poetical fancy!" said he. "My unhappy friend Emil Schlagbein
often declaimed and sang with passion that same poem of
Schiller's. Love had even made a poet of him. He wrote verses to
his Ida. And now, scarcely three years married, he is the most
miserable man in the world--miserable through his wife. Ida has
still the same finely carved head as formerly; but that head, to
the grief of Emil, is full of stubbornness--full of whimsical
nonsense. Her eyes have still the same deep blue; but the
charming expression has changed, and the blue not unfrequently
indicates a storm. How often has Emil poured out his sorrows to
me! How often complained of the coldness of his wife! A ball
missed--missed from necessity--makes her stupid and sulky for
days. In vain he seeks a cheerful look. When he returns home
worried by the cares of business, he finds no consolation in
Ida's sympathy, but is vexed by her stubbornness and offended by
her coldness. Emil sprang headlong into misery. I will beware of
such a step."

"You are unjust and prejudiced. Must all women, then, be Ida
Schagbeins?"

"Perhaps my Ida might be still worse," retorted Richard sharply.

Herr Frank drummed on his knees, always a sign of displeasure.

"I tell you, Richard," said he emphatically. "Your time will come
yet. You will follow the universal law, and this law will give
the lie to your one-sided view--to your contempt of woman."

"That impulse, father, can be overcome, and habit becomes a
second nature. Besides--"

"Besides--well, what besides?"

"I would say that the time of which you speak is, in my case,
happily passed," answered Richard, still gazing through the
window. "For me the time of sentimental delusion has been short
and decisive," he concluded with a bitter smile.

"Can I, your father, ask a clearer explanation?"

The young man leaned back in his seat and looked at the opposite
side while he spoke.

"Last summer I visited Baden-Baden. On old Mount Eberstein, which
is so picturesquely enthroned above the village, I fell in with a
party. Among the number was a young lady of rare beauty and great
modesty. An acquaintance gave me an opportunity of being
introduced to her. We sat in pleasant conversation under the
black oaks until the approaching twilight compelled us to return
to the town. Isabella--such was the name of the beauty--had made
a deep impression on me. So deep that even the detested crinoline
that encircled her person in large hoops found favor in my sight.
Her manner was in no wise coquettish. She spoke with deliberation
and spirit. Her countenance had always the same expression. Only
when the young people, into whose heads the fiery wine had risen,
gave expression to sharp words, did Isabella look up, and a
displeased expression, as of injured delicacy, passed over her
countenance.
{638}
My presence seemed agreeable to her. My conversation may
have pleased her. As we descended the mountain, we came to a
difficult pass. I offered her my arm, which she took in the same
unchanging, quiet manner which made her so charming in my sight.
I soon discovered my affection for the stranger, and wondered how
it could arise so suddenly and become so impetuous. I was ashamed
at abandoning so quickly my opinion of women. But this feeling
was not strong enough to stifle the incipient passion. My mind
lay captive in the fetters of infatuation."

He paused for a moment. The proud young man seemed to reproach
himself for his conduct, which he considered wanting in manly
independence and clear penetration.

"On the following day," he continued, "there was to be a
horse-race in the neighborhood. Before we parted, it was arranged
that we would be present at it. I returned to my room in the
hotel, and dreamed waking dreams of Isabella. My friend had told
me that she was the daughter of a wealthy merchant, and that she
had accompanied her invalid mother here. This mark of love and
filial affection was not calculated to cool my ardor. Isabella
appeared more beautiful and more charming still. We went to the
race. I had the unspeakable happiness of being in the same car
and sitting opposite her. After a short journey--to me, at least,
it seemed short--we arrived at the grounds where the race was to
take place. We ascended the platform. I sat at Isabella's side.
She did not for a moment lose her quiet equanimity. The race
began. I saw little of it, for Isabella was constantly before my
eyes, look where I would. Suddenly a noise--a loud cry--roused me
from my dream. Not twenty paces from where we sat, a horse had
fallen. The rider was under him. The floundering animal had
crushed both legs of the unfortunate man. Even now I can see his
frightfully distorted features before me. I feared that
Isabella's delicate sensibility might be wounded by the horrible
sight. And when I looked at her, what did I see? A smiling face!
She had lost her quiet, weary manner, and a hard, unfeeling soul
lighted up her features!

"'Do you not think this change in the monotony of the race quite
magnificent?' said she.

"I made no answer. With an apology, I left the party and returned
alone to Baden."

"Very well," said the father, "your Isabella was an unfeeling
creature granted. But now for your application of this
experience."

"We will let another make the application, father. Listen a
moment. In Baden a bottle of Rhine wine, whose spirit is so
congenial to sad and melancholy feelings, served to obliterate
the desolate remembrance. I sat in the almost deserted
dining-room. The guests were at the theatre, on excursions in the
neighborhood, or dining about the park. An old man sat opposite
me. I remarked that his eyes, when he thought himself unobserved,
were turned inquiringly on me. The sudden cooling of my passion
had perhaps left some marks upon me. The stranger believed,
perhaps, that I was an unlucky and desperate player. A player I
had indeed been. I had been about to stake my happiness on a
beautiful form. But I had won the game.

{639}

"The wine soon cheered me up and I entered into conversation with
the stranger. We spoke of various things, and finally of the
race. As there was a friendly, confiding expression in the old
man's countenance, I related to him the unhappy fall of the
rider, and dwelt sharply on the impression the hideous spectacle
made on Isabella. I told him that such a degree of callousness
and insensibility was new to me, and that this sad experience had
shocked me greatly.

"'This comes,' said he, 'from permitting yourself to be deceived
by appearances, and because you do not know certain classes of
society. If you consider the beautiful Isabella with sensual
eyes, you will run great danger of taking appearances for
truth--the false for the real. Even the plainest exterior is
often only sham. Painted cheeks, colored eyebrows, false hair,
false teeth; and even if these forms were not false, but true--if
you penetrate these forms, if, under the constraint of graceful
repose, we see modesty, purity, and even humility--there is then
still greater danger of deception. A wearied, enervated nature,
nerves blunted by the enjoyment of all kinds of pleasures, are
frequently all that remains of womanly nature.

"'Do you wish to see striking examples of this? Go into the
gaming saloons--into those horrible places where fearful and
consuming passions seethe; where desperation and suicide lurk. Go
into the corrupt, poisonous atmosphere of those gambling hells,
and there you will find women every day and every hour. Whence
this disgusting sight? The violent excitement of gambling alone
can afford sufficient attraction for those who have been sated
with all kinds of pleasures. Is a criminal to be executed? I give
you my word of honor that women give thousands of francs to
obtain the best place, where they can contemplate more
conveniently the shocking spectacle and read every expression in
the distorted features of the struggling malefactor.

"'Isabella was one of these exhausted, enervated creatures, and
hence her pleasure at the sight of the mangled rider.'

"Thus spoke the stranger, and I admitted that he was right. At
the same time I tried to penetrate deeper into this want of
sensibility. Like a venturesome miner, I descended into the
psychological depth. I shuddered at what I there discovered, and
at the inferences which Isabella's conduct forced upon my mind.
No, father, no," said he impetuously, "I will have no such
nuptials--I will never rush into the miseries of matrimony!"

"Thunder and lightning! are you a man?" cried Herr Frank.
"Because Emil's wife and Isabella are good-for-nothings, must the
whole sex be repudiated? Both cases are exceptions. These
exceptions give you no right to judge unfavorably of all women.
This prejudice does no honor to your good sense, Richard. It is
only eccentricity can judge thus."

The train stopped. The travellers went out, where a carriage
awaited them.

"Is everything right?" said Herr Frank to the driver.

"All is fixed, sir, as you required."

"Is the box of books taken out?"

"Yes, sir."

The coach moved up the street. The dark mountain-side rose into
view, and narrow, deep valleys yawned beneath the travellers.
Fresh currents of air rushed down the mountain and Herr Frank
inhaled refreshing draughts.

Richard gazed thoughtfully over the magnificent vineyards and
luxurient orchards.

{640}

The road grew steeper and the wooded summit of the mountain
approached. A light which Frank beheld with satisfaction glared
out from it. Its rays shot out upon the town that, amid rich
vineyards, topped the neighboring hill.

"Our residence is beautifully located," said Herr Frank. "How
cheerful it looks up there! It is a home fit for princes."

"You have indeed chosen a magnificent spot, father. Everything
unites to make Frankenhöhe a delightful place. The vineyards on
the slopes of the hills, the smiling hamlet of Salingen to the
right. In the background the stern mountain with its proud ruins
on the summit of Salburg, the deep valleys and the dark ravines,
all unite in the landscape: to the east that beautiful plain."

These words pleased the father. His eyes rested long on the
beautiful property.

"You have forgotten a reason for my happy choice," said he, while
a smile played on his features. "I mean the habit of my friend
and deliverer, who, for the last eight years, spends the month of
May at Frankenhöhe. You know the singular character of the
doctor. Nothing in the world can tear him from his books. He has
renounced all pleasure and enjoyment, to devote his whole time to
his books. When Frankenhöhe entices and captivates the man of
science, so strict, so dead to the world, it is, as I think, the
highest compliment to our place."

Richard did not question his father's opinion. He knew his
unbounded esteem for the learned doctor.

The road grew steeper and steeper. The horses labored slowly
along. The pleasant hamlet of Salingen lay a short distance to
the left. A single house, separated from the village, and
standing near the road in the midst of vineyards, came into view.
The features of Herr Frank darkened as he turned his gaze from
Frankenhöhe to this house. It was as though some unpleasant
recollection was associated with it. Richard looked at the
stately mansion, the large out-houses, the walled courts, neat
and clean.

"This must be a wealthy proprietor or influential landlord who
lives here," said Richard. "I have indeed seen this place in
former years, but it did not interest me. How inviting and
pleasant it looks. The property must have undergone considerable
change at least, I remember nothing that indicated the place to
be other than an ordinary farmhouse."

Herr Frank did not hear these observations. He muttered some
bitter imprecation. The coach gained the summit, left the road,
and passed through vineyards and chestnut groves to the house.

Frankenhöhe was a handsome two-story house whose arrangements
corresponded to Frank's taste and means. Near it stood another,
occupied by the steward. A short distance from it were stables
and out-houses for purposes of agriculture.

Herr Frank went directly to the house, and passed from room to
room to see if his instructions had been carried out.

Richard went into the garden and walked on paths covered with
yellow sand. He strolled about among flower-beds that loaded the
air with agreeable odors. He examined the blooming dwarf
fruit-trees and ornamental plants. He observed the neatness and
exact order of everything. Lastly, he stood near the vineyard
whence he could behold an extensive view.
{641}
He admired the beautiful, fragrant landscape. He stood
thoughtfully reflecting. His conversation made it evident to him
that his feelings and will did not agree with his father's
wishes. He saw that between his inclinations and his love for his
father he must undergo a severe struggle--a struggle that must
decide his happiness for life. The strangeness of his opinion of
women did not escape him. He tested his experience. He tried to
justify his convictions, and yet his father's claims and filial
duty prevailed.


                Chapter II.

             The Weather-cross.

The next morning Richard was out with the early larks, and
returned after a few hours in a peculiar frame of mind. As he was
entering his room, he saw through the open door his father
standing in the saloon. Herr Frank was carefully examining the
arrangements, as the servants were carrying books into the
adjoining room and placing them in a bookcase. Richard, as he
passed, greeted his father briefly, contrary to his usual custom.
At other times he used to exchange a few words with his father
when he bid him good-morning, and he let no occasion pass of
giving his opinion on any matter in which he knew his father took
an interest.

The young man walked to the open window of his room, and gazed
into the distance. He remained motionless for a time. He ran his
fingers through his hair, and with a jerk of the head threw the
brown locks back from his forehead. He walked restlessly back and
forth, and acted like a man who tries in vain to escape from
thoughts that force themselves upon him. At length he went to the
piano, and beat an impetuous impromptu on the keys.

"Ei, Richard!" cried Herr Frank, whom the wild music had brought
to his side. "Why, you rave! How possessed! One would think you
had discovered a roaring cataract in the mountains, and wished to
imitate its violence."

Richard glanced quickly at his father, and finished with a
tender, plaintive melody.

"Come over here and look at the rooms."

Richard followed his father and examined carelessly the elegant
rooms, and spoke a few cold words of commendation.

"And what do you say to this flora?" said Herr Frank pointing to
a stepped framework on which bloomed the most beautiful and rare
flowers.

"All very beautiful, father. The doctor will be much pleased, as
he always is here."

"I wish and hope so. I have had the peacocks and turkeys sent
away, because Klingenberg cannot endure their noise. The library
here will always be his favorite object, and care has been taken
with it. Here are the best books on all subjects, even theology
and astronomy."

"Frankenhöhe is indeed cheerful as the heart of youth and quiet
as a cloister," said Richard. "Your friend would indeed be
ungrateful if this attention did not gratify him."

"I have also provided that excellent wine which he loves and
enjoys as a healthful medicine. But, Richard, you know
Klingenberg's peculiarities. You must not play as you did just
now; you would drive the doctor from the house."

"Make yourself easy about that, father; I will play while he is
on the mountain."

{642}

Richard took a book from the shelf, and glanced over it. Herr
Frank left him, and he immediately replaced the book and returned
to his own room. There he wrote in his diary:

  "12th of May.--Man is too apt to be led by his inclination. And
  what is inclination? A feeling caused by external impressions,
  or superinduced by a disposition of the body. Inclination,
  therefore, is something inimical to intellectual life. A vine
  that threatens to overgrow and smother clear conviction. Never
  act from inclination, if you do not wish to be unfaithful to
  conviction and guilty of a weakness."

He went into the garden, where he talked to the gardener about
trees and flowers.

"Are you acquainted in Salingen, John?"

"Certainly, sir. I was born there."

"Do strangers sometimes come there to stop and enjoy the
beautiful neighborhood?"

"Oh! no, sir; there is no suitable hotel there--only plain
taverns; and people of quality would not stop at them."

"Are there people of rank in Salingen?"

"Only farmers, sir. But---stay. The rich Siegwart appears to be
such, and his children are brought up in that manner."

"Has Siegwart many children?"

"Four--two boys and two girls. One son is at college. The other
takes care of the estate, and is at home. The oldest daughter has
been at the convent for three years. She is now nineteen years
old. The second is still a child."

Richard went further into the garden; he looked over at Salingen,
and then at the mountains. His eye followed a path that went
winding up the mountain like a golden thread and led to the top.
Then his eye rested for a time on a particular spot in that
yellow path. Richard remained taciturn and reserved the rest of
the day. He sat in his room and tried to read, but the subject
did not interest him. He often looked dreamily from the book. He
finally arose, took his hat and cane, and was soon lost in the
mountain. The next morning Richard went to the borders of the
forest, and looked frequently over at Salingen as it lay in rural
serenity before him. The pleasant hamlet excited his interest. He
then turned to the right and pursued the yellow path which he had
examined the day before, up the mountain. The birds sang in the
bushes, and on the branches of the tallest oak perched the
black-bird whose morning hymn echoed far and wide. The sweet
notes of the nightingale joined in the general concert, and the
shrill piping of the hawk struck in discordantly with the varied
and beautiful song. Even unconscious nature displayed her
beauties. The dew hung in great drops on the grass-blades and
glittered like so many brilliants, and wild flowers loaded the
air with sweet perfumes. Richard saw little of these beauties of
spring. He ascended still higher. His mind seemed agitated and
burdened. He had just turned a bend in the road when he saw a
female figure approaching. His cheeks grew darker as his eyes
rested on the approaching figure. He gazed in the distance, and a
disdainful flush overspread his face. He approached her as he
would approach an enemy whose power he had felt, and whom he
wished to conciliate.

She was within fifty paces of him. Her blue dress fell in heavy
folds about her person. The ribbons of her straw bonnet, that
hung on her arm, fluttered in the breeze. In her left hand she
held a bunch of flowers. On her right arm hung a silk mantle,
which the mild air had rendered unnecessary.
{643}
Her full, glossy hair was partly in a silk net and partly plaited
over the forehead and around the head, as is sometimes seen with
children. Her countenance was exquisitely beautiful, and her
light eyes now rested full and clear on the stranger who
approached her. She looked at him with the easy, natural
inquisitiveness of a child, surprised to meet such an elegant
gentleman in this place.

Frank looked furtively at her, as though he feared the
fascinating power of the vision that so lightly and gracefully
passed him. He raised his hat stiffly and formally. This was
necessary to meet the requirement of etiquette. Were it not, he
would perhaps have passed her by without a salutation. She did
not return his greeting with a stiff bow, but with a friendly
"good-morning;" and this too in a voice whose sweetness, purity,
and melody harmonized with the the beautiful echoes of the
morning.

Frank moved on hastily for some distance. He was about to look
back, but did not do so; and continued on his way, with
contracted brows, till a turn in the road hid her from his view.
Here he stopped and wiped the sweat from his forehead, His heart
beat quickly, and he was agitated by strong emotions. He stood
leaning on his cane and gazing into the shadows of the forest. He
then continued thoughtfully, and ascended some hundred feet
higher till he gained the top of the mountain. The tall trees
ceased; a variegated copsewood crowned the summit, which formed a
kind of platform. Human hands had levelled the ground, and on the
moss that covered it grew modest little violets. Near the border
of the platform stood a stone cross of rough material. Near this
cross lay the fragments of another large rock, that might have
been shattered by lightning years before. A few steps back of
this, on two square blocks of stone, stood a statue of the Virgin
and Child, of white stone very carefully wrought, but without
much art. The Virgin had a crown of roses on her head. The Child
held a little bunch of forget-me-nots in its hand, and as it held
them out seemed to say, "Forget me not," Two heavy vases that
could not be easily overturned by the wind, standing on the upper
block, also contained flowers. All these flowers were quite
fresh, as if they had just been placed there.

Richard examined these things, and wondered what they meant in
this solitude of the mountain. The fresh flowers and the
cleanliness of the statue, on which no dust or moss could be
seen, indicated a careful keeper. He thought of the young woman
whom he met. He had seen the same kind of flowers in her hand,
and doubtless she was the devotee of the place.

Scarcely had his thoughts taken this direction when he turned
away and walked to the border of the plot, and gazed at the
country before him. He looked down toward Frankenhöhe, whose
white chimneys appeared above the chestnut grove. He contemplated
the plains with their luxuriant fields reflecting every shade of
green--the strips of forests that lay like shadows in the sunny
plain--numberless hamlets with church towers whose gilded
crosses gleamed in the sun. He gazed in the distance where the
mountain ranges vanished in the mist, and long he enjoyed the
magnificence of the view. He was aroused from his dreamy
contemplation by the sound of footsteps behind him.

{644}

An old man with a load of wood on his shoulders came up to the
place. Breathing heavily, he threw down the wood and wiped the
sweat from his face. He saw the stranger, and respectfully
touched his cap as he sat down on the wood.

Frank went to him.

"You are from Salingen, I suppose," he began

"Yes, sir."

"It is very hard for an old man like you to carry such a load so
far."

"It is indeed, but I am poor and must do it."

Frank looked at the patched clothes of the old man, his coarse
shoes, his stockingless feet, and meagre body, and felt
compassion for him.

"For us poor people the earth bears but thistles and thorns."
After a pause, the old man continued, "We have to undergo many
tribulations and difficulties, and sometimes we even suffer from
hunger. But thus it is in the world. The good God will reward us
in the next world for our sufferings in this."

These words sounded strangely to Richard. Raised as he was in the
midst of wealth, and without contact with poverty, he had never
found occasion to consider the lot of the poor; and now the
resignation of the old man, and his hope in the future, seemed
strange to him. He was astonished that religion could have such
power--so great and strong--to comfort the poor in the miseries
of a hopeless, comfortless life.

"But what if your hope in another world deceive you?"

The old man looked at him with astonishment.

"How can I be deceived? God is faithful. He keeps his promises."

"And what has he promised you?"

"Eternal happiness if I persevere, patient and just, to the end."

"I wonder at your strong faith!"

"It is my sole possession on earth. What would support us poor
people, what would keep us from despair, if religion did not?"

Frank put his hand into his pocket.

"Here," said he, "perhaps this money will relieve your wants."

The old man looked at the bright thalers in his hand, and the
tears trickled down his cheeks.

"This is too much, sir; I cannot receive six thalers from you."

"That is but a trifle for me; put it in your pocket, and say no
more about it."

"May God reward and bless you a thousand times for it!"

"What does that cross indicate?"

"That is a weather cross, sir. We have a great deal of bad
weather to fear. We have frequent storms here, in summer; they
hang over the mountain and rage terribly. Every ravine becomes a
torrent that dashes over the fields, hurling rocks and sand from
the mountain. Our fields are desolated and destroyed. The people
of Salingen placed that cross there against the weather. In
spring the whole community come here in procession and pray God
to protect them from the storms."

Richard reflected on this phenomenon; the confidence of these
simple people in the protection of God, whose omnipotence must
intervene between the remorseless elements and their victims,
appeared to him as the highest degree of simplicity. But he kept
his thoughts to himself, for he respected the religious
sentiments of the old man, and would not hurt his feelings.

"And the Virgin, why is she there?"

"Ah! that is a wonderful story, sir," he answered, apparently
wishing to evade an explanation.

"Which every one ought not to know?"

"Well--but perhaps the gentleman would laugh, and I would not
like that!"

{645}

"Why do you think I would laugh at the story?"

"Because you are a gentleman of quality, and from the city, and
such people do not believe any more in miracles."

This observation of rustic sincerity was not pleasing to Frank.
It expressed the opinion that the higher classes ignore faith in
the supernatural.

"If I promise you not to laugh, will you tell me the story?"

"I will; you were kind to me, and you can ask the story of me.
About thirty years ago," began the old man after a pause, "there
lived a wealthy farmer at Salingen whose name was Schenck.
Schenck was young. He married a rich maiden and thereby increased
his property. But Schenck had many great faults. He did not like
to work and look after his fields. He let his servants do as they
pleased, and his fields were, of course, badly worked and yielded
no more than half a crop. Schenck sat always in the tavern, where
he drank and played cards and dice. Almost every night he came
home drunk. Then he would quarrel with his wife, who reproached
him. He abused her, swore wickedly, and knocked everything about
the room, and behaved very badly altogether. Schenck sank lower
and lower, and became at last a great sot. His property was soon
squandered. He sold one piece after another, and when he had no
more property to sell, he took it into his head to sell himself
to the devil for money. He went one night to a cross-road and
called the devil, but the devil would not come; perhaps because
Schenck belonged to him already, for the Scripture says, 'A
drunkard cannot enter the kingdom of heaven.' At last a suit was
brought against him, and the last of his property was sold, and
he was driven from his home. This hurt Schenck very much, for he
always had a certain kind of pride. He thought of the past times
when he was rich and respected, and now he had lost all respect
with his neighbors. He thought of his wife and his four children,
whom he had made poor and miserable. All this drove him to
despair. He determined to put an end to himself. He bought a rope
and came up here one morning to hang himself. He tied the rope to
an arm of the cross, and had his head in the noose, when all at
once he remembered that he had not yet said his three "Hail!
Marys." His mother who was dead had accustomed him, when a child,
to say every day three "Hail! Marys." Schenck had never neglected
this practice for a single day. Then he took his head out of the
noose and said, 'Well, as I have said the "Hail! Marys" every
day, I will say them also to-day, for the last time.' He knelt
down before the cross and prayed. When he was done, he stood up
to hang himself. But he had scarcely stood on his feet when he
was snatched up by a whirlwind and carried through the air till
he was over a vineyard, where he fell without hurting himself. As
he stood up, an ugly man stood before him and said, 'This time
you have escaped me, but the next time I will get you.' The ugly
man had horses' hoofs in place of feet, and wore green clothes.
He disappeared before Schenck's eyes. Schenck swears that this
ugly man was the devil. He declares also that he has to thank the
Mother of God, through whose intercession he escaped the claws of
the devil. Schenck had that statue placed there in memory of his
wonderful escape--and that is why the Mother of God is there."

{646}

"A wonderful story indeed!" said Richard. "Although I do not
laugh at it, as you see, yet I must assure you that I do not
believe the story."

"I thought so," answered the old man. "But you can ask Schenck
himself. He is still living, and is now seventy. Since that day
he has changed entirely. He drinks nothing but water. He never
enters a tavern, but goes every day to church. From that time to
this Schenck has been very industrious, and has saved a nice
property."

"That the drunkard reformed is the most remarkable and best part
of the story," said Frank. "Drunkards very seldom reform. But,"
continued he smiling, "the devil acted very stupidly in the
affair. He should have known that his appearance would have made
a deep impression on the man, and that he would not let himself
be caught a second time."

"That is true," said the old man. "But I believe the devil was
forced to appear and speak so."

"Forced? By whom?"

"By Him before whom the devils must believe and tremble. Schenck
was to understand that God delivered him on account of his pious
custom, and the devil had to tell him that this would not happen
a second time."

"How prudent you are in your superstition!" said Frank.

"As the gentleman has been kind to me, it hurts me to hear him
speak so."

"Now," said Richard quickly, "I would not hurt your feelings. One
may be a good Christian without believing fables. And the flowers
near the statue. Has Schenck placed them there too?"

"Oh! no--the Angel did that."

"The Angel. Who is that?" said Frank, surprised.

"The Angel of Salingen--Siegwart's angel."

"Ah! angel is Angela, is it not?"

"So she may be called. In Salingen they call her only Angel. And
she is indeed as lovely, good, and beautiful as an angel. She has
a heart for the poor, and she gives with an open hand and a
smiling face that does one good. She is like her father, who
gives me as many potatoes as I want, and seed for my little patch
of ground."

"Why does Angela decorate this statue?"

"I do not know; perhaps she does it through devotion."

"The flowers are quite fresh; does she come here every day?"

"Every day during the month of May, and no longer."

"Why no longer?"

"I do not know the reason; she has done so for the last two
years, since she came home from the convent, and she will do so
this year."

"As Siegwart is so good to the poor, he must be rich."

"Very rich--you can see from his house. Do you see that fine
building there next to the road? That is the residence of Herr
Siegwart."

It was the same building that had arrested Richard's attention as
he passed it some days before, and the sight of which had excited
the ill-humor of his father. Richard returned by a shorter way to
Frankenhöhe. He was serious and meditative. Arrived at home, he
wrote in his diary:

  "May 13th.--Well, I have seen her. She exhibits herself as the
  'Angel of Salingen.' She is extremely beautiful. She is full of
  amiability and purity of character. And to-day she did not wear
  that detestable crinoline. But she will have other foibles in
  place of it. She will, in some things at least, yield to the
  superficial tendencies of her sex. Isabella was an ideal, until
  she descended from the height where my imagination, deceived by
  her charms, had placed her. The impression which Angela's
  appearance produced has rests on the same
  foundation--deception. A better acquaintance will soon discover
  this. Curious! I long to become better acquainted!

{647}

  "Religion is not a disease or hallucination, as many think. It
  is a power. Religion teaches the poor to bear their hard lot
  with patience. It comforts and keeps them from despair. It
  directs their attention to an eternal reward, and this hope
  compensates them for all the afflictions and miseries of this
  life. Without religion, human society would fall to pieces."

A servant entered, and announced dinner.

"Ah Richard!" said Herr Frank good-humoredly. "Half an hour late
for dinner, and had to be called! That is strange; I do not
remember such a thing to have happened before. You are always as
punctual as a repeater."

"I was in the mountain and had just returned."

"No excuse, my son. I am glad the neighborhood diverts you, and
that you depart a little from your regularity. Now everything is
in good order, as I desired, for my friend and deliverer. I have
just received a letter from him. He will be here in two days. I
shall be glad to see the good man again. If Frankenhöhe will only
please him for a long time!"

"I have no doubt of that," said Richard. "The doctor will be
received like a friend, treated like a king, and will live here
like Adam and Eve in paradise."

"Everything will go on as formerly. I will be coming and going on
account of business. You will, of course, remain uninterruptedly
at Frankenhöhe. You are high in the doctor's esteem. You interest
him very much. It is true you annoy him sometimes with your
unlearned objections and bold assertions. But I have observed
that even vexation, when it comes from you, is not disagreeable
to him."

"But the poor should not annoy him with their sick," said
Richard. "He never denies his services to the poor, as he never
grants them to the rich. Indeed, I have sometimes observed that
he tears himself from his books with the greatest reluctance, and
it is not without an effort that he does it."

"But we cannot change it," said Herr Frank; "we cannot send the
poor away without deeply offending Klingenberg. But I esteem him
the more for his generosity."

After dinner the father and son went into the garden and talked
of various matters; suddenly Richard stopped and pointing over to
Salingen, said,

"I passed to-day that neat building that stands near the road.
Who lives there?"

"There lives the noble and lordly Herr Siegwart," said Herr Frank
derisively.

His tone surprised Richard. He was not accustomed to hear his
father speak thus.

"Is Siegwart a noble?"

"Not in the strict sense. But he is the ruler of Salingen. He
rules in that town as absolutely as princes formerly did in their
kingdoms."

"What is the cause of his influence?"

"His wealth, in the first place; secondly, his charity; and
lastly, his cunning."

"You are not favorable to him?"

"No, indeed! The Siegwart family is excessively ultramontane and
clerical. You know I cannot endure these narrow prejudices and
this obstinate adherence to any form of religion. Besides, I have
a particular reason for disagreement with Siegwart, of which I
need not now speak."

{648}

"Excessively ultramontane and clerical!" thought Richard, as he
went to his room. "Angela is undoubtedly educated in this spirit.
Stultifying confessionalism and religious narrow-mindedness have
no doubt cast a deep shadow over the 'angel.' Now--patience; the
deception will soon banish."

He took up Schlosser's History, and read a long time. But his
eyes wandered from the page, and his thoughts soon followed.

The next morning at the same hour Richard went to the weather
cross. He took the same road and again he met Angela; she had the
same blue dress, the same straw hat on her arm, and flowers in
her hand. She beheld him with the same clear eyes, with the same
unconstrained manner--only, as he thought, more charming--as on
the first day. He greeted her coolly and formally, as before. She
thanked him with the same affability. Again the temptation came
over him to look back at her; again he overcame it. When he came
to the statue, he found fresh flowers in the vases. The child
Jesus had fresh forget-me-nots in his hand, and the Mother had a
crown of fresh roses on her head. On the upper stone lay a book,
bound in blue satin and clasped with a silver clasp. When he took
it up, he found beneath it a rosary made of an unknown material,
and having a gold cross fastened at the end. He opened the book.
The passage that had been last read was marked with a silk
ribbon. It was as follows:

  "My son, trust not thy present affection; it will be quickly
  changed into another. As long as thou livest thou art subject
  to change, even against thy will; so as to be sometimes joyful,
  at other times sad; now easy, now troubled; at one time devout,
  at another dry; sometimes fervent, at other times sluggish; one
  day heavy, another day lighter. But he that is wise and well
  instructed in spirit stands above all these changes, not
  minding what he feels in himself, nor on what side the wind of
  instability blows; but that the whole bent of his soul may
  advance toward its due and wished-for end; for thus he may
  continue one and the self-same without being shaken, by
  directing without ceasing, through all this variety of events,
  the single eye of his intention toward me. And by how much more
  pure the eye of the intention is, with so much greater
  constancy mayest thou pass through these   divers storms.

  "But in many the eye of pure intention is dark; for men quickly
  look toward something delightful that comes in their way. And
  it is rare to find one who is wholly free from all blemish of
  self-seeking."

Frank remembered having written about the same thoughts in his
diary. But here they were conceived in another and deeper sense.

He read the title of the book. It was _The Following of
Christ_.

He copied the title in his pocketbook. He then with a smile
examined the rosary, for he was not without prejudice against
this kind of prayer.

He had no doubt Angela had left these things here, and he thought
it would be proper to return them to the owner. He came slowly
down the mountain reading the book. It was clear to him that
_The Following of Christ_ was a book full of very earnest
and profound reflections. And he wondered how so young a woman
could take any interest in such serious reading. He was convinced
that all the ladies he knew would throw such a book aside with a
sneer, because its contents condemned their lives and habits.
Angela, then, must be of a different character from all the
ladies he knew, and he was very desirous of knowing better this
character of Angela.

In a short time he entered the gate and passed through the yard
to the stately building where Herr Siegwart dwelt. He glanced
hastily at the long out-buildings--the large barns; at the
polished cleanliness of the paved court, the perfect order of
everything, and finally at the ornamented mansion.
{649}
Then he looked at the old lindens that stood near the house,
whose trunks were protected from injury by iron railings. In the
tops of these trees lodged a lively family of sparrows, who were
at present in hot contention, for they quarrelled and cried as
loud and as long as did formerly the lords in the parliament of
Frankfort. The beautiful garden, separated from the yard by a low
wall covered with white boards, did not escape him. Frank
entered, upon a broad and very clean path; as his feet touched
the stone slabs, he heard, through the open door, a low growl,
and then a man's voice saying, "Quiet, Hector."

Frank walked through the open door into a large room handsomely
furnished, and odoriferous with a multitude of flowers in vases.
A man in the prime of life sat on the sofa reading and smoking.
He wore a light-brown overcoat, brown trousers, and low, thick
boots. He had a fresh, florid complexion, red beard, blue eyes,
and an expressive, agreeable countenance. When Frank entered he
arose, laid aside the paper and cigar, and approached the
visitor.

"I found these things on the mountain near the weather-cross."
said Frank, after a more formal than affable bow. "As your
daughter met me, I presume they belong to her. I thought it my
duty to return them."

"These things certainly belong to my daughter," answered Herr
Siegwart. "You are very kind, sir. You have placed us under
obligations to you."

"I was passing this way," said Frank briefly.

"And whom have we the honor to thank?"

"I am Richard Frank."

Herr Siegwart bowed. Frank noticed a slight embarrassment in his
countenance. He remembered the expressions his father had used in
reference to the Siegwart family, and it was clear to him that a
reciprocal ill feeling existed here. Siegwart soon resumed his
friendly manner, and invited him with much formality to the sofa.
Richard felt that he must accept the invitation at least for a
few moments. Siegwart sat on a chair in front of him, and they
talked of various unimportant matters. Frank admired the skill
which enabled him to conduct, without interruption, so pleasant a
conversation with a stranger.

While they were speaking, some house-swallows flew into the room.
They fluttered about without fear, sat on the open door, and
joined their cheerful twittering with the conversation of the
men. Richard expressed his admiration, and said he had never seen
anything like it.

"Our constant guests in summer," answered Siegwart. "They build
their nests in the hall, and as they rise earlier than we do, an
opening is left for them above the hall door, where they can go
in and out undisturbed when the doors are closed. Angela is in
their confidence, and on the best of terms with them. When rainy
or cold days come during breeding time they suffer from want of
food. Angela is then their procurator. I have often admired
Angela's friendly intercourse with the swallows, who perch upon
her shoulders and hands."

Richard looked indeed at the twittering swallows, but their
friend Angela passed before his eyes, so beautiful indeed that he
no longer heard what Siegwart was saying.

He arose; Siegwart accompanied him. As they passed through the
yard, Frank observed the long row of stalls, and said, "You must
have considerable stock?"

{650}

"Yes, somewhat. If you would like to see the property, I will
show you around with pleasure."

"I regret that I cannot now avail myself of your kindness; I
shall do so in a few days," answered Frank.

"Herr Frank," said Siegwart, "may the accident which has given us
the pleasure of your agreeable visit, be the occasion of many
visits in future. I know that as usual you will spend the month
of May at Frankenhöhe. We are neighbors--this title, in my
opinion, should indicate a friendly intercourse."

"Let it be understood, Herr Siegwart; I accept with pleasure your
invitation."

On the way to Frankenhöhe Richard walked very slowly, and gazed
into the distance before him. He thought of the swallows that
perched on Angela's shoulders and hands. Their sweet notes still
echoed in his soul.

The country-like quiet of Siegwart's house and the sweet peace
that pervaded it were something new to him. He thought of the
simple character of Siegwart, who, as his father said, was
"ultramontane and clerical," and whom he had represented to
himself as a dark, reserved man. He found nothing in the open,
natural manner of the man to correspond with his preconceived
opinion of him. Richard concluded that either Herr Siegwart was
not an ultramontane, or the characteristics of the ultramontanes,
as portrayed in the free-thinking newspapers of the day, were
erroneous and false.

Buried in such thoughts, he reached Frankenhöhe. As he passed
through the yard, he did not observe the carriage that stood
there. But as he passed under the window, he heard a loud voice,
and some books were thrown from the window and fell at his feet.
He looked down in surprise at the books, whose beautiful binding
was covered with sand. He now observed the coach, and smiled.

"Ah! the doctor is here," said he. "He has thrown these unwelcome
guests out of the window. Just like him."

He took up the books and read the titles, _Vogt's Pictures from
Animal Life, Vogt's Physiological Letters, Colbe's Sensualism._

He took the books to his room and began to read them. Herr Frank,
with his joyful countenance, soon appeared.

"Klingenberg is here!" said he.

"I suspected as much already," said Richard. "I passed by just as
he threw the books out of the window with his usual impetuosity."

"Do not let him see the books; the sight of them sets him wild."

"Klingenberg walks only in his own room. I wish to read these
books; what enrages him with innocent paper?"

"I scarcely know, myself. He examined the library and was much
pleased with some of the works. But suddenly he tore these books
from their place and hurled them through the window."

"'I tolerate no bad company among these noble geniuses,' said he,
pointing to the learned works.

"'Pardon me, honored friend,' said I, 'if, without my knowledge,
some bad books were included. What kind of writings are these,
doctor?"

"'Stupid materialistic trash,' said he.' If I had Vogt,
Moleschott, Colbe, and Büchner here, I would throw them body and
bones out of the window.'

"I was very much surprised at this declaration, so contrary to
the doctor's kind disposition.'What kind of people are those you
have named?' said I.

{651}

"'No people, my dear Frank,' said he.' They are animals, This
Vogt and his fellows have excluded themselves from the pale of
humanity, inasmuch as they have declared apes, oxen, and asses to
be their equals.'"

"I am now very desirous to know these books," said Richard.

"Well, do not let our friend know your intention," urged Frank.

Richard dressed and went to greet the singular guest. He was
sitting before a large folio. He arose at Richard's entrance and
paternally reached him both hands.

Doctor Klingenberg was of a compact, strong build. He had
unusually long arms, which he swung back and forth in walking.
His features were sharp, but indicated a modest character. From
beneath his bushy eyebrows there glistened two small eyes that
did not give an agreeable expression to his countenance. This
unfavorable expression was, however, only the shell of a warm
heart.

The doctor was good-natured--hard on himself, but mild in his
judgments of others. He had an insatiable desire for knowledge,
and it impelled him to severe studies that robbed him of his hair
and made him prematurely bald.

"How healthy you look, Richard!" said he, contemplating the young
man. "I am glad to see you have not been spoiled by the seething
atmosphere of modern city life."

"You know, doctor, I have a natural antipathy to all swamps and
morasses."

"That is right, Richard; preserve a healthy naturalness."

"We expected you this morning."

"And would go to the station to bring me. Why this ceremony? I am
here, and I will enjoy for a few weeks the pure, bracing mountain
air. Our arrangements will be as formerly--not so, my dear
friend?"

"I am at your service."

"You have, of course, discovered some new points that afford fine
views?"

"If not many, at least one--the weather cross," answered Frank.
"A beautiful position. The hill stands out somewhat from the
range. The whole plain lies before the ravished eyes. At the same
time, there are things connected with _that_ place that are
not without their influence on me. They refer to a custom of the
ultramontanists that clashes with modern ideas; I will have an
opportunity of seeing whether your opinion coincides with mine."

"Very well; since we have already an object for our next
walk--and this is according to our old plan--tomorrow after
dinner at three o'clock," and saying this he glanced wistfully at
the old folio. Frank, smiling, observed the delicate hint and
retired.

           To Be Continued.

----------

{652}

        Antiquities of New York.


It is as true of nations as it is of individuals that they "live
more in the past and the future than in the present;" and when
either are young and have a very limited past, their thoughts
dwell most upon the future. This is one marked difference between
the peoples of the old world and us on this continent. Our past
is so small in comparison with theirs, that antiquarian
societies, so common with them, are quite unknown among us, and
it is not often that we throw our thoughts back.

Yet in that respect, as in others, we are daily improving, and we
begin, now and then, to find something to think upon in the days
of our forefathers.

These thoughts have arisen in our mind from having come across a
book recently published by the State of New York: "Laws and
Ordinances of New Netherlands, 1638-1674, compiled and translated
from the original Dutch records in the office of the Secretary of
State. Albany, N.Y. E.B. O'Callaghan." From that book a good deal
can be learned of the manners and customs in our goodly city some
two hundred years ago, that cannot fail to be interesting.

It was in 1621 that the States General of the United Netherlands
incorporated a West India Company, with power to establish
colonies in such parts of America as were not already occupied by
other nations.

Under this authority, the company established a colony embracing
the land from the present State of Maryland to the Connecticut
River, and called NEW NETHERLAND.

The Amsterdam Chamber of the company exercised supreme government
over this colony until 1664, when it was captured by the English,
but recovered by the Dutch in 1673, but was finally ceded to the
English.

It was in 1609 that Hendrik Hudson discovered the country, and in
1623 it was that the West India Company sent its first colony of
families, who settled at what was then Fort Orange, now Albany,
and settled a colony of families at New Amsterdam, now New York.

The colonial government, including legislative and executive
powers, was administered by a director-general and council; and
it is from the laws which they enacted that we can gather much
knowledge of the manners and customs of our Dutch progenitors and
from which we now proceed to make some extracts.


          Slavery.

On the 7th of June, 1629, the West India Company granted what we
would call a charter to all settlers in the new world, but which
they called "freedoms and exemptions," to all patroons, masters,
or private persons who would plant colonies in New Netherland.

They consisted of thirty-one articles; and among them was that
which, if it may not be considered the origin, in this country,
of that slavery which it took us some two hundred and fifty years
to get rid of, was, by one of the articles, not only tolerated,
but was actually established, with a covenant on the part of the
home government to supply the settlers with slaves.

{653}

              Article XXX.

  "The Company will use their endeavors to supply the colonists
  with as many Blacks as they conveniently can, on the conditions
  hereafter to be made, in such manner, however, that they shall
  not be bound to do it for a longer time than they shall think
  proper."

On the 19th of November, 1654, the Amsterdam board allowed the
importation of negroes direct from Africa, by the ship Witte
Paert, and on the 6th of August, 1655, the director-general and
council of New Netherland imposed an _ad valorem_ duty of
ten per cent on the exportation of any of the slaves brought in
by that ship.


           The Yankees.

The discord between the quiet, stolid Dutchmen of those days, and
the restless "Yengees," of whom they had so much dread, soon
began to show itself, and every once in a while we find a paper
bomb-shell fired off at them, in the shape of a law, and hitting
them in a tender spot, by forbidding trade.

Take this, the first instance:

          "Ordinance
  Of the Director and Council of New Netherland, prohibiting the
  purchase of produce raised near Fort Hope.--Passed 3 April,
  1642.

  "Whereas our territory which we purchased, paid for, and took
  possession of, provided in the year 1633 with a Blockhouse,
  Garrison, and Cannon, on the Fresh River of _New
  Netherland_, a long time before any Christians were in the
  said river, hath now, for some years past, been forcibly
  usurped by some englishmen, and given the name of Hartford,
  notwithstanding we duly protested against them; who, moreover,
  treat our people most barbarously, beating them with clubs and
  mattocks even unto the shedding of blood; cut down our corn,
  sow the fields by night which our people ploughed by day; haul
  home by force the hay which was mowed by our people; cast our
  ploughs into the river, and forcibly impound our horses, cows,
  and hogs, so that no cruelty, insolence, nor violence remains
  which is not practised toward us, who yet have treated them
  with all moderation; Yea, even at great hazard, have redeemed
  and sent back home their Women, who were carried off by the
  Indians; And although we are commanded by the States-General,
  his Highness of Orange, and the Honorable West India Company to
  maintain our Limits and to assert our Right by every means,
  which We, also, have the power to do, yet rather have We chose
  patiently to suffer violence, and to prove by deeds that we are
  better Christians than they who go about there clothed with
  such outward show, until in its time the measure shall be
  entirely full.

  "Therefore, our order and command provisionally is, & We do
  hereby Ordain that our Inhabitants of _New Netherland_ be
  most expressly forbidden from purchasing, either directly or
  indirectly, by the third or second shipment, or in any manner
  whatsoever, any produce which has been raised on our land near
  _Fort Hope_ on the Fresh River, on pain of arbitrary
  correction, until their rights are acknowledged, and the
  sellers of the produce which shall arrive from our _Fresh
  River_ of _New Netherland_ and from _New England_
  shall first declare upon oath where the produce has been grown,
  whereof a certificate shall be given them, and thereupon every
  one shall be at liberty to buy and to sell."

And finally the quarrel went so far as to give rise to the
following

         "Ordinance

  Of the Governor-General and Council of New Netherland further
  prohibiting the entertainment of Strangers, forbidding
  intercourse or correspondence with the people of New
  England.--Passed, 12 December, 1673.

  "Whereas, it is found by experience that notwithstanding the
  previously published Ordinance and Edicts, many Strangers, yea
  enemies of this State, attempt to come within this government
  without having previously obtained any consent or passport, and
  have even presumed to show themselves within this city of
  _New Orange_; also that many Inhabitants of this Province,
  losing sight of and forgetting their Oath of Allegiance,
  presume still daily to correspond, and exchange letters with
  the Inhabitants of the neighboring colonies of _New
  England_ and other enemies of this State, whence nothing
  else can result but great prejudice and loss to this Province,
  and it is, accordingly, necessary that seasonable provision be
  made therein.

{654}

  "Therefore, the Governor-General of _New Netherland_, by
  and with the advice of his Council, reviewing the aforesaid
  Ordinances and Edicts enacted on that subject, have deemed it
  highly necessary strictly to order and command that all
  Strangers and others, of what nation or quality soever they may
  be, who have not as yet bound themselves by Oath and promise of
  fealty to the present Supreme government of this Province, and
  have not been received by it as good subjects, do within the
  space of four and twenty hours from the publication hereof
  depart from out this province of New Netherland, and further
  interdicting and forbidding any person, not being actually an
  inhabitant and subject of this government, from coming within
  this government without first having obtained due license and
  passport to that end, on pain and penalty that the contraveners
  shall not be considered other than open enemies and spies of
  this State, and consequently be arbitrarily punished as an
  example to others. And to the end that they may be the more
  easily discovered and found out, all Inhabitants of this
  Province are interdicted and forbidden from henceforth
  harboring or lodging any strangers over night in their houses
  or dwellings unless they have previously given due
  communication thereof to their officer or Magistrate before
  sun-down, under the penalty set forth in the former Edict.

  "Furthermore, the Inhabitants of this Province are strictly
  interdicted and forbidden, from this day forward, from holding
  any correspondence with the neighboring Colonies of _New
  England_, and all others actual enemies of our State, much
  less afford them any supplies of any description, on pain of
  forfeiting the goods and double the value thereof, likewise
  from exchanging any letters, of what nature soever they may be,
  without having obtained previous special consent thereto.
  Therefore all messengers, skippers, travellers, together with
  all others whom these may in any wise concern, are most
  expressly forbidden to take charge of, much less to deliver,
  any letters coming from the enemy's places, or going thither,
  but immediately on their arrival to deliver them into the
  Secretary's office here in order to be duly examined, on pain
  of being fined One hundred guilders in Beaver, to be paid by
  the receiver as well as by the deliverer of each letter which
  contrary to the tenor hereof shall be exchanged or delivered."


         Their Currency.

Gold and silver were scarce among them. The modern device of
paper money had not then come in vogue, and so they had to use
wampum--the Indians' currency or medium of exchange.

This was made from oyster-shells, and was worn by the natives as
ornaments, and had no intrinsic value, but only a conventional
one. And it seems to have been hard work to keep it up to its
standard. Every body could make it that could catch oysters, and
its plenty or scarcity causing a fluctuation of prices, gave them
a great deal of trouble, especially when their old rock of
offence, "the Yankees," began to manufacture it and buy away from
them all they had to sell, for what was actually of no value.

So we find every once in a while "Ordinances" passed on the
subject, which in their quaint and simple way show the state of
things. Between April 18th, 1641, and December 28th, 1662, we
find in this book twelve different ordinances on the subject;
some of them fixing their value, some punishing frauds, some
making them a legal tender, some declaring them merchandise, some
providing that they shall be paid out by measure, some exempting
them from import duty, and some providing for their depreciation.

The following extracts will afford an idea of their difficulties
on the subject.

         "Resolutions

  Of the Director and Council of New Netherland respecting loose
  Wampum.--Passed, 30 November, 1647.

  "_Resolved_ and concluded in Council at _Fort
  Amsterdam_, that, until further Order, the loose Wampum
  shall continue current and in circulation only that, in the
  mean while, all imperfect, broken, or unpierced beads can be
  picked out, which are declared Bullion, and shall, meantime, be
  received at the Company's counting-house as heretofore.
  Provided that the Company, or any one on its part, shall, in
  return, be at liberty to trade therewith among the Merchants or
  otter Inhabitants, or in larger parcels, as may be agreed upon
  and stipulated by any individual, or on behalf of the Company."

{655}

          "Ordinance
  Of the Director and Council of _New Netherland_ further
  regulating the currency.--Passed 14 September, 1650.

  "The Director-General and Council of _New Netherland_, To
  all those who hear, see, or read these presents, Greeting.
  Whereas, on the daily complaints of the inhabitants, we
  experience that our previous Ordinance and Edict relative to
  the poor strung Wampum, published under date 30 May, A° 1650,
  for the accommodation and protection of the people, is not
  observed and obeyed according to our good intention and
  meaning; but that, on the contrary, such pay, even for small
  items, is rejected and refused by Shopkeepers, Brewers,
  Tapsters, Tradespeople, and Laboring men, to the great
  confusion and inconvenience of the Inhabitants in general,
  there being, at present, no other currency whereby the
  Inhabitants can procure from each other small articles of daily
  trade; for which wishing to provide as much as possible, for
  the relief and protection of the Inhabitants, the Director and
  Council do hereby Ordain and command that, in conformity to our
  previous Ordinance, the poor strung Wampum shall be current and
  accepted by every one without distinction and exception for
  small and daily necessary commodities required for
  housekeeping, as currency to the amount of Twelve guilders and
  under only, in poor strung wampum; of twelve to twenty-four
  guilders half and half, that is to say, half poor strung and
  half good strung Wampum; of twenty guilders to fifty guilders,
  one third poor strung and two thirds good strung wampum, and in
  larger sums according to the conditions agreed upon between
  Buyer and Seller, under a penalty of six guilders for the first
  time, to be forfeited on refusal by contraveneor hereof; for
  the second time nine guilders, and for the third time two
  pounds Flemish and stoppage of his trade and business, pursuant
  to our previous Edicts.

  "Thus done and enacted in Council by the Director and Council,
  this 14 September, 1650, in _New Amsterdam_."


           "Ordinance

  Of the Director-General and Council of _New Netherland_
  regulating the currency.--Passed 3 January, 1657.

  "The Director-General and Council of New Netherland,

  "To all those who see or hear these presents read, Greeting,
  make known.

  "Whereas they, to their great regret, are by their own
  experience daily informed, and by the manifold complaints of
  Inhabitants and Strangers importuned, respecting the great,
  excessive and intolerable dearness of all sorts of necessary
  commodities and household supplies, the prices of which are
  enhanced from time to time, principally among other causes, in
  consequence of the high price of Beaver and other Peltries in
  this country beyond the value, which, by reason of the great
  abundance of Wampum, is advanced to ten, eleven and twelve
  guilders for one Beaver; And Wampum being, for want of Silver
  and Gold coin, as yet the most general and common currency
  between man and man, Buyer and Seller, domestic articles and
  daily necessaries are rated according to that price, and become
  dearer from time to time; the rather, as not only Merchants,
  but also, consequently, Shopkeepers, Tradesmen, Brewers,
  Bakers, Tapsters, and Grocers make a difference of 30, 40, to
  50 per cent when they sell their wares for Wampum or for
  Beaver. This tends, then, so far to the serious damage,
  distress and loss of the common Mechanics, Brewers, Farmers and
  other good Inhabitants of this Province, that the Superior and
  inferior magistrates of this Province are blamed, abused and
  cursed by Strangers and Inhabitants, and the Country in general
  receives a bad name, while some greedy people do not hesitate
  to sell the most necessary eatables and drinkables, according
  to their insatiable avarice; viz., the can of Vinegar at 18 @
  20 stivers; the can of Oil at 4 @ 5 guilders; the can of French
  wine at 40 @ 45 stivers; the gill of Brandy at 15 stivers, and
  two quarts of home brewed Beer, far above its price, at 14@15
  stivers, &c., which the greater number endeavor to excuse on
  the ground that they lose a great deal in the counting of the
  Wampum; that it is partly short and partly long; that they must
  give 11@12 and more guilders before they can convert the wampum
  into Beaver."

So that, at last, the home government took it up, and in 1659
they wrote to the council at New Amsterdam, among other things:

{656}

  "From this particular reduction of the Wampum a second general
  reduction must necessarily follow, if the depreciation thereof
  is to be prevented. This arises in consequence of the great
  importation of Wampum from New-England, which barters therewith
  and carries out of the country not only the best cargoes sent
  hence, but also a large quantity of beaver and other peltries,
  whereby the Company is defrauded of its revenues and the
  merchants here of good returns, while the Factors and
  inhabitants there remain with chests full of Wampum, which is a
  currency utterly valueless except among New Netherland Indians
  only," etc.

The rate of depreciation may be discovered from the fact that an
ordinance passed in April, 1641, fixed it at 4 polished and 5
unpolished for one stiver, while another, passed in December,
1662, fixed it at 24 for one stiver; and that in 1650 it was
fixed at 6 white and 3 black for one stiver, and twelve years
afterward at 24 white and 12 black for one stiver--making what
President Johnson would call a depreciation of 400 per cent in
that short time.


              Religion.

The government interfered very much in religious matters, seeming
to aim not so much at protection against molestation as to
produce conformity of opinion, by making the people view such
things as the Director and Council did.

Between April, 1641, and November, 1673, fourteen ordinances were
passed concerning Sunday. And between June, 1641, and November,
1673, there were sixteen ordinances as to religion.

As to Sunday, the laws were:

  11 April, 1641.--"No person shall attempt to tap beer or any
  other strong drink during divine service, nor use any other
  measure than that which is in common use at Amsterdam."

This law was preceded by a recital:

  "Whereas complaints have been made to us that some of the
  inhabitants here are in the habit of Tapping Beer during Divine
  Service, and of making use of small foreign Measures, which
  tends to the dishonor of religion and the ruin of this state."


  13 May, 1647.--"None of the Brewers, Tapsters and
  Tavern-keepers shall on the rest day of the Lord by us called
  Sunday, before two of the clock when there is no sermon, or,
  otherwise, before four o'clock in the afternoon, set before,
  tap or give any people any Wine, Beer or strong liquors of any
  kind whatever, and under any pretext, be it what it may," etc.

That law has this preamble:

  "Whereas we see and observe by experience, the great disorders
  in which some of our inhabitants indulge in drinking to excess,
  quarreling, fighting, and smiting, even on the Lord's day of
  rest, whereof, God help us! we have seen and heard sorrowful
  instances on last Sunday," etc.


10 March, 1648.--After reciting that the former edict is
disobeyed, they say,

  "The reason and cause why this our good Edict and well meant
  Ordinance is not obeyed according to the tenor and purport
  thereof, are that this sort of business and the profit easily
  accruing therefrom divert and lead many from their original and
  primitive calling, occupation and business, to resort to
  Tavern-keeping, so that nearly the just fourth of the city of
  New Amsterdam consists of Brandyshops, Tobacco or Beer-houses."

And they enact, among other things, that tapsters and
tavern-keepers shall not

  "sell nor furnish Beer or Liquor to any person, travellers and
  boarders alone excepted, on the Sunday, before three o'clock in
  the afternoon, when Divine Service is finished."

{657}

29 April, 1648.--After complaining again of non-observance of
former laws, they renew and amplify previous edicts, and declare
that,

  "having for the stricter observance thereof, with the preadvice
  of the Minister of the Gospel, deemed it expedient that a
  sermon shall be preached from the sacred Scriptures, and the
  usual prayers and thanksgivings offered from this time forward
  in the afternoon as well as the forenoon," etc., and forbid all
  tapping, fishing, hunting, and business during divine service.

26 October, 1656.--Repeating their complaints, they enact an
ordinance against performing on Sunday any work, such as
ploughing, mowing, building, etc., and, as they term it,

  "much less any lower or unlawful exercise and amusement.
  Drunkenness, frequenting Taverns or Tippling-houses, Dancing,
  Playing ball, Cards, Trick-Track, Tennis, Cricket or Nine-pins,
  going on pleasure parties in a boat, car or wagon, _before,
  between or during Divine Service_," and forbidding the sale
  of liquor "_before, between or during the sermons_," etc.

12 June, 1657.--They forbid all persons, "of what nation or rank
he may be," to entertain any company on Sunday or during divine
service.

18 November, 1661.--They forbid all work on Sunday under "the
penalty of £1 Flemish for the first time, double as much for the
second time, and _four times double as much_ for the third
time." (Silent as to the fourth time.)

And they forbid all entertainments in taverns, and any giving
away or selling any liquor.

10 September, 1663.--The director-general and council of New
Amsterdam passed an ordinance against which the burgomasters and
schepens of New Amsterdam rebelled, and which they refused to
enforce, for the reason that it was "too severe and too much in
opposition to the Freedoms of Holland."

That law extended the former laws to the whole of Sunday from
sunrise to sunset, and in addition prohibited any riding in cars
or wagons, any roving in search of nuts or strawberries, and the
"too unrestrained and excessive playing, shouting and screaming
of children in the streets."

16 June, 1641.--They began by securing to all Englishmen who
might settle with them "the free exercise of Religion."

16 November, 1644.--They granted to the town of Hempstead the
power of using and exercising "the Reformed Religion with the
Ecclesiastical discipline thereunto belonging."

10 October, 1645--They granted to the town of Flushing the
"Liberty of Conscience according to the Custom and manner of
Holland, without molestation or disturbance from any magistrate
or any other Ecclesiastical minister."

19 December, 1645.--They made the same grant to Gravesend.

At a later day a change seems to have come over them, as witness
the following:

         "Ordinance

  Of the Director and Council of New Netherland against
  Conventicles.--Passed 1 February, 1656.

  "Whereas the Director and Council of _New Netherland_ are
  credibly informed and apprized that here and there within this
  Province not only are Conventicles and Meetings held, but also
  that some unqualified persons in such Meetings assume the
  ministerial office, the expounding and explanation of the Holy
  word of God, without being called or appointed thereto by
  ecclesiastical or civil authority, which is in direct
  contravention and opposition to the general Civil and
  Ecclesiastical order of our Fatherland; besides that many
  dangerous Heresies and Schisms are to be apprehended from such
  manner of meetings. Therefore, the Director General and Council
  aforesaid hereby absolutely and expressly forbid all such
  conventicles and meetings, whether public or private, differing
  from the customary and not only lawful but scripturally founded
  and ordained meetings of the Reformed Divine service, as this
  is observed and enforced according to the Synod of Dordrecht,"
  etc.

{658}

On 21 September, 1662, they enacted that "beside the Reformed
worship and service, no conventicles or meetings shall be kept in
the province, whether it be in houses, barnes, ships, barkes, nor
in the woods nor fields."

In December, 1656, they enacted an ordinance containing this,
among other things:

  "Further, whenever, early in the morning or after supper in the
  evening, prayers shall be said, or God's word read, by any one
  thereunto commissioned, every person, of what quality soever he
  may be, shall repair to hear it with becoming reverence.

  "No man shall raise or bring forward any question or argument
  on the subject of religion, on pain of being placed on bread
  and water three days in the ship's galley. And if any
  difficulties should arise out of the said disputes, the author
  thereof shall be arbitrarily punished."

They repeatedly passed ordinances requiring their officers to be
of the reformed religion.

         "Ordinance

  Of the Director-General and Council of New Netherland
  prohibiting the bringing of Quakers and other Strollers into
  New Netherland.--Passed 17 May, 1663.

  "The Director-General and Council of New Netherland, To all
  those who shall see or hear these Presents read, Greeting, make
  known.

  "Whereas we daily find that many Vagabonds, Quakers and other
  Fugitives are, without the previous knowledge and consent of
  the Director General and Council, conveyed, brought and landed
  in this Government, and sojourn and remain in the respective
  Villages of this Province without those bringing them giving
  notice thereof, or such persons addressing themselves to the
  government and showing whence they come, as they ought to do,
  or that they have taken the oath of fidelity the same as other
  Inhabitants; the Director General and Council, therefore, do
  hereby Order and command all Skippers, Sloop Captains and
  others, whosoever they may be, not to convey or bring, much
  less to land, within this government, any such Vagabonds,
  Quakers and other Fugitives, whether Men or Women, unless they
  have first addressed themselves to the government, have given
  information thereof, and asked and obtained consent on pain of
  the importers forfeiting a fine of twenty pounds Flemish for
  every person, whether Man or Woman, whom they will have brought
  in and landed without the consent or previous Knowledge of the
  Director General and Council, and, in addition, be obliged
  immediately to depart out of this government with such
  persons."

17 March, 1664, they ordained that the schoolmasters shall appear
in church with their scholars, on Wednesday before divine
service, and be examined after service by the minister and
elders, "as to what they have committed to memory of the
Christian Commandments and Catechism, and what progress they have
made."

On 1 October, 1673, 8 November, 1673, and 15 January, 1674, they
passed ordinances that the sheriff and magistrates, or the schout
and magistrates, each in his quality, take care that the reformed
Christian religion be maintained in conformity to the Synod of
Dordrecht, (or Synod of Dort,) without suffering or permitting
any other sects attempting any thing contrary thereto, or
suffering any attempt to be made against it by any other
sectaries.

On 12 November, 1661, they passed a law imposing "a land tax at
Esopus to defray the expense of building a Minister's House
there."

On 13 February, 1657, the court of Breuckelen (Brooklyn) imposed
an assessment on that town to pay "the Rev. Minister De J.
Theodorus Polhemius fl 300," as a supplement of his promised
salary and yearly allowance.


         Miscellaneous.

A few more instances of the manner in which our staid and quiet
Dutch progenitors managed their affairs will suffice for this
paper, already long enough.

{659}

_The Ferry_.--In an ordinance regulating the ferry at the
Manhattans, passed 1 July, 1654, it was among other things
enacted:

  "Item. The Lessee shall be bound to accommodate the passengers
  on summer days only from 5 O'clock in the morning till 8
  O'clock in the evening, provided the windmill [Footnote 167]
  hath not taken in its sail.

    [Footnote 167: The windmill here spoken of stood on the old
    Battery, and seemed to serve as a barometer or indicator of
    bad weather to all the people.]

  "Item. The Lessee shall receive ordinary Ferriage during the
  Winter from 7 O'clock in the morning to 5 O'clock in the
  evening; but he shall not be bound, except he please, to convey
  any one over in a tempest, or when the windmill hath lowered
  its sail in consequence of storm or otherwise."

_Wages_.--In 1653, the director and council of New
Netherland passed an ordinance fixing the rate of wages to be
paid to carpenters, masons, etc. But the directors at Amsterdam
disapproved of it "as impracticable."

_Fast Driving_.--Here, now, is a law which would illy enough
suit our times, and which shows us how queer were the times when
such a regulation could exist.

         "Ordinance

  Of the Director and Council of New Netherland regulating the
  driving of Wagons, Carts, etc., in New Amsterdam.--Passed 27
  June, 1652.

  "The Director-General and Council of _New Netherland_, in
  order to prevent accidents, do hereby Ordain that no Wagons,
  Carts or Sleighs shall be run, rode or driven at a gallop
  within this city of _New Amsterdam;_ that the drivers and
  conductors of all Wagons, Carts and Sleighs within this city
  shall not sit or stand on them, but now henceforth within this
  City (the Broad Highway alone excepted) shall walk by the
  Wagons, Carts or Sleighs, and so take and lead the horses."

_Danger from Fire_s.--They passed quite a number of
ordinances on this subject.

In January, 1648, they recite that the people do not keep their
chimneys clean, whereby "greater damage is to be expected in
future from fire, the rather as the houses here in New Amsterdam
are, for the most part, built of wood, and thatched with reed,
beside which the chimneys of some of the houses are of wood,
which is most dangerous;" and they forbid any more wooden
chimneys, but those already built may remain.

They appoint as fire wardens to see that the chimneys are kept
clean, "from the Hon. Council, Commissary Adriaen D'Keyser; from
the commonalty, Thomas Hall, Marten Crigier and George Wolsey."

On 28 September, 1648, they direct the fire wardens to visit
every house, "and see that every one is keeping his chimney
properly clean by sweeping."

And finally, on 15 December, 1657, they passed a law which
complains, as usual, of the non-observance of former laws, and
recites that "divers calamities and accidents have been caused,
and are still to be apprehended, from fire; yea, a total ruin of
this city, inasmuch as it daily begins to be compactly built,"
etc.;

And enact that "all thatched roofs and wooden chimneys, Hay ricks
and hay stacks within this city shall be broken up, and removed
within the time of four consecutive months," "to be promptly put
in execution for every house, whether small or large, Hay rick,
or hay stack, or wooden chimney, hen houses, or hog pens," etc.;

And then, after reciting that "whereas, in all well ordered
Cities and Towns it is customary that Fire Buckets, Ladders, and
Hooks be found provided about the corner the streets and in
public houses," they authorize the burgomaster, "to send by the
first opportunity to Fatherland for one hundred to 150 Leather
Fire Buckets," etc.

{660}

_Marriages_.--On 15 January, 1658, after reciting that "the
Director General and Council not only are informed, but have even
seen and remarked that some persons, after the proclamation and
publication for the third time of their bans, or intention of
marriage, do not proceed further with the solemnization of their
marriage, as they ought, but postpone it from time to time, not
only weeks, but some months, which is directly contrary to, and
in contravention of, the good order and custom of our
Fatherland:"

They enact that marriage must be solemnized within one month
after the last publication, or appear in council and show cause:

And that "no man and woman shall be at liberty to keep house as
married persons before and until they are lawfully married, on
pain of forfeiting one hundred guilders, more or less, as their
quality shall be found to warrant, and all such persons may be
amerced anew therefor every month by the officer, according to
the order and the custom of our Fatherland."

----------

            The Charms Of Nativity.


In this day, when a spirit of restlessness seems to have seized
upon the various peoples of the world, and operates to produce
great movements from one locality to another, or from one country
to another, we propose to devote some pages to the discussion of
this interesting subject. The world may be said to be grossly
material; for surely no land of flowering beauty, however rich in
the wealth of nature's charms, can, to a sentimental and
spiritual soul, be at all comparable to those heavenly flowers of
love which bloom in the vicinage in which we were reared. In
leaving a cold and bleak country even, we may go to one where
nature has stamped her own warmth, as she is sure to do, on the
hearts of her inhabitants; but those scenes to which we were
earliest used are, by far, dearer to the sensitive soul, than
others which, in distant lands, crop out more gorgeously; and the
playmates, the associates of our hearts, our early lives, even
though it may be in the very chill and frost of barren rocks and
dreary plains, are far dearer to us than the welcome of
strangers, let it be as warm and as sunny as genial and glowing
hearts can make it. The stranger, with soul, in a strange land,
has fully felt the truth of these remarks. These are
considerations which should operate powerfully with us to bind us
to our homes and our own communities. But the benefits of staying
at home, or of enlarging the area of "civilization" and of
settlement but slowly, are not confined, by any means, to our
feelings. To prevent the loneliness which we naturally feel in a
strange country is not the only object to be gained by migrating,
when we migrate at all, slowly, and but little at a time, (say a
few miles only,) and by making our habitations as permanent as
possible. There are, perhaps, weightier considerations, even,
which should govern in the matter than the loneliness and the
estrangement which we must suffer for years, when we make distant
removals.

Home is, in its full meaning, a most heavenly word. It is a word
that is allied with every principle of our natures. It is the
nursery in which our spirits are trained. It is the seat of our
religion and the abode of our loves. There can be to us but one
home, that is, in the full sense of the term.
{661}
And that home is a locality, a place, where, with the kindred
ideas, elements, and social and spiritual partnerships of our
earlier lives and beings, we can enjoy life pure and perfect as
we at first received it. Any local or social estrangements from
these pure elements of life, no matter how complete the
surrounding appointments of comfort may seem to be which draw us
away from them, do not constitute and make up the bulk of what,
properly, is to the human spirit to be considered home.

The loss of home, then, by removal to a distance from those
earlier scenes, localities, peoples, ideas, and customs of which
we are a part, is a far greater loss to us, considered in the
aggregate, than is at first apparent by any mere feelings of
loneliness or estrangement which we may suffer in a strange
community. Because, while these feelings undoubtedly indicate to
us the part of our lives with which we have parted in leaving
those scenes and associations of which we were a part, they do
not always reflect back to us the painful vacuum which is created
at home by our absence; and therefore, our feelings are not
always an accurate measurement of the full injury done by the
detaching of human elements from their proper places, to be
thereafter located in strange and distant lands. And it may
properly be said that the suffering of these feelings by those
who have removed is not the greatest injury done by such
removals. For, while feelings represent some of the injury done
to us by such removals, they certainly do not represent all of
it. The strongest powers of a man, naturally considered, are in
the locality or in the society in which he was raised. He may, in
distant communities, where social life is just taking root, or
where, indeed, it has already taken root, be, to outward
appearances, a more prominent person than at home, where he was
raised. He may be called into public life oftener, and be made to
assume offices of trust which at home he never would have
assumed, and, perhaps, never could have assumed. But, after all,
he is really not so important a personage in his new locality,
and in his new offices, as he would have been at home in his
natural offices. This statement may appear, to some minds,
paradoxical. But it really is not so, examined by the light and
the law of uses and of natural adaptations. We shall not go into
any extended discussion, however, of this particular question,
but we shall assume, at the outset, that the circle of
"civilization" or of settlement, should be but slowly and
gradually enlarged. There are a great many strong reasons for
this plea of widening and enlarging the circle of "civilization"
or of settlement. The same reasons which operate to show that no
single individual can be as useful (in the scale of nature) in a
community distant and remote from his birthplace, as he could in
serving out his natural uses in his birthplace, will operate
equally to show that such distant removals are not healthy for
whole communities of people. Our border States, some of which are
very far out from the centres of settlement, have been peopled by
persons leaving the older and denser communities where they were
born and raised, and repairing to these new "settlements." The
effect of it has been, in many instances, to change the wheel of
individual fortune, and to place some in high positions who, in
their native communities, would never have reached those
positions. But we shall argue that this result has not always
been beneficial to the parties so elevated.
{662}
The natural growth of communities, that is, the growth by
enlarging the circle of settlement but slowly and connectedly, is
sustained by every healthy law of economy. Even in the gross
matter of material wealth, the bulk of the people are better off
in an old than in a new community. We venture the assertion that
this remark will hold good even as between the outer border
States of the West, and the inhabitants of those countries from
whose populations these States have, in a large measure, been
settled. But it will especially hold true as between the people
of those outer border States and the people of a corresponding
class of our older States.

But what is the moral exhibit? What do the facts here prove? They
prove, incontestably, that the standard of law, of morals, of
religion, and of society, in all the vast multitude of its
meaning, is, in the "new settlements," incomparably below what it
is in the old communities. These are grave proofs, and of
importance enough, in our judgment, to settle a national policy
against the building up of new communities at great distances
from the old ones.

If it were physically possible to detach one half of the
territory of an old state, and to send the detached portion, with
its entire population, to some distant and remote country, and
there locate it, even this huge mass of matter and of peoples
would greatly suffer by the shock of the new situation. The earth
has its affinities as well as people have theirs, and no
considerable portion of the earth (that is, if such a thing were
possible at all) could be detached from its proper place, where
all of its connections are natural and healthy, and could be
transported to another portion of the globe where the materials
and the fashions of nature are not exactly of the same kind,
without suffering by the change. How much more, then, will human
beings, who are more subject to influences, suffer by a
corresponding change? The laws of affinity and of sympathy must
be preserved in the commonest things even; and if such a change
as we have spoken of were possible in any considerable portion of
the earth's surface, the peoples carried along with the detached
portion would, for a time, have the same laws, the same customs,
the same religions--would see the same scenery, and would, to
some extent, breathe the same air to which they had all along
been accustomed; but, in the course of time, they would find
themselves laboring and struggling in full sympathy with the
earth so detached for sympathy with the new objects and new
external surroundings of the new situation, until a perceptible
change would take place in their feelings, and in the very ardor
of their religious worships.

We have put the case in this strong form to show what will be
done by change. Change in one thing necessarily involves change
in another thing. We cannot change our habitations and our
abodes, without also changing all in us which is peculiar to
locality and the law of locality; and in this alone there is a
large volume of life. That society is always the best which holds
the closest together, and in which the work of adaptation and
assimilation has been carried on the longest between its members.
The superior frame of English society, which is the growth of an
old community, and the sturdy world of the English people, will
demonstrate this. There is a certain morality in locality, too,
and the morality developed by a particular locality is always the
healthiest for its people. We do not, however, mean to say that
the morality of locality is _sui generis_--that it is
something which is peculiar to particular localities independent
of the people of those localities.
{663}
This is an absurdity which we will not utter. But we merely mean
to say that the morality of localities, or of the people of
particular localities, is influenced, more or less, by the
surrounding circumstances of locality. This remark will be
strongly verified in the different social habits and moral
sentiments of people whose occupation, from natural causes,
differs; circumstances, for instance, of different situation,
such as make some people nautical and seafaring, while others are
agricultural and domestic. It is in this wise that locality may
be said to have its morality, and that the peculiar phases of
morality developed by the natural and unavoidable circumstances
of situation are the best for the people of that locality. This
is a proposition which we imagine no one will dispute. But there
are very often carried into a particular locality certain phases
of morality, or rather the want of it, which have no connection
with the locality, and with which the genius of the locality has
nothing to do. These are positive conditions of vice and
immorality which may be engendered in any community.

Sensibilities are the most delicate and refined things
conceivable. They are the result of the most delicate nurture of
the feelings, the associations, and the relationships of life.
The peculiar modes of association of a people--the peculiar frame
and structure of their domestic relationships--has a great deal
to do with the type and kind of their sensibilities. In a new
country, where everything is rough, the sensibilities cannot be
as nice and as refined as in an older community where they are
nursed. Sensibilities, then, depend for their flexibility, and
for the grain of their qualities, on the fineness--on the
niceness--of the social food on which they have been fed. This is
constantly being illustrated to us in the treatment of animals,
even, which certainly have sensibilities of a certain kind.

Where the finer threads of society, then, are preserved, and
where there are close-knit sympathies between the people, without
too much of the rough work of a rough country to harden them and
to dry up the fountains of the sensibilities, we may always there
expect to find the flowers of love blooming in the greatest
abundance. New countries, then, are not as favorable to the
development of these feelings as older ones are, and the moral
havoc in such countries is, usually, very great. But, apart from
the rough circumstances of a new country, which have upon the
feelings a hardening effect, the mental sensibilities are greatly
influenced by scenery, and by the natural effect of air,
temperature, etc. These refined elements are just as much a part
of the mental food on which we feed as anything else is. All our
ideas of comfort, of beauty, and of healthiness do not come from
artificial surroundings and from the frame-work of society which
we may have constructed. Mental emotions are excited in us by
scenery; and that of the particular kind to which we have been
used, though in reality it may, to some extent, be barren and
bleak, is to us the most charming. The appearance of things in
nature is indissolubly associated with our earlier lives,
memories, incidents, occurrences, and sentiments; and so we, in
the very nature of things, must love this earlier record better
than any subsequent one which we may make. It necessarily follows
that we love those peculiar features in nature the best which are
the closest associated with our earlier experiences of life.
{664}
The analyzing spirit will detect, at a slight glance, even the
minute and particular differences between the outward features of
different localities. The eye of the student of nature will at
once perceive the smallest shades of difference in the leaves of
trees of the same class in different localities. To the sensitive
mind the rain, even, of different localities will have a
different spirit, and its falling will make a different
impression upon the mind. We are a wonderfully constructed
battery, and the effect of these manifold things in nature upon
the organism cannot be estimated, or correctly judged of, by any
but those who, by living in new and strange countries, have had
full experience of it. The chemistry of the soul is more
marvellous than that of flesh and matter, and the effect of
scenery, of air, of the spirit of the air, and of all the vast
and grand combinations of matter on the brain, and on the life
principles of man, cannot be judged of until, to him, some
foreign country has written its strange history on his organism,
and he discovers that, though in reality he is the same
individual, still he does not see nature through the same eyes
through which he was wont to see it, and does not feel its
refreshing spirit as he was wont to feel it. These are some of
the sad mental impressions made by great changes from one distant
locality to another. Could anything be more hurtful or injurious
to the human spirit? Could anything be more obliterative of
morality, than not to respect and act out, every day of our
lives, its sacred lessons in close connection with those old
school associations with which we linked life the fondest, and
through which we enjoyed it the dearest? The early dawn as it
came to us shaded by the hills and the forests common to the
localities in which we were born and reared; our parting with the
great companion of the day, influenced by the same surroundings;
the familiar notes of the night-birds common to our localities;
the peculiarities of the very gusts of wind there; the peculiar
haze of the atmosphere; the methods in which the very trees droop
their branches; these, these are all familiar scenes and things
to us all, and are, we may say, the school-house associates of
our earlier lives, when our spirits were first learning the great
lessons of life--those lessons under which life in us was
organized and under which it has spread its richest and its
grandest panorama. Change these localities and these scenes, and
we feel as though we had parted with dear friends whose
association is necessary to our lives, and for years afterward,
they form, in our minds, an ever present picture of their
appearance. These familiar scenes are the old oaken trees, so to
speak, under whose umbrageous bowers we learned our first lessons
of virtue and of life; and we cannot give them up, and part from
them, without also surrendering some of the sacred lessons which,
in their midst and in their hallowed shadow, we learned. But,
throughout, the parting with home, and going into new localities,
makes a new era in our lives. The village boy, who is the object
of charity, and who has no ties to bind him but those of the
guardian public, feels it. He even feels, when he parts with the
dear scenes of his nativity, almost as though he had taken leave
of the very God, whom he had been taught to worship, and that he
lay launched out upon a great wide ocean of uncertainties, there
to hunt for another God, and other friends. How must it, then, be
with those who are a part of the household and the inheritance of
human affections? Mother, father, brothers and sisters are
gathered for the sad parting.
{665}
Tears of deep grief fall thick and fast. There is, indeed,
occasion for them. The heir of the possession, or the mate of
fraternal friendship and love, is about to become a stranger. He
is about to seek a home! (ah! sad word, in this connection,) it
may be in the midst of olive-groves and of vineyards--away from
the home of his inheritance, and the family are summoned to
bemoan their loss. Years are to pass between him and them before
they meet again, and when they do meet they are to each other
strangers. This is indeed a sad picture. Can the growth and the
building up of "a new country" compensate for it? I say not. I
say that the planting of empire even, in the name and under the
titles of the home government, it may be in some grandly tropical
country, will not repay for these losses and for these
sacrifices. Political grandeur is not the only object to be
attained in this world. In fact, it is but an epitome of the
grand and the beautiful objects of life. The comforts of home,
and its solid connections, are worth more to us than all the
offices in the world could be without them. And how few are there
who nowadays appreciate and enjoy the comforts of home, even in
their own natural communities, who are weighed down with the
shackles and the plunder of office? How much more deplorable,
then, the fate of the poor office-holder at a distance from his
natural home, and those associates of his early life, found
nowhere outside of home, which make life agreeable, and give to
it its charms and its zest? His fate must indeed be pitiable and
deplorable in the extreme. It is only, then, viewed generally, in
the interests "of the public," (a most false "public interest,")
that we heretofore have been enabled to find so much heroism in
the spirit of venture and of distant emigration that the almost
entire press of the country have lauded it, and have praised it
"as a spirit of public enterprise;" which praise has done much
toward exciting in the people of the world that restlessness and
feverish spirit of excitement, which has led so many men and
families to leave their natural attachments, and to seek location
either in foreign and distant countries, or in States, at least,
remote from those in which they were reared. These removals have
always, when viewed in a moral and social light, been more
productive of harm to the parties concerned than of good. Avoid
them, in the future, would be our earnest advice to all good
people. The best and greatest men of the world have invariably
staid at home.

But are not the boundaries of civilization to be extended, may be
asked? Most assuredly they are; but only slowly and by degrees,
like waves as they spread and enlarge from a centre of disturbed
waters. This is, undoubtedly, the true method of enlarging the
area of settlement and of "civilization."

The parties immediately concerned are not alone the parties
injured by distant removals. They affect, more or less, the world
at large. The bad morals, engendered by innumerable people
leaving their homes, where the sediments of society have settled
to the bottom, and repairing to new and remote localities where
there is no strongly constructed web of society, are not confined
alone to the localities where the social connections are loose;
but they spread like some terrible plague, and seize upon the
minds of people of the denser and older communities.
{666}
A reciprocal interchange in morals is finally established between
these remote and unlike communities, until the tone of the one is
measurably improved, while that of the other is gradually
reduced, and made worse by the interchange than it was before.
These are some of the damaging effects of "new settlements," at a
distance from the older ones. The law perfected is to be found
only in the close and tight connections of society, with all of
the social interests well defined, and with social rights so
clear that one person will not interfere with those of another.
This degree of social security and comfort is the perfection of
the law; and no civilized government has any interest in
upholding a system of "settlement" and of colonization which
impairs the strength of the social structure.

Society has been built under the guardianship of the church, and
any system either of "settlement," or of politics, which
threatens the integrity of society, is against the interests of
government, and equally against the interests of the Christian
religion. Government is the secular means which we employ to
enforce those wholesome moral inspirations of the church which
have constructed society on sure foundations. Anything which
attacks this wholesome system is at war with the Christian
religion, and, consequently, against the higher civilization of
the age. The sacred affinities and congenialities of home should
not be disturbed, and society debauched, by a mania amongst the
people for separations and removals. "Those whom God hath joined
together let no man put asunder," applies also to the firm
welding together of those whose lots he has made similar by
nature, as it does to that holy matrimonial alliance by which a
man takes to himself a consort and a mate, and by which a woman
takes to herself a husband. That government is not truly and
reliably built on the foundations of the Christian religion which
disregards any of these sound maxims of social life, and which
makes provision for scattering those members of society who are
the most natural to each other, and which holds out to them the
very strongest inducements to scatter and to form new
associations. Such is certainly not a healthy law of society, and
is in direct contravention of the great natural order. We must
pay attention, in this as in all other things, to the
associations made by nature. It is a monstrosity to suppose that
there is not power enough in nature to adapt those to each other
who were born together. It is a faith in this sort of power which
associates people together in family groups, and which upholds
the vast system of paternal and fraternal relations established
throughout the world. If it were not for the belief in the
perfect natural adaptation to each other of persons born of the
same parents, we would not have so strong a system for rearing
them together, and for imposing upon those who are responsible
for their being so large a duty to keep them together whilst
taking care of them. Nature, it is true, would suggest this duty,
but society has strengthened it. It is the perfect fitness,
naturalness, and adaptation of beings for each other, who were
born together, which makes the family system strong, and which
imposes upon parents the moral duty of keeping their offspring
together while they take care of them; by which means the
beautiful and sacred relations of brother and sister are
established in something more than in the mere name. But we will
not discuss a proposition which is so plain. It is not necessary
for us to do it. The main feature which, in this connection, it
is the most necessary for us to notice, is the necessity for some
system by which violent separations between members of the same
community and family may be avoided, and by which society may be
strengthened in its foundations.
{667}
For, if these separations tend, as they most assuredly do, to the
weakening of the family ties, it is necessary for us to take some
strong measures in order to bind families more closely together;
or else, the whole system of society, through these very means of
neglect, will ultimately be disorganized, and will go to pieces.
Indeed, we are rather verging on such a condition in this country
now. We have what we call homes, it is true; but we now have
really very little of the true family system. Nearly one half of
the time of the younger members of the family--if not more--is
not now spent, in the great majority of cases, under the paternal
roof; and there is now in American society a perfect mania for
being anywhere else except at home, and there may be said to be
no family law. This is certainly a most deplorable state of
things, and if pushed to further extremes, will ultimately
disorganize society altogether. Whenever that may be done,
government will then be impossible. So it behooves the public men
of this country to look about for some remedy for this most
distressing evil. Where can it be found? is the important inquiry
of to-day. Our opinion is, that emigration, the restless spirit
of movement, which our system of legislation has developed, is
the fruitful source of the evil, and consequently, to correct it,
we must change our migratory habits and policy. We have organized
too many "territories," and have encouraged the building of too
many railroads in far distant and remote regions from the centres
of settlement, thereby causing our people to emigrate and to move
about from one place to another. We have not sufficiently
encouraged stability in the people. We have pursued a course of
legislation which has made them restless, speculative, and
venturesome. In this way we have not developed the real wealth
which we might have developed had our people staid at home, and
preserved their even, temperate avocations. But the material
injury done by this system of removals has not been the principal
evil of it by any means. Society has been unhinged by it. The
strong attachments of home have been violently rent asunder, and
by that means, our people have been compelled to look for their
amusements, their enjoyments, and their entertainments, more in
public than in private. This has had upon their dispositions,
their habits, and their morals a most unbalancing effect, until
now very little indeed is held by them to be any longer secured.
These are the gigantic evils of the day with which we now have to
battle, and the important question of the hour is, How are they
to be met?

The question is much more easily asked than answered. A huge evil
is upon us, however, and we must devise ways of ridding ourselves
of it. Indeed, we do but develop the strength of the human, by
devising means for the overthrow--the complete overthrow--of all
of our evil conditions. No condition, then, however bad, may be
supposed to be too gigantic for our efforts. Let us but keep
steadily in view the great and important aims of life, and we
certainly can make all else succumb to them. In working out the
great problem of life, we must expect often to have to go back,
and work it over again. We must often undo much of the work which
we may suppose ourselves to have done, and must do it over again,
in order to avoid errors and to correct mistakes.
{668}
It may be a hard task for us to perform; but nevertheless, we
must do it. We know that there is a common error that in national
affairs God is at the helm, and that we cannot steer wrong; that
everything that has been done in the national "destiny" has been
rightly done, and that God is certainly with us there in every
step that we may take. This is certainly a most fatal error. God
is no more with us in our national course than he is in our
individual business, and in this we very often find it necessary
to retrace our steps, and to correct errors. If we were to accept
every individual misfortune, and every individual piece of bad
management, as the direct work of God, and should make no effort
to correct it, our private fortunes would be in a most deplorable
condition. Without, then, being irreverent, we must recognize God
in ourselves, in our national as well as in our individual
matters, and must understand that good results are invariably the
offspring of good motives and of good efforts, and that bad
results are invariably the offspring of bad motives and bad
efforts. We must understand this, and we must make results the
guide and the criterion of divine will and divine favor. If
results are good, we must suppose that God favors them; if they
are bad, we must suppose that he disapproves them; and, as we
honor him, we must set about correcting them. This, in my
judgment, is the true criterion by which to judge of the divine
will and the divine favor. Under this rule, then, we are at
liberty, and we are expected to scrutinize every act of national
conduct, and to see whether or not it is full of the seeds of
good results; and if we find that it is not, then, at whatever
cost to us the thing may have been done, to expunge it, and
correct the error. This is sound national wisdom, as it would be
sound individual wisdom. We have, then, already, too many
railroads extending into far, remote regions of our country,
distant from the centres of settlement, inviting our people to
leave their homes and their families, and to emigrate in quest of
fortune and of new honors. These invitations by our government
are like so many snares set by the tempter to tempt us into sin
and wickedness. I would say that all of the sacred interests of
society would dictate to us the policy of abandoning the building
of these roads, and equally to abandon the policy of organizing
"new territories," to thereby tempt our people to hunt for new
fields of "settlement." Let us make that strong which we already
have. Let us refine and civilize as we go, and let us make but
slow haste in extending the boundaries of our "settlements." This
would seem, to our mind, to be the suggestion of wisdom. We must
not conclude, either, that because money has been spent, and
labor has been performed, that therefore we may not abandon
altogether huge enterprises of "settlement" which have already
been begun, and that our people now in remote "settlements" may
not, in a great measure, return to their former homes. Such a
course, undertaken on a large scale, might be productive of the
best results, and perhaps, in the course of time, would be. But
we must not anticipate too much. We must reach this proposition
by degrees. We must, in a matter so grave as this, be, as in the
process of settlement, slow. We must not proceed with it too
fast.

The degrees of civilization are remote from each other. Indeed,
government would be of but little use if it were not productive
of the best results, where it is applied in the best spirit and
under the soundest administration.
{669}
We cannot, from the very nature of the circumstances, expect
these results for it in distant and remote regions from the
centres of settlement, where the population is sparse, and where,
on account of the formidable difficulties of a new country and
new fields of labor, there is but little time on the part of the
people to devote to social improvements. These are difficulties,
certainly, to be considered, in estimating the scale of
civilization of a people. We naturally look for a much healthier
tone in an old community than we do in a new one. In an old
community there is a much larger surface from which to choose an
occupation, and the various interests of society are much better
connected than they are in the new communities. These are
important things to be considered by the adventurer after a
home--if so paradoxical a thing is to be allowed as that a home
may be found by adventure! In fact, the thing is impossible.
Adventure can never make a home. A home is the product of
continuing possession, and of careful culture. It is not
necessarily a particular house, or a particular piece of land,
which has been in the same hands for generations, which makes a
home. But it is a continuous abiding of the same family and its
members for several generations in the same neighborhood, the
same locality, which makes, in the fullest sense, a home. They
are then a part--incorporated as such by nature--of the community
and of the locality in which they may chance to dwell. It is
this, more than the continuous possession of a particular house
or a particular piece of ground, which makes home. The woods, the
streams, the outer walls of nature to which people have been
accustomed, must have been the same, or similar and kindred ones,
for at least several generations, in order to make for them a
home. Where this has been the case, there nature is fully
incorporated in those beings. There is not, then, in their own
peculiar locality, a leaf, or a tree, or a flower, or a bird,
that is not fully understood, and interiorly possessed by them.
Through the manifold processes of nature, they, in this time,
have made acquaintance with things in nature, and have become a
much stronger part of the creation. Any traveller will tell us
that, when he first begins to wander, things in nature at a
distance from home appear strange to him, and that he never does
become as well acquainted with them as he is with those
corresponding things which he has left behind, that have been not
only his, but also the familiar associates of his parents before
him. This, we will venture to say, will be the testimony of all
travellers. There is, in this testimony, a great lesson to be
learned by us. It is the lesson that, if we want to be a
part--absolutely a part--of creation, so as to have immediately
under our control, at all times, a commanding sense and
consciousness of our power in nature, and over it, as a part of
it, we must stay where our organisms command the elements the
best, and where, by long residence, they have become the strong
masters of things in nature. This is certainly no new philosophy.
If it has not been fully heretofore eliminated as a philosophy,
in this form, it certainly has in other forms, just as
substantial and far more practical. What are our feelings
connected with our return to the earth but a confirmation of this
doctrine? Every man who has a soul in him loves his own native
soil; and when the solemn hour of dissolution approaches, he
feels, as one of the last of his earthly hopes, that he would
like to be gathered to the graves of his fathers, in the land of
his and of their wanderings.
{670}
This is an event which is capable of testing the matter, and of
proving the attractions which our earliest homes have for our
spirits. When all nature is dissolving in us, we naturally look
for support to those localities where life was organized in us,
and which have fortified us the strongest with those forces on
which we must rely the most to ward off dissolution. Thus our
minds and our affections are naturally carried back to the land
of our birth, in a way to make us love it above all other spots
of earth, and in a way to cause us to desire it as our last
resting-place. If these last trials do not show to the human
spirit--drawing upon all of its resources for support--where its
chief strength in nature lies, whether in the new home, or the
old one, then perhaps our theory that we lose many of the
essential elements of life by migrating, and by going to a great
distance from the home of our nativity, may not, indeed, be a
sound one. But we must take the case of the normal spirit to
prove it. The moods of the spirit that has been debauched and
made common; that has lost the love of its sanctuaries by
dishonorable and aimless wanderings, are not a fair test of our
philosophy. We must take some spirit who has gone into a distant
land seeking fortune, with the love of home in his heart, and
with the responsibilities of family upon him; and let the trial
of dissolution come upon him, even after years of absence, and
see if his last thoughts are not directed to the home of his
childhood, and if the last appeals which he makes in his mind to
nature to save him are not addressed to the genius, the
localities, the scenes, the cherished associations, of his
earlier home. This must be so. It is unavoidable. The cool stream
from which we drank in our boyhood thirst often has power, when
vividly called to mind, to abate the rage of some terrible fever;
and the maternal hand, as we see it in imagination laid upon us,
long years, even, after that hand has been stilled, has power to
soothe us. Thus fancy makes medicine from the past, and the
chosen spots of the spirit's earlier wanderings are the places to
which she goes for her healing arts.

The maternal breast has attractions for us as long as we live.
Its sorrows are our sorrows, and it is upon the same principle
and by the same laws of correspondence that we love our earlier
homes the best, and that they have over our morals a stronger
control and a more salutary influence than any other society or
community can have. In fact, a removal from our own community and
our own home is too often looked upon as a license to do as we
please, and is interpreted as a relaxing of the social traces in
which we had been bound. It is not worth while, at present, to
explore the philosophy of this fact, but it is a fact, and we
therefore deal with it accordingly. We know that the white man is
the representative of civilization, and that he carries with him
a Christian inheritance wherever he goes. We know that in any
situation in which he may be placed, he will strive to ally
himself with his God. We know that he has fixed the cross of his
worship upon many a bleak mountain of this land, and that he has
planted the vineyard of peace in the remote regions of the
wilderness. We know that he has established government, erected
schools, built churches, and planted the seeds of society in far
and distant regions from the centres of civilization. We know all
this, and yet we know, or believe, that if this same potent mass
of human beings, thus scattered and toiling separate and apart
from each other, had held together under the strong covenants of
a powerful society, and had advanced in a body to occupy and
possess the land, holding together at every step, the rainbow of
God's favor would have spanned over them in such luminous light
that we of this continent would now have been a strong and
powerful and united people, in the enjoyment of a civilization
and in the possession of a purity of social life neither enjoyed
nor possessed by any other people on the earth.

{671}

It may be supposed by some that this position assumes too much;
but our own opinion is, that it may be brought almost down to a
demonstration. Such a social wreck as follows the violent
segregation of members of the same family or community, to form
in new communities, must be followed by a corresponding civil
prostration. But wild and incoherent ideas of government will be
entertained, and the strength of the masses in such communities,
or in old ones, either, that have been much affected by these
separations, may, upon any wild and great excitement, although in
reality springing but from trivial causes, be organized to
overturn rather than to sustain a government. Without intending
in the least to be sectional, or even to verge, in the slightest
degree, on the brink of politics, we will venture to say that the
history of events in this country within the last few years will
sustain this position. Too much liberty--such as is usually
enjoyed in new communities free from proper social
restraints--confuses the reason. Law, as a centre of action, is
the only safeguard of any people; and to be law, it must be
firmly planted in constitutions beyond the reach of the passions
of the populace. To maintain law as a centre, there must not be
too many flying forces connected with it at a distance from those
regular and steady communities which have developed it. For,
unless the system of law is equally developed, and the structure
of society (upon which the law is founded) is equally perfected
in every part of a country where the central source of labor is
equally controlled by law-givers from every part, we must expect
a general deterioration of morals, corresponding to the mixture
of good and bad elements which are the active forces of the
lawmaking power. Too many "territories," and too many new States
at a distance from the older communities, tend, in our judgment,
to unsettle the morals of the country, and, through the morals,
the laws, and ultimately through the laws, the government itself.
We have divided our people into fractions too fast. It would have
been better for our own, and for the interests of humanity, if we
had held more firmly together in better connected and more
contiguous communities. Our people would not then have had the
same wild ideas about "law" that many of them have to-day, and
the better united interests of the country would have made a more
loving and united people.

Unity, in the affairs of men, is certainly a great desideratum.
Immense geographical and social divisions between people usually
produce a spirit of alienation, and, in many instances, of
absolute hostility. Mere navigable streams of water and railroad
connections cannot so connect a people at the distance of many
hundreds of miles from each other as to make them but one people.
The nearest possible approach that can be made to a close social
and sympathetic connection between peoples who are separated from
each other by so much space, is to bridge the space over by
densely packed masses of human beings, and then we establish
lines of mental and social sympathy which will make them but one
people. This is the only method, aside from the bond of religious
unity, by which a close and hearty cooperation can be secured
between people even of one blood and living under the same laws.
The human bridge connecting together remote parts of a country is
the most complete.

{672}

The true policy, then, is not to plant colonies or "settlements"
at distances from the centres of settlement, and to bridge over,
with human beings, the intervening space, by degrees. But on the
contrary, for us to advance in a body, closely connected, and to
carry, unbroken, our civilization with us as we go. There will
then be no spasmodic disturbances of the law. The wild passions
of the wild tribes who roam our borders will not then be
incorporated (as is now too often the case) by our people, who go
in fragmentary bodies to great distances from the solid
settlements, and there make their dwellings amidst the rude
timbers of nature. There would be, under this plan of settlement,
an equipoise and a balance. It would be regular, steady, and not
as now fragmentary. The arrangement of the State divisions--as a
form of government--would not, in the least, be interfered with.
We only propose that, instead of disjointed masses of human
beings going off by themselves at great distances from the main
settlements, people hold, as they go, more together as a body,
and that we encourage wild schemes of emigration less. They have
had upon our people, upon our laws, and upon society, a most
disastrous and unsettling effect. The policy which we propose
does not interfere with commerce or with healthy travel, but is
only against the wild spirit of emigration which has seized upon
the world, and which moves those not engaged in commerce to seek
new homes.

The charms of nativity will be greatly increased by educating the
mind to look upon our earlier homes as the theatres in which we
are to act our parts in life. It will develop in us a more
conformatory spirit in life, and will secure for us the
measureless blessings of a compact and united society. A
different training and a different practice are the fruitful
sources of those wild idiosyncrasies in society which teach us
that all men should be to us alike, and that there are no sacred
fountains of the affections where the faith of the heart ever
beams bright, and where the hallowed altars of love and
confidence have established their holiest worship. In a word, the
home-training, continuing through a life, and ending, for the
most part, where begun, that is, under the genius of the same
state laws, and amongst people of a kind, is indispensable to
happiness, and to the natural enjoyment of life. It is equally,
alas! indispensable to a full understanding of the genius of law
and to the development of that conservative spirit in us which
will teach us to value the blessings of social life far too much
for us ever to interfere in their sacred enjoyment by other
people. The man of home, then, as against the emigrant and the
wanderer, is a man of peace, a man of law, a man of religion, and
a man of society. He does not go with his rifle to destroy, nor
with his individual will to make it the law of the surrounding
country; but he is content to stay at home, and he accepts the
developments of society there as he finds them, and labors
conscientiously, when improvement is needed, to improve them; but
always within the boundaries of those barriers which Christianity
and conscience have set up as the landmarks of his labors.
{673}
If we would preserve our stability, then, as a people, and make
our government and society what they ought to be, we must change
our wandering habits, and must cultivate the flowers of home-love
as the only sure guarantee of peace and happiness. We must not
allow our wandering ambitions to stretch away into other domains;
but we must put upon ourselves the bridle of wisdom, and must be
content to people our fields at home with the laborers which we
now offer to other lands, to other climes, and to other states.
This policy will make us _truly_ great.

----------

      A Mother's Prayer.

  The regent of a goodly realm,
      A sovereign wise and fair,
  Gazed fondly on her youthful son,
      And breathed her earnest prayer;
  The one wish of her loving heart,
      Her ceaseless, solemn thought,
  Sole boon her love had craved for him,
      The only prize she sought.

  Was it new conquests? blood-bought gems
      To deck his kingly hand?
  Fair realms by cruel triumphs wed
      Unto his rightful land?
  Rich trappings? robes of royal state?
      A fawning courtier throng?
  Or minstrels' ringing lays, to pour
      The flatteries of song?

  Nay, nay, no earthly leaven base,
      No worldly dross could cling
  Unto that pure, maternal prayer
      For France's youthful king.
  'My precious son! more dear than life,
      More prized than aught on earth,
  In all this false and fleeting world
      My only gift of worth!

{674}

  "Oh! loved and treasured as thou art,
      Far rather would I weep
  Above the bier where thou wert laid
      In thy last, dreamless sleep,
  Than live to know this form of thine
      Held, foully shrined within,
  A tarnished gem, a soul defiled,
      By _e'en one mortal sin._."

  Well answered was that mother's prayer:
      No foul, polluting taint
  E'er marred the white and shining soul
      Of France's royal saint.
  His pure baptismal robe of grace
      Unstained through life he wore;
  The lily sceptre of the just
      King Louis brightly bore.

  O Christian matron! in thy heart
      This lesson fair enshrine;
  And let the blest, heroic prayer
      Of holy Blanche be thine.
  For what are all the gifts of earth,
      The charms of form and face,
  If the immortal soul hath lost
      Its bright, baptismal grace?

  Ay! what avails the wealth of worlds,
      If, lured by syren vice,
  God's heir hath sold his birthright fair,
      His only "pearl of price"?
  In vain may proud ambition grasp
      Vast realms to tyrants given,
  If from his guilty hand hath passed
      The heritage of heaven.

-------
{675}

        Two Months In Spain
    During The Late Revolution.


MADRID.

Monday, Oct. 19.

We visit the "Museo" to-day--the richest picture-gallery in the
world. Ten Raphaels, forty-six Murillos, sixty-two Rubens,
sixty-four Velasquez, forty-three Titians, etc. But even
Raphael's "Perla," (that holy family called the Pearl,) even his
"Spasmo de Silicia," (Christ falling beneath the cross,) even
Guido's exquisite Magdalen and Spagnoletto's "Jacob's Dream,"
even these great pictures sink to nothingness beside Murillo's
"Annunciation," his "Adoration of the Shepherds," "Eleazar at the
Well," "The Martyrdom of St. Andrew," the "Divine Shepherd," the
Infant Saviour giving St. John to drink from a shell, called "Los
Niños de la Concha," the "Vision of St. Bernard," and those
wonderful "Conceptions" which embody "all that is most sublime
and ecstatic in devotion and in the representation of divine
love."

The more one sees of Murillo, the more one is convinced that he
is the greatest painter of the world. Others may have points of
excellence superior to his; but his subjects are so full of piety
and tenderness, so fascinating in coloring, and appeal so at once
to the heart and the common sense of mankind, that they please at
once the learned and the unlearned. The Spaniards say of him that
he painted "Con leche y sangre," with milk and blood, so
wonderful are his flesh tints.

The "Spasmo de Silicia" is so called from the convent for which
it was painted, "St. Maria della Spasima," in Palermo. "The
Virgin's Trance on the way to Calvary" is considered by some
critics only second to the "Transfiguration."

The "Perla" is so named because Philip IV., beholding it for the
first time, exclaimed, "This is the pearl of my pictures." It
belonged to the Duke of Mantua, was bought by Charles I., and was
sold with his other pictures by the "tasteless puritans and
reformers."


Tuesday, Oct. 20.

Spend another hour in the "Museo," looking at the pictures of the
Flemish and Dutch schools--fifty-three Teniers, twenty-two Van
Eycks, fifty-four Breughels, twenty-three Snyders, ten
Wouvermans, etc. A wonderful gallery, so rich in great masters.

We then go to see the "House of the Congress," which is
handsomely decorated. The ministers' bench is here blue, while
the others are red.

The library is small but very handsome. From this we go to the
interesting artillery museum, and then to see the coach-houses
and stables of the palace, begun by Charles III. and finished by
Ferdinand VII. One felt more than ever sorry for the poor
fugitive queen, at sight of all this majesty. Beautiful Arabian
and Andalusian horses and mules, over a hundred carriages of
every hue and shape, from the black, cumbrous thing in which poor
Jeanne la Folle carried about the coffin of her handsome husband,
to the beautiful modern carriage in which the lovely Infanta went
so lately to her bridal! All had a personal sort of interest; but
most touching of all was the sight of the little carriages and
perambulators which bore evidence of having been long used by the
royal children.

{676}

The state carriages are very grand, many of them gifts from
crowned heads: one from the first Napoleon; another from the
present emperor to Queen Isabella; and a handsome plain English
coach from Queen Victoria to her majesty. But even more than the
carriages do the saddles and embroidered housings, the plumes,
and harness, and trappings, and liveries, give one an idea of
this splendor-loving court, especially those belonging to the
days of Charles III. and Philip V. Above all these stood the
crowned lion, with his feet on two worlds, significant of the
greatness of Spain. And where is she, so lately the mistress of
all this grandeur? The people told us that there had been
thirteen thousand people dependent upon the queen's privy purse;
that she had a school in the palace for all the children of her
servants; and that there was no end to her generosity and
kindness; and that, had she not been away, the revolution would
never have occurred.

And just here we meet a long line of troops, horse, foot, and
artillery, who proved to be the men who had fought so bravely for
their queen at Alcolea, and at such fearful odds. The men of
Novaliches!

And no man cried, "God bless them!" as they passed, weary and
dispirited, through the streets; their enemies would not do them
honor, and their friends dared not.

When we reached the hotel, General Prim was making a speech to a
ragged, dirty mob, who were shouting for "Libertad." He told them
it was his saint's day--that they need not work, he would give
them money. So, after distributing some coppers, he got into a
fine carriage and drove off. While we struggled to get in, one of
our party heard some of the poor women exclaim softly, "Our poor
queen!" and then the usual piteous exclamation, "Ay Dios mios!"
"Ay Dios mios!"



Wednesday, Oct. 21.

Go this morning to "finish" the pictures in the Museo--if such a
thing could be done--but the more one looks, the more one feels
it impossible ever to finish with them.

The sculpture-gallery (gallery of Isabella II.) is very handsome,
but contains only a few antiques of interest and a beautiful
modern statue of St. John of God carrying a sick man out of his
burning hospital. Next we go to the gallery of the Belli Arti,
where, among other good pictures, are four of Murillo's, and
first of these "St. Elizabeth of Hungary washing the Lepers," one
of the greatest pictures in the world--by some considered
Murillo's very best. It was painted for the "Caritad" of Seville,
for which its subject made it peculiarly appropriate. The
beautiful saint is the centre of a group of nine persons plainly
dressed in black, an apron before her, the crown upon her head,
and above and around a soft luminous halo seems to beam from her
whole person. Her white hands are washing the head of a ragged
boy who leans over the basin, and writhes with pain. A lovely
young girl holds a pitcher, another the ointments, and an old
woman with spectacles peers between them. In front of the
picture, a beggar-man is taking off the dirty bandage from his
leg, ready for his turn to be washed. On the other side, a
withered old crone, with stick in hand, gazes eagerly on the
saint, who speaks with her. A lame beggar on crutches is behind,
and in the distance is the palace and a dinner-table upon the
terrace, surrounded by beggars, upon whom the queen waits,
showing her charity in another form.
{677}
An artist who was copying the picture made us remark the
wonderful variety and harmony in the figure, the tender pity of
the saint's expression, the natural and graceful grouping, and
the soft light over all. Many critics find the sores too truly
painted to be agreeable to look upon; but (as some Protestant
traveller says of it) "her saint-like charity ennobles these
horrors, on which her woman's eye dares not look; but her royal
hand does not refuse to heal, and how gently! The service of love
knows no degradation."

In another room are two semicircular pictures, taken also from
Seville, (from the church of St. Maria de la Blanca,)
representing the legend of the founding of the great church of
St. Maria Maggiore in Rome, in the year 360.

The first picture represents the "Dream" of the Roman patrician
and his wife, in which he sees the Blessed Virgin in the heavens,
pointing out the spot where the church shall be built--upon which
spot the snow will fall in August. In the companion picture, the
founder and his wife are kneeling before the pope relating the
vision, while in the dim distance is seen a procession advancing
to the appointed place.

Coming from the Museo, we go to see the palace of the Duke of
Medina Coeli, one of the richest nobles of Spain and one of the
highest in rank. A regal establishment, with a greater air of
comfort than prevails in most palaces. Gardens and
picture-galleries, a theatre, suites of magnificent rooms--one in
rose-colored satin, with walls hung in gray silk.


Thursday, Oct. 22.

Set out for Toledo; pass the palace of "Aranjuez," the St. Cloud
of Spain, as la Grandja, built by Philip V., is its Versailles.
We mistake our way, and are left on the plains of la Mancha in a
miserable "posada," or rather a "venta," (the lower grade of
inn,) where we remain all day with nothing visible save one of
Don Quixote's windmills, which we are sorely tempted to battle
with after the fashion of that redoubtable hero. How truly it has
been said of this sterile-looking country, the "old Castile of la
Mancha," by a witty traveller--" the country is brown, the man is
brown, his jacket, his mantle, his wife, his _stew_, his
mule, his house--all partake of the color of the saffron, which
is profusely cultivated, and which enters into the composition of
his food as well as his complexion."

At length we are cheered by the arrival of a lovely Spanish woman
and her daughter, who are returning from their estate near by,
and come, like ourselves, to wait the train for Madrid.

The daughter had been educated in the Sacré Coeur Convent near
Madrid. Spoke French well. She told us in her lively way that,
though these plains looked so brown and desert-like, they brought
good crops and "put money in the pocket," and that back from the
roads were fine plantations of olive and vine.



Saturday, Oct. 24.

Some Spanish friends come to show us some of the hospitals and
other great charities of Madrid, which numbers forty in all.
First, to the general hospital, attended by the Sisters of
Charity--a city in itself, where are over eighteen hundred sick
poor. It covers an immense extent of ground, and, like all
Spanish hospitals, has shady courts, and gardens, and corridors
running around the courts. All was clean and comfortable, the
sisters tenderly feeding the sick children and old people, and
reading or praying beside the beds.

{678}

From this we go to the most interesting of all, called the
"Maison de la Providence," supported by the ladies of rank in
Madrid, and under the care of the French Sisters of Charity, who
wear the familiar "cornette." Here, besides _enfants
trouvés_ and orphans, they have (or had) six hundred poor
children, taken out of the streets. Many of these are kept for
the day, the parents seeking them at night: all of them are
taught gratuitously. We were shown a room in which forty of the
smallest (not one over two years) had been put to bed for the
noonday sleep, perfect little cherubs, side by side, on the
tiniest and whitest of beds, with fringed curtains above them.
The sister opened the window-shutters to give us a look at this
lovely picture; and the light woke many of them, who sat up
rubbing their bright eyes, and looking with wonder at the
strangers, but not one cried. In one corner were great basins and
towels showing why the faces were so clean and rosy.

The sister then took us to the playground, where hundreds of
little things, from the ages of three to six years, were playing;
the boys on one side, the girls on the other; the sisters with
them. We were invited to remain and see them go into school, that
we might see the system of uniting instruction with amusement,
which has been so successfully employed by these charitable
teachers. At the sound of an instrument, (something like a
castanet,) the little things fell into ranks, one behind the
other, the hindmost holding on with both hands to the shoulders
of the one who preceded him. In this way, and slowly keeping time
with their little feet, they marched into the room, marching and
countermarching with admirable precision. Three divisions of
eight, headed by a "captain," (a well-drilled soldier,) form, and
go to their seats; each captain helps to seat his division, and
then counts to see if he has the correct number. The children
then rise to say the Lord's Prayer, all in concert, slowly and
reverently, preceding it with the "sign of the cross," made with,
some, such tiny fingers! The sister next proceeds to give a
lesson. Great black letters, on wooden blocks, (so large as to be
seen by all,) are one by one laid in grooves upon an inclined
plane, the children all (together) calling out the letter as it
is placed, spelling the word, then reading (or rather, singing)
the sentence. If the sister makes a mistake, a dozen little
voices correct it. A child of six is next chosen to spell a
sentence, and severe were the little critics when he misplaced a
letter. Next came a lesson in Scripture history. A book of
colored prints was opened here and there, and the stories were
told by the children in their own pretty way, of Adam and Eve,
David and Absalom, etc. We were presently shown the children old
enough to be taught to work, little things of five and six years,
knitting or sewing; and then a class making plain sewing; and
then the larger orphan girls, working the finest needlework and
embroidery.

And this is one of eight such institutions in Madrid! It is kept
up by individual charity; and the fear is, that it must be
curtailed if not closed on account of the revolution; the ladies
who contributed most to it having been forced to leave with the
queen's party, or having absented themselves from fear of getting
into trouble. These high-born ladies have had also many schools
in different parts of the city, where they taught the poor every
Sunday, as in our Sunday-schools. The provisional government has
stopped all these, on the pretext that they are "incendiary," as
they have also that of the "Conferences of St. Vincent de Paul"!

{679}

Our Spanish friends tell us of the closing, yesterday, of the
"royal school," (founded many centuries ago by one of the kings
of Spain, and supported from the privy purse of the reigning king
or queen,) for the daughters of the nobility who have met with
reverse of fortune, orphans and others of good birth but of no
means. Yesterday these poor girls were turned out, homeless,
houseless; and as they passed along, the brutal rabble insulted
them with cries of, "Come out, you thieves; you have eaten our
bread long enough; come out, and let us have place." To-day, we
see them tearing down the building. And this is "progress!"

We hear that the carriage of the Duchess Medina Coeli has been
assaulted to-day, the crown upon her carriage pelted, the glasses
broken, with the cry of "Down with the aristocrats!"--that fatal
cry, which (with many other bad things) they borrow from the
French, and which was the signal to spill so much "good" blood.


               Toledo.

October 25.

Only three hours' time (by rail) separate Toledo and Madrid, the
old and new world of Spain! What a contrast between the two!
Toledo towers like an eagle's nest on the steep rock, the "dark,
melancholy" Tagus winding below, with walls and Moorish gates and
steep crags, with Roman and Gothic and Arabic ruins, with
glorious memories of the fierce and warlike Goths, and of its
imperial renown under Charles V.; while the modern upstart,
Madrid, has nothing of which to boast, save fine houses, and
shops, bustle and traffic, noise and dirt, "progress" and
revolution!

Toledo is said to have been a Phoenician or Grecian colony, then
conquered by the all-absorbing Romans, 146 B.C., and the favorite
resort of the Jews who fled from Jerusalem after its fall, and
who became here rich and powerful, and exercised an important
influence in the history of the country until expelled by
Ferdinand and Isabella, in 1492.

In the fifth century, the Goths conquered Spain and founded that
splendid and powerful kingdom which, after three hundred years,
ended with Roderick in 712, when the Moors, under Taric,
overthrew the Goths in the battle of the Guadalete, and overran
all Spain. In 1085, it was reconquered by Alonzo V., and Toledo
was the seat of the court until removed by Philip II. to Madrid
in 1560, and (for a few years) to Valladolid.

Our first duty is to the cathedral, considered by many persons to
be the finest building in the world. It was commenced by St.
Ferdinand in 1227, on the site of a mosque, which, in turn, had
been built upon a church founded in 587 by St. Eugenius, the
friend and disciple of St. Denis, who introduced Christianity
into Spain. It employed one hundred and forty-nine of the
greatest artists of the world two hundred and sixty-six years to
complete and render it the masterpiece it now is. The cathedral
of Seville is grander, higher, more impressive from its austere
simplicity; but this, from its greater lightness, the mingling of
the early Gothic with the later and more florid style, from the
Moorish carvings on the white stone of which it is built, is more
graceful and beautiful; and from the thousand memories of great
men and great deeds with which it is associated, its royal tombs
and statues, its Muzurabic chapel, its great relics, its grand
treasures, is infinitely more interesting.

{680}

We arrived in time to hear the high mass--the glorious organs,
and fine voices, while the morning sunlight streamed through
seven hundred and fifty stained windows and among eighty-eight
colossal pillars. Picturesque groups knelt before the different
shrines. We chose the chapel of St. Ildefonso, raised upon the
spot where, according to the legend, he received the chasuble
from the hands of the Blessed Virgin, which Murillo has made the
subject of one of his finest pictures.

Near this chapel is the altar at which Ferdinand and Isabella
heard mass after the conquest of Granada. The grand retablo of
the main altar extends from the altar to the ceiling, and is
considered a marvel of exquisite carving, representing the scenes
in the passion of our Lord--the work of twenty-five artists, of
whom John of Bologna was one.

On either side of this, (in niches,) are the tombs of Sancho the
Brave, Alfonso VII., and Sancho the Wise, and, below these, that
of the great Cardinal Mendoza. On each side of the altar are
screens, of which the carvings in marble are exquisite, as are
the seventy stalls of the choir, which are divided by jasper
pillars. The two pulpits are of gilt metal resting on marble
columns, and are of the finest workmanship. The chapels are
exceedingly rich, especially that of Santiago, built by that
worthless favorite of John II. of Castile, Don Alvaro de Luna, as
the burial-place of his family. Upon his tomb was originally a
statue which was contrived so as to rise and kneel at the time of
the "elevation" during mass; but Queen Isabella, the wife of John
II., (who was the means of bringing him to justice,) had it
changed. He lies quietly enough now, with his sword between his
legs, while kneeling figures of knights pray at each corner of
the tomb.

The chapter-house contains portraits of all the archbishops of
Toledo, many pictures, and a superb carved and inlaid ceiling of
alerce wood. Here have been held all the important councils of
Spain. There is a chapel filled with interesting relics, and the
treasures of the church surpass those of all Spain in value.
Among these is the cross which Cardinal Mendoza carried in
procession at the surrender of Granada, and planted on the walls
of the Alhambra; a custodia of gold and silver, weighing
twenty-five arobas--about six hundred pounds--nine feet high, and
covered with myriads of statuettes and exquisite ornaments. It
was given by Queen Isabella, and made from the first gold sent by
Columbus from America. There was one vestment covered with
eighty-five thousand pearls; another with as great profusion of
coral; a crown, and other ornaments of diamonds and other jewels;
a missal, given by St. Louis; some silver plate carved by
Benvenuto Cellini; and in the vestuario is the grandest display
of vestments in the world. Those at St. Peter's are not so fine.
Many of these were given by cardinals Mendoza and Ximenes, by
Queen Isabella, and other sovereigns; and most of them many
centuries old, yet preserving the brightness of the gold and
silver work, and the colors of the embroidery. There were the
chairs used by these great dignitaries, and the hangings used to
adorn the church on the occasion of the thanksgiving for the
victory of Lepanto.

{681}

But above all this is the interest felt in the "Muzarabic
Chapel," built by Cardinal Ximenes, (_Cisneros_, as they
call him in Spanish,) to preserve the ancient liturgy of the
Muzarabes, (Muzarabes--mixed Arabs,) who were the Goths who,
after the conquest of Spain by the Moors, agreed to live under
the Moslem rule, retaining the Christian worship. This is the
oldest ritual in Spain, introduced here by the apostles of this
country, St. Torquatus and his companions. It was at first, in
most respects, similar to the Roman liturgy; but underwent many
changes after the conquest of Spain by the Visi-Goths and
Vandals, who were Arians, and brought with them to Spain their
liturgy, which was Greco-Arian, written in Latin.

This Gothic liturgy was almost exclusively adopted in Spain,
after the fourth council of Toledo in 633, when St. Isidore of
Seville and other celebrated Spanish bishops of this period, to
put a stop to the disorders in the churches, arranged the ritual
and obliged all to follow it. Even after the introduction of the
Gregorian liturgy, the Spaniards retained their own, and it was
universal up to the eighth century, when the Moors conquered
Spain. By those Goths who submitted to the Moors, and who were
promised freedom of their religion, it was guarded with the
utmost vigilance; and even after Spain was conquered by the free
Spaniards, (who had meantime adopted the Gregorian rite,) the
Muzarabes retained their own Gothic rite, and it was allowed to
them in six parishes, just as it had existed during the six
hundred years of Moorish domination.

But as the Muzarabic families disappeared or mingled with others,
their venerable and ancient liturgy gradually disappeared; and
but for cardinals Mendoza and Ximenes, it must have been lost
entirely. The first formed the design which Ximenes carried
out--gathered up all the manuscripts of their liturgy, had them
revised by their own priests, and printed a great number of the
missals, and built this chapel in his own cathedral, (called "ad
Corpus Christi,") and founded a college of thirteen priests to
serve it, confiding to the chapter of the cathedral the
protection of this religious foundation. Other bishops followed
his example, and in the sixteenth century a chapel was founded in
Salamanca, and another in Valladolid; but the one in Toledo seems
to be the only one now existing: here the mass is said every day
at nine o'clock; but few attend it, and it has become a mere
liturgic curiosity.

It commences with a prayer very little different from the Roman
liturgy; then the same psalm "Judica me," the introit, the
"Gloria in Excelsis," a lesson from the Old Testament, then the
gradual and epistle. The prayers of the offertory are almost
identical with those of the Roman liturgy; then follow prayers
like the Greek and Milanese liturgies; then the preface. But the
canon of the mass is different; the trisagion is followed
immediately by the consecration, and the credo is said at the
"elevation." The host is divided into two parts; the priest then
divides one part into five, and the other into four small bits;
places them upon the paten, upon which is engraved a cross
composed of seven circles, so that seven pieces of the host are
placed in the seven circles. He then places (on the right) at the
side of the cross upon the paten, the other two parts; each of
these nine parts has a name corresponding to a mystery in the
life of Christ, and they form, placed upon the paten the
following figures,

  Incarnation,    Passion,
  Nativity,       Death,
  Circumcision,   Resurrection,
  Epiphany,       Ascension,
      Eternal Kingdom.

{682}

After this division, follows the "Pater," a prayer for the
afflicted, for prisoners, the sick and the dead. The priest then
takes a particle of the host corresponding to the words, "Eternal
Kingdom," and lets it fall into the chalice, pronouncing the
appropriate words; then he blesses the people, and communicates;
then the particle of the host corresponding to the word
"Ascension," recites a prayer for the dead, says the "Domine, non
sum dignus," and communicates with the particle of the host just
mentioned, and so successively with all the others; empties the
chalice, takes the ablutions, says the post-communion, the "Salva
Regina," blesses the people, and leaves the altar.

Over the altar of the Muzarabic chapel is a picture of the taking
of Oran, (in Africa,) which Ximenes conquered at his own risk and
his own expense, and made a gift of it to the crown of Spain.

Opposite the cathedral is the archbishop's palace, where is a
library open to the public, and adjoining this is the "Casa del
Ayuntamiento," house of the municipality, built by Del Greco, a
Greek who came to Toledo in 1577, where he became famous as
painter and architect.

We now travel through the narrow, precipitous streets, visiting
curious and beautiful architectural remains of the Gothic and
Moorish times, found in public and private buildings, strange
projecting door-posts, with cannon-ball ornaments; traverse the
"Zocodover," the market square, which is most Moorish looking,
with irregular windows and balconies, and is as well the
fashionable promenade, and lounging place as place of traffic.
Among the many churches, two are especially interesting in
arabesque remains--St. Maria de la Blanca and El Transitu, built
in 1326, which were once synagogues; the latter was afterward
given by Queen Isabella to the order of Calatrava.

Next to the cathedral in interest is the church of St. Juan de
los Reyes, (St. John of the Kings,) St. John being the special
patron of the kings of Spain. This was built by Ferdinand and
Isabella in 1496, in thanksgiving for the victory of Toro, where
they defeated the king of Portugal, who had set up a rival to the
throne of Castile, in the person of Jeanne Beltranea, the natural
daughter of Jeanne of Portugal, wife of Henry II., the elder
brother of Isabella. Upon the outside walls of this church hang
the chains taken off the Christians found in captivity in
Granada. The interior has been much changed; but there still
remain the high tribunes used by the royal family, and much of
the curious and elaborate carving, whose richness was once past
all description. The cloisters of the adjoining convent of
Franciscans, now in ruins, were once one of the most splendid
specimens of florid Gothic art in the world. The fine pointed
arches and delicate arabesque carvings are now half covered by
passion-vine and ivy, and the pretty garden is a desert wild. In
this convent the great Cardinal Ximenes made his novitiate as a
Franciscan monk, from which retirement he was called, by Cardinal
Mendoza, to be the confessor of Queen Isabella; and this
wonderful woman, who had the discernment to know and choose men
who could aid her in her great designs, when Mendoza died, named
as successor to the "great cardinal" the poor monk Francis
Ximenes, who became at one time bishop of Toledo, primate of
Spain, and grand chancellor of Castile; and though, in this
position, the first personage of the court, and the greatest
grandee of the kingdom, he still retained the simple habits of
the Franciscan; and it was necessary to have an order from the
pope to induce him to assume the appendages belonging to his
rank.
{683}
Indeed, it is said that under his robes of silk and velvet he
wore the "cilice" and the coarse brown habit of his order; and
after his death was found the little box with the needles and
thread with which the great primate of Spain mended his own
garments. He concluded the treaties which made Spain at this time
the greatest power of the world; and it is wonderful how this
man, already old--for he was sixty when he assumed the
primacy--how he could at once attend to the various and
multiplied duties of which he is said never to have neglected
anything. He lived in the age of great men, of Mendoza, (el gran
cardinal,) of Gonzales de Cordova, (el gran capitan,) of
Christopher Columbus, and many others, and took part in all the
great events of this great age. Immediately upon the invention of
printing, he had printed the celebrated polyglot Bible of Alcala,
which cost him 500,000 francs of our money, and was in itself
enough to immortalize him. He founded universities, built
colleges, endowed professorships and scholarships, and built
convents and schools for the education of poor children. Raumer,
in his _History of Europe_, says of him, "His sagacity and
his activity were equal to his sanctity. Embracing all the
branches of administration, nourishing the grandest plans and
projects, he neglected for these neither piety nor science. As a
warrior, he commanded in 1509 the crusade which made a descent in
Africa, and conquered Oran. He founded, upon principles which do
honor to his intelligence, the university of Alcala, and directed
the printing of the celebrated Bible to which this city gives its
name. He is the only man admired by his contemporaries as a
politician, a warrior, and a saint at the same time."

From the esplanade in front of the church of St. Juan de los
Reyes is a fine view. The great manufactory of the "Toledo
blades" lies below upon the wild and melancholy Tagus, which
winds through the plain; beyond are the mountains. The bridge of
St. Martin spans the Tagus on one side, with its Moorish towers
at either end. The tower of Cambron, one of the great Moorish
towers, is in front, in which is a lovely statue of St. Leocadia,
and near the bridge of St. Martin, on the city side, is the site
of the palace of the Gothic kings. Here are some arches of a ruin
called "Los Vaños de Florinda"--she who was the daughter of the
apostate Don Julian, and with whose unhappy fate is involved that
of the last of the Gothic kings.

The Alcazar, which overlooks the whole city, was a Moorish
palace, then a fortress, with additions made by Alonzo VI., in
1085. Improved by Don Alvarado de Luna, and then by Charles V. in
1548, and by Philip II.'s great architect, Herara, there only
remains the great patio, with its fine columns and the
magnificent staircase for which Philip sent directions from
England. Burned in the war of the succession, it was repaired by
Cardinal Lorenzana, a munificent patron of arts, and whose whole
life was devoted to good works, who made it a silk factory for
poor girls. The French injured it again in 1809, and it has been
a ruin until now, when some repairs seem to be going on by order
of the queen.

{684}

The esplanade in front commands a fine view. Just below is the
military college, formerly the great hospital of Santa Cruz,
founded by Cardinal Mendoza. On a height near are the ruins of
the castle of Cervantes, not the author Cervantes, but one which
belonged to the Knights Templars. We pass through the Puerta del
Sol, one of the great Moorish gates, follow the steep and winding
way by the remains of an old Roman bridge and fortress, cross the
bridge of Alcantara, and so--leave Toledo.

----------

         All For The Faith.


There is a mystery, an evangel, in suffering; and this fiery
evangel, God's message to our immortality, prepares and perfects
the soul for the long hereafter.

In a humble room sat Sir Ralph de Mohun and the Lady Beatrice.
The soft sunlight of Provence was fading, and athwart the rose
leaves the dying flush rested on this fairest type of girlish
loveliness. Absorbed in her rosary, she sat at the open window;
while, bending near, Sir Ralph watched the gorgeous heavens,
gazing with no thought of the surroundings, and
thinking--thinking as we so often do in the hours that fate
allows us for decision.

Glimpses of his proud English home stole upon the old man's
vision; of the shadowy oak-lined halls and stately corridors
where, as a boy, he had looked with childish pride upon portraits
of a brave line that had passed their own childhood there; the
cross of the old chapel glittered in his dreams, for beneath it
the mother of his children slept. But now, homeless and an alien,
he would never again see the white cliffs of the land his heart
loved best.

The battle of the Boyne had crushed the lingering hopes of the
Cavaliers who had forsaken home and kindred to follow the last
Stuart king. If James had only possessed average tact, he might
have retained the affection of his subjects; but strong-willed
without discrimination, zealous without wisdom, his whole reign
was a succession of errors which could not but alienate the
middle classes, all ways practical and struggling against the
encroachments of the aristocracy. Nobly did the Cavaliers rally
to the rescue of this last Catholic king, when, forsaken even by
those of his blood, he stood alone, held at bay by the same
subjects who had sworn him fealty. All through the darkness of
his mistaken flight, through the changeful, disastrous campaign,
and, so trying to their haughty spirit, even unto the court of
Louis, where sneering courtiers dared to greet them with slights
and contumely, they neither swerved nor varied. All this had
tested their loyalty, tried their faith; yet they neither changed
nor forsook him: and of this band none had suffered more than
gallant Sir Ralph de Mohun.

A very pleasant life was that of the Catholic gentry in England;
they hunted, they were jovial at their meetings, but devout in
the chapel; and no class of the English subjects were more
orderly and refined. But when the old crown rested on other than
the brow of a Stuart, they left the broad moors and sunny downs,
and fled with the monarch who represented not only their
government, but their faith, in old England.

{685}

Stripped of the wealth that had given him comfort, despoiled of
all that makes a man's position a blessing, the brave knight
steadily, defiantly met an adverse fate. "_Noblesse
oblige!_" spoke in every phase of his stormy life; he would
suffer, ay, die, as a gentleman, with no murmur to the world of
the sorrow and strife within. But an uncontrolled, unsubdued
feeling warred with the iron resolve which supported him, and
this was his devotion to the last bairn left him by his fair
Scottish wife.

Twenty summers had deepened her girlhood into that rare
womanhood, refined through suffering, strengthened by discipline;
and the sweet eyes shone with a softer light, a more earnest
loveliness, as they gazed from under the long, dark lashes; while
the gentle, low voice owned a subdued tone, very different from
the lightsome carol that had gladdened bluff Sir Ralph at the gay
meet in old Suffolk. But times were different now, and the table
was becoming scantier, while the silver grew very low; and the
soldier who had rallied the dragoons at the Boyne, had stood
unmoved when advancing squadrons of the English, his own blood in
the front ranks, swept on to attack him, felt his eyes dim as he
watched his frail, last blossom, and knew that soon she would be
in a strange land all alone.

The afternoon faded into night, and the scanty fire could not
warm the chill and bare chamber in which the old man lay. He was
dozing in the great arm-chair, and Beatrice was crouched on a low
cushion near, when softly the door opened. Was the young girl
dreaming, as with her large eyes larger still, she rose
instinctively, rose as though swayed by an unseen spirit, and
walked out upon the terrace?

"Beatrice, I have risked life, almost honor for this."

"Philip Stratherne, life belongs to honor, and honor should never
be risked."

The speech cost her an effort, for her voice was faint and very
low.

"I have come to offer peace and comfort, my darling, and--dare I
whisper the story which you used to listen to, under the elms at
home?"

"Sir Philip Stratherne, you forget the past; you will not
remember the blood that lies between us."

"My darling! my darling! we have no past save what you gave to
me. Life belongs to honor, your own sweet voice has told me, and
we are commanded to 'love without dissimulation;' therefore the
logic of courts and battle-fields shall claim no power here."

"Philip! Philip!" was all the maiden could find speech to answer,
uttered in a tone meant to be reproachful.

Two years of sorrow had passed since the fatal battle of the
Boyne, and the heart of the maiden was very sore, very lonely,
very hungry for the one love that made her life.

"Beatrice!" called from the room, and she entered.

"Come and sing to me, little one; for I have been dreaming sad
dreams of the old home." And so she sat on her cushion at his
feet, and sang in her soft alto:

  "It was a' for our rightful king,
      We left fair Scotia's strand;
   It was a' for our rightful king,
      We e'er saw Irish land,
         We e'er saw Irish land!

  "The sodger frae the war returns,
      The sailor frae the main;
   But I hae' parted frae my love,
      Never to meet again,
         Never to meet again.

  "When day is done, and night is come,
      And a' things wrapt in sleep;
   I think o' one who's far away,
      The lee lang night, an' weep,
         The lee lang night, an' weep."

"Will Sir Ralph Mohun welcome the son of an old friend?"

{686}

The old man turned hastily, and Philip Stratherne stood before
him.

"The time was, Sir Philip, when I should have grasped your hand
with all the feeling which my love for the boy inspired. Now, you
are under the roof of what is left me, and therefore I am
silent."

There was a stately courtesy in all this which embarrassed and
wounded the young man.

"This, certainly, is not my former welcome; but the times have
changed the manners, Sir Ralph, and we must accept the change."

"True, Sir Philip. There is little that I can offer you now; yet
methinks there is a seat for you."

The young man hesitated, and then sat down.

"I have not learned diplomacy on battle-fields, Sir Ralph,
therefore I will without preamble tell you what is heavy on my
heart. First, to be selfishly eager, I have come to ask you for
what you promised years ago--your daughter. Sir Ralph de Mohun,
you were once young, and blood coursed as fiery then as now. Can
you find it in your heart to separate us? Then, secondly, your
old friends at court offer entire restitution and pardon, if you
will accept the new _régime_, with England's faith."

"If I have been true to my country, then must I still be true to
my God! Philip Stratherne, if I had not loved you from your
boyhood, the words that would come to my lips would tell you what
my heart wills to speak to _all_ who have proved false! For
the rest, my daughter has the Mohun blood, and she knows what her
church teaches."

And Beatrice sat silent, crushed as a lily powerless from the
storm. She knew her duty, she felt her love. Reason--honor told
her that even love could not span the chasm through which the
blood of her gallant brothers flowed. They, too, had followed the
fortunes of the Stuart king, and one lay dead before the bastions
of Londonderry, while another gave up his young life with the
war-shout on his fearless lips, in the van of his father's
regiment at Newtown-butler.

It was Philip Stratherne who led the detachment of Enniskillen
horse that rode down the mere handful of Irish dragoons, inspired
by Guy Mohun's ringing cry; and Sir Ralph had listened to Philip
Stratherne's voice, as, clear and steady, it rallied the
Enniskilleners to the charge that had snatched that last son from
him. Not only for the Stuart had he yielded his glorious life,
but for the cross, for the faith, in the defence of which
centuries had borne brave testimony for the Mohuns, not only in
bonnie England, but on every battle-field in Christendom.

A stern self-control subdued the old man; but the girl, the woman
was suffering; honor commanded, duty pleaded, but a wilder,
stronger, stormier feeling fought within her now. The color
crimsoned the fair face, and the sweet eyes turned, rested for
one moment on the young man with all the girl's tenderness, all
the woman's passion--a mute appeal, a dying cry for help; then
with the delicate hands clasped tightly over her breast, as
though to keep down the heart's mad struggling, she spoke so low
that the words seemed almost inarticulate, yet to the man
listening with such painful eagerness each sound knelled the
death which knows no "resurgam!" Only the simple words came
faltering forth, came sobbing as the wind soughs the prelude to
destruction, ere the lightning scathes its fiery death; and so in
this whisper he heard,

"Were I a false Mohun, I could not be a true Stratherne."

{687}

Then without a word she left them; and when the old man sought
her, he found her lying as one dead before her crucifix. Tenderly
he raised her, and from his lips sounded the prayer:

"May the Lord receive the sacrifice from thy hands, to the praise
and glory of his name, and to the benefit both of us and of his
holy church."

"Amen!" whispered a low voice, and the soft eyes unclosed all dim
with tears.

No murmur escaped her lips, no regret was ever spoken, but fairer
and frailer in her rare loveliness, the old man trembled as he
watched her, and he cried in the bitterness of his agony,

"Save me, O God! for the waters are come in even unto my soul."

It was Holy-week, the most solemn of the Lenten season, and
Beatrice Mohun knelt in the old cathedral during the impressive
_Tenebrae_, and as the fourteen candles were extinguished,
and the solemn _Miserere_ rose, from the depths of her heart
came the prayer:

"Let not the tempest of water drown me, nor the deep swallow me
up."

And the pervading gloom corresponded with her own spirit; her
life owned no brightness, and the one tie left her seemed fast
wearing away. Trouble had weakened the iron constitution of Sir
Ralph; for more exhausting than mere physical pain is the
ceaseless care that preys upon the vitals, claiming life as its
tribute.

He felt that he could buy back ease and comfort for his darling,
and he knew that for him earth held but a very few years; but to
obtain all this, he must barter his honor, yield his creed, and
the old blood still owned the fierceness of a changeless
fidelity. No Mohun had ever swerved, not even in the dark days of
the last Tudor, nor after, when his graceless daughter held the
sceptre. And now, though bereft of home, with his gallant sons
lying far from their kindred, his fair young daughter
life-wrecked, his own existence a burden, when even starvation
mocked them, the loyal spirit knew no change; but staunchly by
the old faith, true to the weak king, the brave knight still
fought his adverse destiny.

And Beatrice came back through the darkness, and leaned against
the couch on which her father lay.

"Come to me, little one; for I fear that you are not as strong as
in the days when wild Bess bore you to the hunt. Have you any
regrets for the past, my darling?"

"Duty gives us discipline, papa, and it would not be right to
question Providence."

"Bravely spoken, my daughter; you nerve a courage which was
growing too human to be strong. But you grieve at the choice
which has kept you the slave of an old man's caprice?"

"O papa!" and a low quick sob stopped her; then with more control
she quietly said, "You forget that it was not only to be with
you, but to remain firm and loyal to holy church; and papa, I
often think that earth is only the high road to a better world;
therefore I only pray that the end may be very near."

"Little one, bring the light nearer--let me look upon your face;
hold it nearer, darling. Ah God! this is the dimness which brings
my warning. Quick, daughter mine, send for Father Paolo. Now, O
God! my eyes, darkened with the mist of death, fix their last
dying looks on thy crucified image. Merciful Jesus, have mercy on
me!"

{688}

Father Paolo did come, and in the gray dawn of Good-Friday the
old knight lay dying.

"Kyrie Eleison!" said the clear voice of the holy father, and,
clasping closer the blessed crucifix, the old man's voice was
steady as he responded, "Christe eleison!" And alone in her agony
the young girl knelt.

A clattering of hoofs sounded in the court-yard, and a quick
step, that startled her even then, broke the solemn stillness.

"In manus tuas, Domine, commendo spiritum meum," prayed the
priest.

"Domine Jesu Christe, suscipe spiritum meum," in clear, earnest
tones rung out the old man's voice; then the door was flung open,
and Philip Stratherne entered.

"Not too late, thank God! Hold her not away from me. Say now that
you die William's subject, and all your own shall be hers."

The closing eyes opened, the old strength came back to them, and
a sweet smile illumed his face, as the words came,

"Maria, mater gratis, mater misericordiae, tu me ab hoste
protege, et in hora mortis suscipe!" And with a long low sigh the
spirit passed away to God.

With a sob that rent her heart in twain, Beatrice threw herself
beside her father.

"My darling, come with me; the last obstacle has passed away, and
God has given you as my legacy."

She made no answer. The solemn monotone of the priest alone was
heard, "Requiem aeternam dona ei, Domine, et lux perpetua luceat
ei."

But to all this the man was deaf; he only saw the prostrate girl,
and listened to her sobs of agony.

"My waif has drifted to her haven, and I will guard her with my
life."

His strong arms were around her, and the voice that thrilled her
soul was sounding in her ears. How could she send him from her?
"Ah! God help me!" she cried.

"Et ne nos inducas in tentationem," came in deep, sonorous tones
from the priest.

"Sed libera nos a malo," sounded the response.

And further, "Domine, exaudi orationem meam!"

"Et clamor meus ad te veniat!" and Beatrice fainted with these
words upon her lips.

"Son, leave her to us," urged the priest, but he would not go
till she opened her sweet eyes.

"Daughter!"--and she caught the hand of Father Paolo, as in the
desperation of agonized despair. A shadow darkened Philip
Stratherne's brow.

"The cursed priest again!" he muttered between his closed teeth.
"Tell me when I may see you again, Beatrice, free from these
fearful surroundings."

"The Monday of Easter-week," was all she replied, and he left
her.

And when the Monday dawned, bright with the carol of birds, he
sought her; but the old chateau by the valley was silent, the
shutters barred, and the flowers drooping and dead. An aged woman
came hobbling to him, who said, with the tears dimming her old
eyes, "Ah! the sweet bird has flown, master, and St. Ursula
guards her from behind the bars."

"God of heaven, save me! Here is gold if you will prove this
false."

"Keep your gold for charity, master; for the truth is strong; and
our holy Mother keeps her safe from all evil."

{689}

Wild with the horror of losing her, he strode across the valley
to the convent near. The angelus was sounding, and over the
hills, up the broad river, the holy prayer-call echoed, for the
Easter season rejoiced the earth; her _jubilate_ for the
blessed link connecting the God-man with humanity.

Blade, and leaf, and blossom gloried in the new life, and the
spring sun spread over the natural world the same light with
which the resurrection gladdened the soul; but to all this was
the young man blind and deaf and dumb--for surging and beating
within his heart was the stormy, o'er-mastering human feeling. He
only knew that the woman to whom he bent the knee in this mad,
idolatrous love was lost to him, he only felt that fate had
snatched her from him for ever! The sister started, as his
deathly face presented itself. With scarcely human utterance, he
asked for the Lady Beatrice, and after a few moments, the
messenger returned, and a folded paper was put in his hand. He
read:

  "The Lord keepeth thee from all evil:
   may the Lord keep thy soul!"

And she, with her intenser passion, clinging steadily, loving
unselfishly, as only a woman can, gave him up; yielded her costly
tribute to the faith which taught her that loyalty to God
demands, if need be, all that life and love can give. Then, faint
and weary, bruised and suffering, yet staunch and true to her
faith as she was, the holy church opened its arms to her,
comforting the broken spirit, healing the bleeding heart, and
blessing her with the precious benediction that brings its calm
to those who seek the life that dieth not. In deeds of unselfish
love and sacrifice, she passed her days; all the strength within
her clinging to the cross, all the human passion purified,
glorified into the worship of the Lamb whose blood had made her
whiter than snow. And safe in her haven, the dove of peace rested
upon her heart; for the "fellowship of the Holy Ghost" had
sanctified her: and thus, when her summers were yet in their
flush, she passed away to God.

But he forgot her in the years that came after, and found
happiness in the fair English Protestant, whose children heired
the broad lands of the brave Mohuns. Verily man's love is
fleeting, but in God is eternal life; and while we pay our
tribute to one who was so strong in resisting, we pray that all
who are thus tempted may likewise prove ready to yield all for
the faith.

-------
{690}

  The Struggle Between Letter And Spirit In The Jewish Church.
  Conference Preached In The Cathedral Of Notre Dame,
  In Paris, By R. Pere Hyacinthe, January 3, 1869.


  Littera occidit, spiritus autem vivificat.

  "The letter killeth; but the spirit giveth life."


  [It is due to R. P. Hyacinthe to say that the following
  translation is made from a short-hand report, published in the
  _Semaine Religieuse de Paris_. In style, in development of
  ideas, the _compte rendu_ is incomplete. But to us who
  cannot listen to the great Carmelite's eloquence, in the nave
  of Notre Dame, even an outline of this conference, so full of
  fresh and healthy thought, will be acceptable.--TRANS.]


Rev. P. Hyacinthe takes this text from St. Paul, at once as the
basis and the summary of his entire conference. On previous
occasions he had pointed out two elements in the Jewish Church,
opposed to each other yet equally essential to the aims of that
church; the one exclusive, securing the preservation of the
sacred deposit of revelation; the other universal, insuring the
diffusion of this deposit throughout the whole human race. These
two elements he now calls, in the language of the apostle,
_letter_ and _spirit_. According to the letter, the
Bible--that is to say, the Old Testament, is exclusive; according
to the spirit, it is universal. The internal struggle of these
two elements forms the history of Judaism, thoughtfully viewed.
Their startling rupture during the life of Jesus Christ
introduced the Christian era, inaugurated the Catholic Church. As
sons of that holy and infallible church, we need not fear the
triumph of the letter; but as members of a church composed of and
governed by imperfect men and sinners, we should not disregard
the struggles of the letter for predominance. Let us, then,
review the profitable history of these combats between letter and
spirit in the bosom of Judaism, considering successively the
representatives of the letter and the representatives of the
spirit in the Jewish Church.



  I. The Representatives Of The Letter.


These were the kings and priests. The kings represented the
letter in the political order; the priests, in the religious
order.

I. David prophesied, "He shall rule from sea to sea, and from the
river unto the ends of the earth. And all kings of the earth
shall adore him; all nations shall serve him." And discerning in
the far-off radiance that one among his sons whom he called the
Anointed, the Christ _par excellence_, he said, or let the
Lord say by his lips: "Sit thou at my right hand until I make thy
enemies thy footstool. With thee is the principality in the day
of thy strength: in the brightness of the saints: from the womb
before the day star I begot thee."

{691}

In the throne of the son of David, the God-engendered, two
royalties were united: a temporal royalty, created to reign over
the house of Jacob, confined within the narrow limits of its own
blood, _regnabit in domo Jacob_; and a royalty destined to
extend throughout all humanity, within the wide boundary of the
faith of Abraham, _regnabit in aeternumn_.

The danger lay in confounding these two royalties, in absorbing
the celestial in the terrestrial royalty--an error so frequent in
similar unions. To this danger succumbed the synagogue.

In a national church, or in a religious nation, no peril is more
imminent, none more fatal, than the confusion of religious and
political forms. [Footnote 168] Already great while remaining
human, for such it is in character and origin, political thought
becomes still greater in ascending to the heavenly spheres of
morality and religion. But religion shrinks in dimensions,
abdicating its true position, revolting against human instinct,
and wounding the attributes of Divine Majesty, when it assumes
political forms, adopting the ideas, the habits, the paltry
interests of politics.

    [Footnote 168: Lest those who may be unacquainted with
    previous conferences of Père Hyacinthe should interpret this
    passage as referring to the temporal power, we subjoin a
    quotation from a conference delivered by him in Notre Dame in
    the year 1867. Speaking of the complications caused by
    placing political power and religious power in the same
    hands, R. P. Hyacinthe says: "Nowhere under the sun of the
    Catholic world do I find this dreadful confusion. If you bid
    me look toward Rome, it is not the confusion, it is the
    exceptional alliance of the two powers that I hail in that
    place, itself exceptional as a miracle. Beneficent alliance,
    knot of the liberty of conscience, never to be united,
    because it unites there what it must separate elsewhere,
    never were you more fearfully necessary to us than now! You
    have received the testimony of French blood, shed by those
    who have been called mercenaries while they are simply
    heroes! You are defended by the eloquent words, the national
    words of our orators, by the energetic and loyal declarations
    of our government."

    In a conference preached at Rome during the Lent of 1868, R.
    P. Hyacinthe compares those who urge the church to throw
    aside the temporal power, and lead a purely supernatural
    existence, to Satan tempting Christ to cast himself from the
    pinnacle of the temple, that angels may bear him up.]

Such, however, was the kingdom which kings, and the partisans of
kings, persistently dreamed of giving to humanity. For one single
instant, under David, that prophetic ideal foreseen and pictured
by the prophet king shone with unblemished purity, soon to be
veiled under the worldly, (we will speak in plain terms,) under
the pagan ideal of Solomon.

Solomon was a great king, especially at the outset of his career.
He was always great, even in his errors and crimes. But
intoxicated with the science of nature, which he possessed, says
the inspired text, from the cedar growing on the summit of
Lebanon to the hyssop piercing the cracks of the walls, Solomon,
not content with knowledge leading to God, wished to possess all
the riches and the loves of earth. He built him palaces bearing
little resemblance to the palm-tree beneath which Deborah
administered justice, or to the tents where David camped with his
soldiers; palaces so sumptuous that the queen of Sheba came from
the depths of Arabia to admire them. He had harems filled with
women, chiefly foreigners and idolaters; seven hundred sultanas
and three hundred concubines! Then letting this inebriation
mount, I will not say from heart, but from sense to brain, he
fell down with his women at the feet of all their idols,
venerating, under poetic symbols, that great nature which is the
work of God and so easily takes the place of God.

Such was the spectacle presented by Jerusalem under the successor
of David--a hideous spectacle, but made less repulsive in the
days of Solomon by a glory he had no power to bequeath to his
heirs in Judah and to his Israelitish emulators. He left them
only his pride, his sensuality, his idolatry; and when the two
inimical yet analogous monarchies succumbed at last beneath the
blows of powerful neighbors, of those northern conquerors whose
favors they had so often solicited, and whose arms they had so
often braved, they left behind them, in the history of the holy
nation, a long track of mire and blood.

{692}

Such was the royalty of Judea, such the royalty of Israel;
promised to the world under the name of the kingdom of God!

So perverted were the Jews by their kings--or, to speak more
justly, for we must not misjudge these kings, so perverted were
they by national pride, that they could not throw aside this
gross ideal, but contemplated still, under the profaned name of
the kingdom of God, the domination of races with the sword and
with a rod of iron. When the true Messiah, Jesus, came to them,
they misunderstood him, chiefly because he rejected this low and
narrow royalty, proclaiming the true principle of the kingdom of
God--a spiritual kingdom which should be in the world, but not of
the world; _regnum meum non est de hoc mundo;_ a spiritual
kingdom which comes to bear witness of the truth, _ego in hoc
natus sum et ad hoc veni in mundum, ut testimonium perhibeam
veritati._ They preferred, before him, the seditious Barabbas,
who had fought in the streets of Jerusalem, shedding blood to
deliver them from the Romans. They preferred, before him, all the
false Messiahs, all the impotent and treacherous Christs, who
closed their mad career by precipitating the ruin of the nation,
the city, and the temple they had pretended to save.

Break, then, vase of Jewish nationality! formed so lovingly by
God through the hand of Moses; royal and sacerdotal vessel,
break! since thou wilt have it so. Thou wert formed to keep the
treasures of religious life for all humanity; thou didst close
upon thyself in jealous egotism; break! and let thy shivered
atoms, scattered through the world, spread abroad the balm which
shall intoxicate all nations. "The vase was shattered," says Holy
Writ, "and the whole house was filled with the odor." _Et domus
impleta est ex odore unguenti._

What kings effected in the political order, priests accomplished
in the religious order. Indeed, fatal as is the mistake of
confounding religious with political forms, still more lamentable
is the error of identifying, within the very heart of religion,
accidental and accessory forms with essential forms. Every
religion--above all, the true religion, the Christian
religion--going back to Moses, Abraham, Adam, is not merely a
religious idea, a religious sentiment, as it pleases contemporary
rationalism to call it. It is a fact, and therefore has positive
forms; it is a living fact, and therefore has a determined
organism. But, placed amid time and space, the fact of religion
must consider the varying conditions of space, the changing
conditions of time. Its organism must discharge its functions
amid dissimilar or even contradictory surroundings. Therefore,
side by side with substantial, permanent forms, we find variable,
accessory forms, clothing the first, so to speak, according to
the exigencies of races and centuries. By trying to confound
religion with accessory forms peculiar to certain countries or
races, we should isolate it from the great current of humanity in
the present. By trying to bind it to worn-out forms, we should
isolate it from the great current of humanity in the future. We
should misinterpret St. Paul's words to the ancient synagogue:
"_Quod autem antiquatur et senescit, prope interitum est_."
No worse service could be rendered to religious unity. On this
shoal the Jewish priesthood stranded.

{693}

I would speak respectfully of that priesthood. Last Sunday we
inhaled the perfume of its censers, we listened to the harmony of
its canticles. The rod of Aaron had not blossomed in his hands in
vain, and in the ancient tabernacle we almost adored the body of
Christ Jesus prefigured in the manner, the word of Christ Jesus
prepared in the decalogue. But however respectable in origin and
essence the Levitical priesthood, it no longer merits respect,
corrupted as it now is; or, at least, corrupted as are most of
its members. This corruption bears a special name, pharisaism.

Is pharisaism hypocrisy? No. Whatever the dictionary may say, in
the biblical sense pharisaism is not hypocrisy, unless in that
subtle form, at once most innocent and most fatal, that
unconscious hypocrisy which believes itself sincere. Jesus often
said, "Pharisees, hypocrites," _pharisaei, hypocriae_; but
he explained this expression by another, "Blind guides,"
_pharisaee caece_. And the great apostle Paul, himself a
pharisee, reared, as he says, at the feet of the pharisee
Gamaliel, bears witness in a striking manner to their sincere
zeal for God, _habent zelum Dei_, but not according to
knowledge, _sed non secundum scientiam_.

Pharisaism, thoughtfully considered, is religious blindness, the
blindness of priestly depositaries of the letter, who think they
guard it best by explaining it least; blindness bearing on all
points of the sacred deposit--blindness in dogma, predominance of
formula over truth; blindness in morals, predominance of external
works over interior justice; blindness in worship, predominance
of external rites over religious feeling. Blindness in dogma.
They taught the truth. "The scribes and pharisees sit on the
chair of Moses," said Christ; "all, therefore, whatsoever they
shall say to you, observe and do: but according to their works do
ye not; for they say, and do not."

There is no revealed idea enlightening and vivifying the world
that has not words to contain it: _lucerna verbum tuum,
domine_. But when speech compresses itself, when it encloses
the idea as in a jealously narrow prison, obscuring and choking
it, that is pharisaism. That is what the apostle Paul called
guarding the word, but keeping it captive in iniquity. That is
what forced from the meek lips of our Saviour Jesus the terrible
anathema _Vae vobis!_ "Wo to you who have taken the key of
knowledge, and will not enter, and all those who would try to
enter, you prevent."

In morals, it is exterior works, it is a multiplicity of human
practices, resting like a despicably tyrannical load upon the
conscience, making it forget, in unhealthy dreams, that it is an
honest man's conscience, a Christian conscience. The pharisees
said to Jesus Christ, "Why do thy disciples transgress the
traditions of the ancients? for they wash not their hands when
they eat bread." And our Saviour replied, "Why do you trample
under foot the commandments of God, to keep the commandments of
men?" Rites are essential to worship, as formula is essential to
dogma--wo to him who tears the formula of biblical revelation, or
the formula of the definitions of the church; and, since works
are essential to morality, wo to him who sleeps in a dead and
sterile faith, without works.

Worship! but worship is the expansion of the religious soul; it
is the heart's emotion rising odorous and harmonious to God. It
is action working from within outward; it is, also, the not less
legitimate reaction from without inward. Rites elevate religious
feeling, and arouse inspiration in heart and conscience.

{694}

But when there is no religious feeling, when heart and conscience
bend beneath the weight of exterior practices; "Yea, verily,"
said Jesus Christ again, (for the gospels are full of these
things; the gospels are the eternal reprobation of pharisaism,)
yea, verily, the prophet Isaias spoke truly when he said, "This
people honoreth me with their lips, and with their hands, but
their heart is far from me."

This is the yoke of which St. Peter said, "You would impose it on
the head of nations; neither our fathers nor we have been able to
bear it." This is the smothered and exhausted breath with which
they thought to renew the world. This is not the Judaism of
Moses, but the decrepit Judaism of the scribes and pharisees.
When the entire world, by the eloquent lips of Greece and Rome,
asked of the East salvation; when, by the sudden stir of
barbarians quivering in the depths of Germany and Scythia, the
world demanded light and civilization, this was offered to them!
Judaism became the more inadmissible as the world had more need
of it. Pharisaism, in its blind fanaticism, stood before the
gates of the kingdom of heaven to prevent generations from
entering.

Away! men of the letter; away! enemies of humanity.
_Adversantur omnibus hominibus_, says St. Paul. And thou,
Jesus, arise, my Saviour and God!--thou who wert moved by wrath
twice only in thy life! Jesus felt no anger against poor sinners.
He sat at their table; and when the woman taken in adultery fell
at his feet, burning with shame and weeping with remorse, he
raised her up, thinking only of absolving her: "Go in peace, and
sin no more." He felt no anger against heretics and schismatics.
He sat by Jacob's well, beside the woman of Samaria, announcing
to her, with the salvation which comes from the Jews, _quia
salus ex Judaeis est_, worship in spirit and in truth. But
Jesus was moved with wrath on two occasions: once, scourge in
hand, against those who sold the things of God in the temple, and
again, with malediction on his lips, against those who perverted
the things of God in the law.

Arise, then, meek Lamb! arise in thy pacific wrath against the
enemies of all men, and against the true enemies of God's
kingdom! Arise and drive them from the temple! Thus did the
synagogue perish, and the Christian Church come to life.


  II. The Representatives Of The Spirit.

I have said (and you already knew it) that we have nothing to
fear from the triumphs of the _letter_. Yet we cannot
overlook the struggles and temptations, not only of every
priesthood, but of all pious persons; the temptation of the
faithful, as well as of priests, to allow the letter to
predominate over the spirit. Let us glorify God because we are
born in a holy and infallible church, which Jesus Christ
protects, and will protect until the consummation of his work, in
the course of ages, against the ignorance of our minds and the
weakness of our wills.

But what voice strikes my ear? These are no longer the coarse
tones of earthly domination, nor of carnal legislation. Nor yet
is it a Christian voice, the voice of Christ speaking to us a
moment ago; but, though anterior to Christ, how like to him it
sounds:

{695}

  "Hear the word of the Lord, ye rulers of Sodom; give ear to the
  law of our God, ye people of Gomorrha," saith the voice; and
  yet it is speaking to the church of Sion. "To what purpose do
  you offer me the multitude of your victims, saith the Lord? I
  am full; I desire not holocausts of rams, and fat of fatlings,
  and blood of calves, and lambs, and buck-goats. Offer sacrifice
  no more in vain: incense is an abomination to me. The new
  moons, and the sabbaths, and other festivals, I will not abide;
  your assemblies are wicked. My soul hateth your new moons, and
  your solemnities: they are become troublesome to me; I am weary
  of bearing them. And when you stretch forth your hands, I will
  turn away my eyes from you: and when you multiply prayer, I
  will not hear: for your hands are full of blood.

  "Wash yourselves, be clean, take away the evil of your devices
  from my eyes: cease to do perversely, learn to do well: seek
  judgment, relieve the oppressed, judge for the fatherless,
  defend the widow. And then come and accuse me, saith the Lord:
  if your sins be as scarlet, they shall be made as white as
  snow: and if they be red as crimson, they shall be white as
  wool."

This is the voice of Mosaic spirituality in all its energy and
light. How different from the pharisaism we were speaking of just
now; from the letter, smothering beneath its murderous weight
reason, conscience, and heart! How like the gospel, the law of
Christ, with its two commandments: an insatiable hunger, an
inextinguishable thirst after righteousness, and a heart ever
open to mercy! Ah! I feel that this is no local law, no national
organization, no restricted or temporary code. It is the law of
all people and of all ages. It needs but the breath of St. Paul
to bear it from one end of the world to the other.

But the voice of the Spirit still speaks--no longer, now, of the
carnal law, but of the earthly _kingdom:_

  "And in the last days, the mountain of the house of the Lord
  shall be prepared on the top of mountains, and it shall be
  exalted above the hills: and all nations shall flow into it,
  _fluent ad eum omnes gentes_. And many people shall go,
  and say: Come and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, and
  to the house of Jacob, and he will teach us his ways, and we
  will walk in his paths: for the law shall come forth from Sion,
  and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem, _quia de Sion exibit
  lex et verbum Domini de Jerusalem._ Come, let us break our
  swords and make ploughshares; let us shatter our lances and
  turn them into sickles, for the anointed of the Lord will reign
  in justice and peace; all idols shall be broken, _et idola
  penitus conterentur_, and in those days the Eternal shall
  alone be great."

Such was the future _disfigured_ by kings and the successors
of kings. Understand it well; this is not oppression, but
deliverance! It belongs to the letter to impose itself by force;
this is its necessity; it has no other way, if this can be called
a way. To the spirit belongs the appeal summoning us to the
liberty of man and the liberty of God. _Ubi spiritus, ibi
libertas_. "Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is
liberty." Therefore, I do not see in the Messiah's hands a sword
besmeared and gory. I see nations rise up spontaneously, like a
sea shuddering to its deepest abysses. _Fluent ad eum omnes
gentes;_ this is not servitude; it is deliverance. This is not
the reign of the Messiah victor; but it is the reign of the
Messiah liberator.

But you ask me whose is this voice preaching a spiritual kingdom
to priests, a divine royalty to kings and nations? The voice
shall interpret itself; it shall tell its origin and mission.

Here Père Hyacinthe relates the famous vision in which Isaiah
receives his mission after a seraph has purified his lips with a
burning coal. This is prophecy.

And were not prophets and saints; necessary to the Jewish Church,
as they are necessary to the Catholic Church? The two beggars in
the dream of Innocent III. upholding the crumbling Lateran
basilica, as if symbolizing the decadence of the hierarchical
church in the middle ages; those two mendicants, Dominic de
Guzman and Francis of Assisi, what were they but prophets of the
New Testament, sprung not from the hereditary tradition of ages,
but from the living kiss of Jehovah?
{696}
Yes, we need saints, we need prophets--that is to say, men of
love, martyrs; men of vision who read not only according to the
letter but according to the spirit, who see God in the vision of
their reason enlightened by faith; in the ecstasy of their
conscience elevated by grace. "I have seen the Lord with my
eyes"--_Oculis meis vidi Dominum_. We need men who speak to
him face to face like Moses, and, above all, men who love him
heart to heart, and pass through the struggles of days and ages,
struggles only to be fully understood by contemplating them in
the final future. _Vidit ultima, et consolatus est lugentes in
Sion._ Such men were the prophets.

They were _seers_. They saw the future. They did not look
only upon the present, so accurately fitted to the measure of
narrow minds and hearts. They did not return with cowardly tears
toward the past, never to be born again. It was for Gentiles, for
pagan antiquity, to dream of a golden age for ever lost. The
prophets, gazing into the future, saw the golden age of Eden
reappear, under a form more full and lasting, at the gates of
heaven, yet still upon the earth.

The prophets believed in the future because they believed in God.
They believed in progress; they were in all antiquity the only
men of progress. Antiquity did not believe in it, not even
knowing its name. But the prophets believed in the most
incredible and the most necessary of all progress, moral and
religious progress. They believed in it despite the fall, or
rather because of the fall and of the redemption. To them evil
did not lie in radical vice, essential to our nature, or in the
inflexible decree of destiny; it was in the liberty of man, and
must find its remedy in the liberty of God. If God had allowed
the starting-point of man to recoil, be cause of sin, into the
abyss, it was in order to raise, through the redemption; his goal
to the very heavens. From the summits to which their faith lifted
them, they saw salvation spread from individuals to nations, from
nations to the human race, from the human race to all nature.

Such was progress to the prophets; such the future universal Sion
they hailed in the future? Isaiah prophesied it in the existence
and in the relative prosperity of Jerusalem. Jeremiah mingled it
with tears shed over the smoking ruins of his beloved city.
Ezechiel in the bosom of captivity pictured Sion, no longer
Jewish, but humanitarian, where all nations were to find their
place. He engraved upon the pediment of the gates this immortal
device, "The Lord is there;" _Dominus ibidem_.

II. This was what the prophets, men of faith in vision and men of
vision in faith, believed and respected. This was the object of
their love, for they were men of understanding, and also men of
heart.

I do not love Utopians, I do not love thought which dwells
exclusively in the future, feeding on sterile and chimerical
dreams. I love men of the future who are also men of the present;
contemplatives, but workers too. The prophets were workers. They
did not love the future in the future, but in the present where
it germinates. They did not love humanity in humanity--too
abstract if it be an idea, too vast if it embrace all
individuals; they loved humanity in their nation; they loved the
typical Jerusalem of their vision in their terrestrial Jerusalem
of their existence.

{697}

I love to follow them in their writings; to see them rise up in
the face of every national fact, every religious fact of that
gross people--rise up to meet every evil deed with anathema, to
consecrate in the Lord's name every moral or religious act
tending toward true progress. I love to see them go down into the
deep ravines, to the borders of the torrent of Cedron, where the
Messiah was to drink before lifting up his head; climb the abrupt
acclivity to the citadel, to the temple where Jesus was to teach;
traverse the public squares where ever and anon the wind from the
desert, as if to mock their hopes, caught up the dust beneath the
burning sun and flung it in their faces.

Now, in the ravine, in the citadel, and in the temple of Sion, in
the streets possessed by the whirlwind, everywhere in that city
environed with their love and their devotion, they saw that Sion
which was to grow up in its bosom and embrace the world. They
loved the future; they loved humanity in God; they loved them in
the house of Abraham and in the church of Jesus Christ.

In the presence of these great examples, let me say to you of the
love of country all that I have said of domestic love. We no
longer know, or rather we no longer rightly know, what it is to
love country and people; to see and love, in them, the city of
humanity, the city of Jesus Christ, the city of time and
eternity.

III. Men of vision and of love, the prophets were also men of
combat, and, when necessary, martyrs, soldiers, and victims. No
man passes without effort that Red Sea which separates present
and future. The prophets crossed it bearing with them on their
vigorous shoulders the ark of God and the ark of mankind. But
what combats and struggles!--struggles majestic as their visions
and their love. They shrunk from them in their infirm human
nature; they dreaded these struggles. They knew that the word of
God ends by slaying those who hear it: "I have slain them, saith
the Lord, in the word of my mouth." "Ah Lord God!" cried
Jeremiah, "behold I cannot speak, for I am a child;" and the Lord
answered, "Say not, I am a child; for thou shalt go to all that I
shall send thee: and whatsoever I shall command thee thou shalt
speak. Behold, I have given my words in thy mouth. Lo, I have set
thee this day over the nations, and over kingdoms, to root up and
to pull down, and to waste and to destroy, and to build and to
plant. For, behold, I have made thee this day a fortified city,
and a pillar of iron, and a wall of brass, over all the land, to
the kings of Judea, to the princes thereof, and to the priests
and to the people of the land. And they shall fight against thee
and shall not prevail, for I am with thee to deliver thee."

And to Ezechiel, colleague and successor of Jeremiah, God ever
spoke the language of struggle: "Fear not; I send thee to an
apostate people that hath revolted from me, _ad gentem
apostatricem;_ but I have made thy face stronger than their
faces, and thy forehead harder than their foreheads; I have made
thy face like an adamant and like flint. I will set thee up like
a wall of iron and like a city of brass, for I will be with
thee."

Thus did the prophets struggle for that Sion which fought against
them, repudiating them. They never forsook it, they always loved
and always served it.

We are about to part for another year. Let me entreat you now to
unite yourselves with me in a consecration to that kingdom of
God, to that church whose courts we have traversed. Christianity
is not of today nor of yesterday. It belongs not merely to the
historical period of Jesus Christ and his apostles.
{698}
It comes from David, from Abraham, it comes to us from Adam, our
father, our king, our pontiff. In this unique religion, this
church changeable in form, immovable in foundation, friends,
brothers--let me use words which come from my heart--let us
consecrate ourselves, following the example of the prophets, to
the love and service of God's kingdom. The kingdom of God is for
ever established in Christianity, in the Catholic, Apostolic,
Roman Church. But, as I said just now, this church must ever pass
from form to form--_de forme en forme_-from brightness to
brightness--_transformamur claritate in claritatem_--until
her pacific empire shall cover the whole earth, until with
humanity she shall attain the age of the perfect man in Christ
Jesus.

Do we not wish to work for this kingdom? What are we to do if not
that? What are the works of our public and private life if they
do not relate finally to the kingdom of truth, justice, charity,
to all which constitutes Christianity, to the Catholic and
Apostolic Roman Church? I do not ask you to love her as she does
not wish to be loved--to love her as a sect is loved, as the
gross Jews loved the synagogue, with a heart and mind restricted
to the letter. I do not ask you to love our grand Catholic Church
by glorifying the infirmities of her life, which are your
infirmities and mine; or by condemning all the truths professed
and all the virtues practised outside of her by men who are often
her sons without knowing it. No; let us have no sectarian love! I
ask you to love the church with the heart of the church herself;
with a heart commensurate only with the heart of Jesus Christ,
_dilatamini et vos_. "You are not straitened in us," said
St. Paul to the Corinthians; "but in your own bowels you are
straitened. But having the same recompense, (I speak as to my own
children,) be you also enlarged." _Dilatamini et vos_.

Before leaving you, let me tell you the secret of my youth. Let
me speak to you of the day of my priestly consecration, when in
this nave, less crowded then than it is to-day, stretched upon
that icy pavement, filled with burning palpitations, I was
sustained, I was inebriated with one thought--the conviction that
I had but one love and one service, the kingdom of God and
humanity.

Yes, let us love the church in every man, and every man in the
church! What matters condition? Rich or poor, ignorant or
learned, _omnibus debitor sum_, I am every man's debtor,
says St. Paul. What matters country? Whether Frenchman or
foreigner, Greek or barbarian, _omnibus debitor sum_, I
answer with St. Paul. I am the debtor of barbarism as of
civilization. In a certain sense, what matters even religion, if
we would love a man?

Ah! if he is not a son of the Catholic Church in the body, by
external union, he is so, perhaps--he is, I hope, in the soul, by
invisible union. If he is a son of the Catholic Church neither
according to the body nor in the spirit, nor in the letter, he is
so at least by preparation in the design of God. If the water of
baptism is not on his brow, I grieve to know it; but I see there
the blood of Jesus Christ, for Jesus Christ died for all, opening
wide his arms to all the world upon the cross! The world belongs
to Jesus Christ, therefore the world belongs to the church, if
not in act, at least in power. Let me, then, love all men; and
you, too, love all men with me--not only in person, not only in
their narrow earthly individuality, but in the great Christian
community, in the great divine community which summons each and
all.

{699}

When Moses, founder of the Jewish church, died on the mountain
within sight of the land of promise, the Hebrew text says that he
died in the kiss of Jehovah. Before dying let us learn to live in
the kiss of Jehovah, which is also the kiss of all humanity. O
holy Church! thou art more than man and thou art more than
God--than God alone in heaven, than man alone on earth. O holy
Church! thou art the kiss of God to man, the kiss of man to God;
the embrace of all men, all races, all ages, in the flame of
universal and eternal love. "He who abideth in love abideth in
God, and God abideth in him."

----------

    A Sketch Of Leo X. And His Age.


In the annals of literature and art, the name of Florence peers
above that of any other Italian city, Rome excepted. Here were
the poets who tuned the Italian language and made it the most
musical of modern idioms; here was the illustrious astronomer,
who was not the discoverer of a planet, but the revealer of the
whole celestial machinery; and here, too, were the artist and
politician who were not only the first sculptors and statesmen of
their time, but the inventors of the very art and craft in which
they excelled. Every day the pilgrim scholar arrives at her gates
and requests to be shown the monuments of her great men, and
every day genius worships at the shrine of genius.

At the time of which we write, the middle ages had seen their
palmiest days, when a Charlemagne courteously entertained
ambassadors from the Mussulmans of Florence and the Caliphs of
Bagdad, and when the flower of chivalry, headed by a valiant
Philip, a lion-hearted Richard, and a sainted Louis, rushed to
the plains of the east to battle with the Moslem foe; they had
presided over the erection of those great Gothic piles whose
sublime architecture towered to the clouds, and had beheld the
pontiffs of Rome issuing orders for the foundation of
universities not only in Italy, but on the very outskirts of the
civilized world; [Footnote 169] and finally they had seen the
laborious and prolific genius of the schoolmen multiplying
inventions and discoveries, fathoming the profound depths of
theological science, and disserting on those great metaphysical
problems, which, like so many apples of discord, have caused
endless dissension and controversy among modern philosophers.
[Footnote 170]

  [Footnote 169: Gibbon tells us in a foot-note to his _Decline
  and Fall of the Roman Empire_ that, "at the end of the
  fifteenth century, there were about fifty universities in
  Europe." Though this is indeed a glorious tribute, considering
  from whom it came, paid to the mediaeval ages, we are, however,
  more inclined to believe with the _New American
  Cyclopaedia_ that, "before the year 1500, there were over
  sixty-four universities in Europe."]

  [Footnote 170: Mackintosh says, "Scarcely any metaphysical
  controversy agitated among recent philosophers was unknown to
  the schoolmen." (_Dissertation on the Progress of Ethical
  Philosophy_.)]

But before these great medieval ages had reached their terminus,
they again shone forth with brilliant splendor. That, indeed, was
a glorious epoch in the world's history, when the most important
invention recorded in the annals of mankind came forth from the
brain of Guttenberg; when the stormy Atlantic was first ploughed
by adventurous keels, and new worlds discovered; when letters,
philosophy, and the fine arts were cultivated in such schools as
the Medicean palaces, and were patronized by such men as Cosmo
and Lorenzo de' Medici.

{700}

Under the enlightened patronage of these princely merchants,
Florence became the Athens of Italy, and one of the favorite
retreats of the muses. Her public halls were crowded with youths
eager to listen to an eloquent hellenist, expatiating upon the
beauties of Homer; her poets sang in the idiom of the great
Mantuan; her philosophers were smitten with love for the divine
Plato; and her scholars were so well read in antiquity, that
students from every country came thither, to slake their thirst
at what was then considered the fountain-head of ancient lore.
The gardens of the Medici recalled the groves of the Academies in
which the Athenian philosopher descanted upon human and divine
things, and the shady porches of the Lyceum, in which the
Stagirite perambulated whilst delivering his sublime lessons.

A great bustle might have been observed in these gardens on the
11th of December, 1475; artists and humanists were vieing with
one another in congratulating Lorenzo the Magnificent on the
birth of his second son, who, in memory of his paternal uncle,
was christened Giovanni. Lorenzo was proud of his little
Benjamin, and he listened with complacency to those who admired
his keen, restless eye, his pure and noble forehead, his flowing
hair and snowy neck. In contemplating the sweet expression of his
countenance, the poet declared that he would revive classic
literature; and the Neoplatonician predicted a bright era for
philosophy; whilst a fugitive Hellene read in the Greek profile
of the infant happy days for his dispersed countrymen; and an old
sage, endowed with Simeon-like prophecy, exclaimed, "My soul,
praise the Lord! Giovanni shall be the honor of the sanctuary."

The education of the young child's heart and the embellishment of
his mind were, for his enlightened parents, objects of supreme
importance. The former duty necessarily devolved upon themselves;
and how well they succeeded was best shown by the mild and
placable temper, polished manners, and kind and affable
disposition of their little favorite; the latter they entrusted
to scholars whose names even then were running through the
schools of Europe, especially to Politiano, one of the best
classical writers of the _renaissance_, and the preceptor of
a pleiad of illustrious men. Naturally docile, well endowed with
parts, in constant intercourse with men of rank and talent,
Giovanni acquired a dignity of deportment, a facility of
conversation, and a fund of knowledge, much beyond his years. At
sixteen, he had completed the curriculum of Pisa, was graduated
doctor and invested with the insignia of the cardinalate, and
thus entitled to take his seat among the princes of the church.
These precocious acquirements and early preferments ought to have
ripened into days of serenity; but no, they were more like the
calm that precedes the storm. Brought up in the school of
prosperity, he was to acquire his last finish amidst the rude
trials of adversity. Before attaining the highest dignity that
can adorn the brow of man, he was destined to experience the
instability of human affairs and the fickleness of men. The death
of his father, and the demise of his munificent protector,
Innocent VIII., inflicted deep wounds on his sensitive heart.
{701}
In the mean time, a terrific storm was gathering in Florence. The
inhabitants of this metropolis, exasperated at the seemingly
unpatriotic conduct of Piero de' Medici, his elder brother,
expelled from within their walls even the last scion of their
noblest family; something like the ungrateful Athenians, who
ostracized the very man on whom they had conferred the title of
just. To cheer the dreary hours of exile, no less than to enrich
his mind with useful knowledge, the expatriated cardinal resolved
upon visiting the principal cities of Europe. Even here,
difficulties and disquietudes unforeseen lurked in the background
of the smiling ideal that he had formed of his itinerary. The
suspicious authorities of Ulm and Rouen arrested the little
caravan, and ordered him and his companions to confinement; the
foaming billows deterred him from proceeding to England, and thus
deprived him of the pleasure of visiting the land of Bede and of
King Alfred. On his return, he was cast by a storm on the Genoese
coast, and, thinking it advisable to relinquish his voyage,
proceeded by land to Savona, where he met the celebrated Cardinal
Della Rovere--a remarkable coincidence, if we consider that Della
Rovere, Giulio de' Medici, and he himself were afterward raised
to the dignity of the tiara. Notwithstanding all the afflictions
that poured in on him, the future pontiff invariably preserved
that equanimity of mind and amenity of manners which were the
prominent features in his character. Better and brighter days
were now about to dawn. The premature death of Piero, partially
disarmed the hostility of the Florentines, and they finally threw
open their gates to the illustrious representative of the
time-honored family of the Medici. A year had hardly elapsed
after his restoration before Rome was plunged into mourning by
the death of that wary and energetic pontiff, Julius II. The
conclave assembled immediately after the obsequies, and Cardinal
de' Medici was called by the unanimous vote to the see of St.
Peter. Giovanni de' Medici was now Leo X., and the choice of that
name, as Erasmus spiritually remarks, was not without its
significance. If Leo I. saved the eternal city from the ravages
of the "scourge of God;" if Leo IV. again repelled from her walls
the barbaric bands of Saracens, Leo X. was to make her the
capital city of the republic of letters, as she was already the
starry centre of the Christian world.

Italy had already taken the lead in the restoration of ancient
learning, and supplied the fire from which the other nations
lighted their torches. [Footnote 171] As may easily be fancied,
the elevation to the pontificate of the son of Lorenzo the
Magnificent spontaneously awoke the most sanguine expectations of
the artists and literati. In their fervor, they imagined that
genius, worth, and talent could not remain unnoticed or
unremunerated. "Under these impressions," says a Protestant
writer, [Footnote 172]

    [Footnote 171: Hallam, _Literature of Europe_, vol. i.
    ch. i.]

    [Footnote 172: Roscoe, _Life and Pontificate of Leo_,
    vol. i. p. 306.]

"Rome became, at once, the general resort of those who possessed
or had pretensions to superior learning, industry, or ability.
They all took it for granted that the supreme pontiff had no
other objects of attention than to listen to their productions
and to reward their labors." That their hopes were to be
realized, was evident to all from the very first act of the new
pontiff's administration, the selection as apostolic secretaries
of Bembo and Sadoleti, two scholars who resume in themselves the
intellectual life of the time--Sadoleti, a profound philosopher
and the best exegete of his age; and Bembo, who emulated Virgil
and Cicero with equal success, and recalled in his writings the
elegance of Petrarch and Boccaccio. [Footnote 173]

    [Footnote 173: Bettinelli. It is to Bembo that we are
    indebted for the restoration of the long-lost art of
    abbreviated or shorthand writing.]

{702}

A new era in literature and art was about to dawn; its first
bright rays were for Italy, that "land of taste and sensibility."
With a pontiff who could say, "I have always loved accomplished
scholars and _belles-lettres_; this love was born with me,
and age has but increased it; for literature is the ornament and
glory of the church; and I have always remarked that it knits its
cultivators more firmly to the dogmas of our faith;" with such a
pontiff, the intellectual movement that then pervaded Italian
society was nobly sustained and enlivened, until at last the
golden age again reappeared on earth. All sorts of
encouragements, such as honorary employments, lucrative offices,
pecuniary gratuities, and even ecclesiastical preferments, were
lavished upon talent and genius. Every latent energy luxuriantly
budded forth and blossomed in the genial sunshine of such
munificence.

The academies of literary men philosophized on the banks of the
Tiber or in the cool recesses of a fragrant villa. The lovers of
the arts, the votaries of the muses, and the cultivators of
polite literature sat side by side at the sumptuous banquets
frequently given in the Vatican. At these grand entertainments
all topics were convivially canvassed, and fancy soared aloft to
delight the guests by her sublime improvisations. Popular
favorites, like the poet of Arezzo and the "celestial" Accolte,
read their productions in public halls to admiring multitudes;
while the best scholars of the age, yielding to the invitation of
Leo, filled the professorships of the great universities. Italy
was then, in the beautiful words of Audin, "the promised land of
the intellect;" [Footnote 174] and Rome the centre of learning
and the nursery of great men. No wonder, then, that the
snow-capped Alps presented but a feeble barrier to the
transalpine scholar, and that every day some new Hannibal
descended their craggy flanks and pushed forward to the
seven-hilled city, to pay a courteous visit to the accomplished
pontiff, and gratify a long-entertained desire of conversing with
the celebrities of the age. The whole world thus recognized that

    "The fount at which the panting mind assuages
  Her thirst of knowledge, quaffing there her fill,
  Flows from th' eternal source of Rome's imperial hill." [Footnote 175]

    [Footnote 174: _Vie de Luther_, vol. i. p. 179.]

    [Footnote 175: Byron, _Childe Harold_, Canto III.]

Since the days of Petrarch, the Italian muse had all but hushed
her lovely strains; her lyre was silent and unstrung. Politiano
came, swept its music-breathing chords, and sent its sweet notes
on the wings of the zephyrs throughout the Italian peninsula. All
listened with rapture to the enchanting strains of the Tuscan
siren, and, after a moment of hesitation, prepared their pens to
write on every theme and to illustrate every department of
science and letters. The classic models of heroic poetry, fresh
from the Aldine presses or half consumed by the dust of ages,
were taken down from their shelves and studied with passionate
ardor. The children of song were delighted with the epic muse,
and were now hard at work at their great poems.
{703}
Mozarello elaborates his _Porsenna_; Querno, the archpoet,
cadences the twenty thousand verses of his _Alexias_; Vida,
like Horace of old, draws up the rules of the metrical art, and
sings his _Christiad_ in verses of Augustan purity and
elegance; Ariosto, the Homer of Ferrara, condenses into his
_Orlando Furioso_ a vein of poetry so remarkable for its
grace and energy as to leave it doubtful whether the palm of
superiority should be awarded to him, or to the author of the
_Jerusalem Delivered_. [Footnote 176] The terrible
eventualities of tragedy and the more pleasing casualties of
comedy were brought upon the stage by Trissino, Ruccellai, and
Bibbiena; the protean burlesque assumed its most humorous forms
under Berni's magic pen, and the shafts of satire were keenly
pointed by Aretino, whose virulent epigrams drew upon him such an
amount of physical retaliation that a contemporary writer calls
him "the loadstone of clubs and daggers." [Footnote 177]

    [Footnote 176: Laharpe. _Cours de Littérature_, vol. i.
    p. 435.]

    [Footnote 177: See Addison, _Spectator_, No. 23.]

Guicciardini wrote the history of his country with the elegant
diction of the great historians of Rome; Giovio's periods were so
flowing as to make Leo X. declare that next to Livy he had not
met with a more eloquent writer. The _Prince_ of
Macchiavelli enjoys a world-wide reputation, and his _History
of Florence_ is so remarkable for the beauty of its style,
that it is said to have had more influence on Italian prose than
any other work, except the _Decameron_ of Boccaccio. Besides
these reigning stars, there was a host of other literary
celebrities who shed a brilliant lustre on Leo's golden reign.
There was Fracastoro, who, at the early age of nineteen, had won
the highest academic degree of the Paduan university, and was
nominated to the professorship of logic; Navagero, whose aversion
to an affected taste was so intense that he annually consigned to
the flames a copy of Martial; Aleandro, who was only twenty-four
when the celebrated Manuzio dedicated to him his edition of the
_Iliad_, alleging as a reason for conferring this honor on a
person so young, that his acquirements were beyond those of any
other person with whom he was acquainted, and it is well known
that the Venetian typographer was the friend and correspondent of
almost all the literary characters of the day; Augurelli, whom a
contemporary historian calls the most learned and elegant
preceptor of his time; Castiglione, who was called by Charles V.
the most accomplished gentleman of the age; Leonardo da Vinci,
who, long before the philosopher of Verulam, proclaimed
experiment the base of the physical sciences, and, before the
astronomer of Thorne, taught the annual motion of the earth; and
Calcagnini, who wrote an elaborate work to defend this startling
thesis. The correction of the calendar was investigated by
Dulciati, and even hieroglyphics found an expounder in the
encyclopedic Valeriaro, who wrote no less than fifty-eight books
on that abstruse subject. Literature, indeed, was a universal
hobby; it was the royal road to distinction in an age when the
love of the well-turned period and the mellifluous sonnet was
epidemic. The lady cultivators of polite letters were numerous,
and not only accomplished proficients but formidable rivals. The
sonnets of Veronica Gambara rank among the best; Vittoria
Colonna, in lively description and genuine poetry, excelled all
her contemporaries with the sole exception of the inimitable
Ariosto; and Laura Battifera is represented as the rival of
Sappho.

{704}

Notwithstanding this general enthusiasm for the amenities of
literature, great attention was bestowed upon the more arid study
of languages. Already the Latin muse had come to dwell again
beneath the beautiful sky of Ausonia; and the humanists, fleeing
from the savage fury of the triumphant Ottomans, sang, in the
gardens of Florence and on the banks of the Tiber, the fall of
Troy and the adventures of Ulysses. Leo X. was not only a Latin
scholar, he was also a refined hellenist. Moreover, he knew what
vast treasures of patristic lore are contained in the Greek
fathers, and hence, as a lover of sacred and profane literature,
he lavished his treasures on the revival of that beautiful
tongue. A little colony, fresh from the Morea, was installed in a
magnificent mansion on the Esquilian hill, and a Greek seminary
was opened to impart to the Italians the true pronunciation and
the very genius of the Homeric idiom. The famous Lascaris, at the
invitation of Leo X., relinquished his position at the French
court, in order to direct the studies of his young countrymen and
superintend the editions of the Greek classics that were issued
from the Roman press. The Hebrew was taught at Rome by
Guidacerio, who published a grammar of that language and
dedicated it to Leo X.; the Syriac and Chaldaic were taught at
Bologna by Ambrozio, a regular canon of the Lateran, who at
fifteen could converse in Greek and Latin with as much ease and
fluency as any of his contemporaries, and who subsequently
mastered eighteen languages. A useful and authentic lexicon was
first given to the learned world by Varino. A new Latin version
of the Bible from the Hebrew having been announced by Pagnini,
Leo X. requested an interview with the author, and was so well
pleased with his competency as well as with the elegance and
accuracy of the work, that he defrayed all the expenses of
transcription and publication. Erasmus, who corresponded with
Leo, and, more than any one else, knew his great desire to
promote biblical studies, inscribed to him his _New
Testament_ in Greek and Latin with corrections and
annotations. Giustiniani commenced, in 1516, a new edition of the
Bible in Greek, Latin, Hebrew, Arabic, and Chaldaic. If to this
we add that the famous Cardinal Ximenes dedicated to Leo X. his
herculean work, the Complutensian Polyglot, we shall have some
idea of the efforts made in the beginning of the sixteenth
century toward the promotion of scriptural and philological
studies. [Footnote 178]

    [Footnote 178: It may here be remarked, in passing, that,
    before the Reformation, the Bible was translated into not
    only the classic and oriental languages, but also the
    vernacular of every nation of Europe. For particulars, see
    Cantu, _Histoire Universelle_, vol. xv. p. 12.]

It has been said that a genuine love of literature invariably
evinces its existence by an insatiable thirst for books, "those
souls of ages past." This love Leo X. possessed to an eminent
degree; he was a second Nicholas V. At his request and under his
patronage, sterling bibliophiles set out from Rome to overrun the
world in quest of manuscripts. The monasteries of Britain and
Germany and the ruins of the Byzantine libraries were diligently
searched; ample pecuniary remuneration was everywhere offered for
unpublished works; and as kings and princes encouraged this hunt
after books, it may easily be fancied that volumes teemed in from
every quarter. The Vatican was made the recipient of these
literary treasures; and, thanks to the zeal of the popes, it now
possesses the most valuable collection of manuscripts in the
world.

{705}

Leo X. was not only a man of letters, he was also well versed in
antiquities. Prior to his elevation to the pontificate, his
greatest delight was to shut himself up in his library or museum,
and there pore over his hoarded treasures. This antiquarian taste
he inherited from his illustrious ancestors, whose collections
were famous throughout all Italy. One day, while he was yet a
cardinal, a statue of Lucretia was exhumed; his joy was supreme,
and in the heat of his enthusiasm, he strung his lyre and
commemorated the happy event in beautiful iambics. On another
occasion, a piece of sculpture, representing the ship of
AEsculapius, was, owing to his exertions, discovered in the
Tiber. This was considered by his omen-liking friends as an
augury of his future dignity. The discovery of the famous group
known as the Laocoön was an epoch in Rome. That evening, the
bells were rung to announce the event; the poets, among whom was
Sadoleti, lucubrated all night, preparing their hymns, sonnets,
and canzoni, to welcome the reappearance of the masterpiece. Next
morning, all Rome was on foot, and the public works were
suspended while the antique statue, festooned with flowers and
verdure, was carried processionally to the capitol, amidst the
sound of vocal and instrumental harmony. Such was the joy of the
Roman artists on the discovery of a relic of ancient art.

The twin arts painting and sculpture shared largely in the
munificence of the pontiff. Bramarte, Michael Angelo, Raphael,
and Leonardo da Vinci, the princes of modern art, were the worthy
emulators of Phidias and Apelles. In immortalizing their names
and that of their patron, they immortalized their age and their
country. At their call, genius again returned to earth, and
exhibited, in the chiselled marble and on the glowing canvas,
such animated representations as filled the eye with wonder and
stirred the deep foundations of the heart. Bramarte planned and
commenced St. Peter's, which, in the estimation of the sceptic
Gibbon, is the most glorious structure that has ever been applied
to religion; for

                           "Majesty,
  Power, glory, strength, and beauty, all are aisled
  In the eternal ark of worship undefiled."

Michael Angelo, whose very fragments have educated eminent
artists, continuing the noble structure, placed the pride of
Roman architecture in the clouds, and drew the design of the Last
Judgment, which connoisseurs pronounce a miracle of genius.
Raphael covered the Vatican with his inimitable frescoes and
sketched his Transfiguration, which was hailed by the Roman
people as the type of the beautiful, a paragon of art, and the
masterpiece of painting. The profound Da Vinci painted the Last
Supper and thus afforded Christian families a neat ornament for
their refectories and a piece of artistic finish for their
drawing-rooms. Sansovino's productions, according to the
historian of the arts, were among the finest specimens of the
plastic art, and Romano's were worthy of his "divine" master.

Such was the flourishing state of the arts and the great impulse
given to all branches of learning just before the memorable epoch
when the fetters of the human intellect were, forsooth, burst
asunder by the great Saxon hero, the unfrocked monk of
Wittemberg, against whom Leo X. hurled the bolt of
excommunication. If this grand impetus was not followed up, if
the pen was forgotten for the sword, and the altars of Apollo
were deserted for those of the homicide Mars; if the era of the
reformation "was truly a barbarous era," [Footnote 179] it most
certainly was not owing to incapacity on the part of the Roman
pontiffs, since sectarians themselves proclaim them "in general
superior to the age in which they lived," [Footnote 180] while
historians of the depth of Neander are struck with admiration to
find the popes "ever attentive to the moral and religious wants
of their people;" [Footnote 181] but it must be attributed to the
immediate effects of the so-called Reformation, that spirit of
blind fanaticism which was equalled only by the wholesale
brigandage and all-destroying vandalism of the sainted
evangelicals.

    [Footnote 179: Schlegel, _Philosophy of History_.]

    [Footnote 180: Roscoe, _Life and Pontificate of Leo X_.]

    [Footnote 181: Neander, _General History of the Christian
    Religion and Church_.]

{706}

A kind dispensation of Providence it was, that saved Leo X. the
sight of the harrowing scenes that Europe then presented. He had
already occupied the throne of St. Peter eight years, eight
months, and nineteen days, during all which time he had
faithfully guarded the interests of the church against royal
encroachments, and the liberty of his dominions against foreign
aggression; he had presided over the last seven sessions of the
oecumenical council of Lateran, and conferred on an English
monarch the title of _Defensor fidei;_ and now, in the
forty-seventh year of his age, cruel death takes him from the
affection of his subjects, the love of his cardinals, and the
veneration of men of letters. Sad was the day when it was told
that Leo X. was no more. Artists and humanists dropped a tear for
their friend and benefactor; the sculptor and the painter
commemorated their deceased Maecenas in the virgin marble and on
the glowing canvas, while the historian wrote the annals of his
reign and the poet embalmed his memory in immortal verse. Rome
erected his monument, and posterity, admiring the virtues of the
Christian, reverencing the eminent qualities of the pontiff, and
idolizing the protector of letters and art, has called the age in
which he lived the golden age of Leo the Tenth.

----------

      Translated From The Spanish.

        Little Flowers Of Spain.

          By Fernan Caballero.


  "Humble flowers of religious poetry, and derivations of popular
  expressions and proverbs," is the title given by the authoress
  to the article headed "Cosas (humildes) de España"
  --_Humble Things of Spain_.


If there exists an individual who has read all that we have
written--and the case, though not probable, is nevertheless not
impossible--he must have noticed that our zeal, our labor, and
our specialty is to find out origins and causes, draw inferences
and conclusions, and trace things to their why and wherefore. We
are really apprehensive lest in this branch we may become too
notable.

Our system is the same that is followed nowadays by writers of
history. Let it be understood that we do not meddle with such
weighty subjects, nor venture into profound depths, and that our
employment of the aforesaid modern system is solely in questions
of the humble schools. Our information is all obtained from
popular traditions, romances, and beliefs. The data which it is
our delight to place in relief, all the world has handled as the
Indians did gold before their conquerors gave it value; as future
generations will give value to the things of which we treat when
they lament their loss.

{707}

Our explorations in these rich mines have been rewarded. We have
ascertained that the first tree that God planted was the white
poplar; therefore the white poplar is the most ancient of
trees--the vegetable Adam. We have learned that the serpent went
straight, erect, and proud of his triumph in Paradise, until the
flight into Egypt, when, encountering the Holy Family, he
attempted to bite the child Jesus, and the indignant St. Joseph
prevented him with these words, "Fall, proud one, and never rise
again!" From that good day to this he has crawled. We have
learned, moreover, that snakes and toads are permitted to exist
solely for the purpose of absorbing the poisons of the earth. We
have found out that the evergreen trees are endowed with their
privileges of life and beauty in recompense for having given
shelter and shade to the Mother and Child whenever they stopped
to rest in their flight from the sword of Herod; that the
rosemary enjoys its fragrance and always blossoms on Friday, the
day of Our Lord's Passion, because the Blessed Virgin, when she
washed the little garments of the babe, used to hang them to dry
upon its branches; also, that for this very reason it has the
gift of attracting peace and good-hap to the dwellings that are
perfumed with it on Holy-night. That everybody has sympathy,
affection, and even reverence for the swallows, because
compassionately and with such sweet charity they pulled out the
thorns that were piercing the temples of the divine Martyr. That
the red-owl, which, grieved and appalled, witnessed the cruel
crucifixion of the God-man, has done nothing ever since but
repeat the melancholy cry "Cruz! Cruz!" That the rose of Jericho,
which was white before, owes its purple hue to a drop of the
wounded Saviour's blood that fell into its cup. That on Mount
Calvary, and all along the way of agony, the gentle plants and
fresh herbs wilted and died when our Lord passed by bearing his
cross, and that these places were presently covered with briers.
That the lightning loses its power to hurt in the whole
circumference that is reached by the sound of praying. That at
High Mass on Ascension-day, at the moment of the elevation, the
leaves of the trees incline upon each other, forming crosses, in
token of devotion and reverence. When newborn infants smile, in
dreams or waking, we know that it is to angels, visible only to
them. A murmur in the ears is the noise made by the falling of a
leaf from the tree of life. When silence settles all at once upon
several persons forming a company, it is not, as the wise ones
say, because "the carriage is running upon sand," but because an
angel has passed over them, and the air that is moved by his
wings communicates to their souls the silence of respect, though
their comprehension fails to divine the cause. Likewise, we have
ascertained that the tarantula was a woman extravagantly fond of
the dance, and so inconsiderate that when, on one occasion, she
was dancing, and His Divine Majesty [Footnote 182] passed by, she
did not stop, but continued her diversion with the most frightful
irreverence. For this she was changed into a spider with the
figure of a guitar delineated upon its back, and possessed of a
venom that causes those who are bitten by it to dance and dance
until, fainting and exhausted, they fall down in a swoon.

    [Footnote 182: The Blessed Sacrament.]

In effect, we have learned many other things: some of them we
have already written; the rest we mean to write; that is to say,
"If the rope does not break, all will go on as usual."

{708}

But, among these things, there is one which we are going to
communicate immediately, for fear lest we die of cholera, and it
descend with us into the tomb; for it barely survives at present,
and with it would perish its remembrance.

In times when faith filled hearts to overflowing, offerings and
_ex-votos_ were brought by thousands to the house of God.
Now that we are enlightened, we have other uses for our gold, our
rare objects, and fine arts; for, as the poet says,

  "En el sigh diez y nueve
   Nadie á tener fé se atreve,
   Y no huy que en milagros cred." [Footnote 183]

    [Footnote 183: In the nineteenth century, no one dares to
    have faith and there is no one who believes in miracles.]

It is well--or, better said, it is ill.

The first ostrich eggs procured by the Spaniards, in their
voyages to Africa, were regarded as marvels, and deposited,
either as offerings or _ex-votos_, in the churches, where,
bound and tied with gay ribbons, they hung before the altars and
were looked upon as ornaments of great value. And even now,
before modest altars in humble villages are sometimes seen these
enormous eggs; presenting with their worn and faded decorations
the appearance of porcelain melons. By whom were they brought?
where were they found? who hung them here? are questions that
assault the mind of the beholder, and send his thoughts and fancy
into the vast field of conjectures impossible to verify, but all
sweet, romantic, and holy.

The imagination of the Spanish people is an _instinct_. They
cannot see a material object without attaching to it an ideal.
Out of the fervor of their own heart they made a symbol of this.

The belief adapted to the ostrich egg, hung in front of the
altar, is one that will be sagely qualified by sanctimonious
devotees of literal truth as superstitious and fanatical. We
offer it to the Protestant missionaries who favor us with their
propaganda, as a killing weapon against the benighted and
malignant papists.

It is said that the mother-bird cannot hatch these eggs, which
appear to be of marble, because it is impossible for her to cover
them, and because there is not heat enough in her body to warm
them through; but that she has in her look such fire, kindled by
her great desire to free her offspring, that by keeping her eyes
continuedly and without distraction fixed upon the eggs, the
ardor and concentration of her love penetrates the hard shell and
delivers her little ones. And they hung these eggs before the
places where the holy sacrifice of the mass is offered, to teach
us to keep our eyes fixed upon the altar with equal desire, equal
love, and exclusive attention and devotion. O poets! if you would
fulfil your mission, which is to move the heart, learn less in
palaces, and more from the people who feel and believe.

Among sayings and proverbs that have been accepted everywhere
without having to show their parentage, is the well-known
expression, _Ahi me las den todas:_ May I get them all
there.

One of the creditors of a certain dishonest fellow, that owed all
the world and paid nobody, laid his complaint before the judge,
who sent an alguacil to suggest to the debtor the necessity of
paying at once.

For response to the intimation, the debtor gave the alguacil, who
was a very dignified man, a slap on his face. The latter,
returning to the tribunal, addressed the magistrate thus: "Sir,
when I go to notify an individual on the part of your worship,
whom do I represent?" "Me," answered the judge. "Well, sir,"
proceeded the alguacil, touching his cheek, "to this cheek of
your worship they have given a slap." "May I get them all there,"
replied the judge.

{709}

Here is the etymology of another saying, _Quien no te conozea
te compre:_ Let some one buy you that don't know you. Three
poor students came to a village where there was a fair. "What
shall we do to amuse ourselves?" asked one as they were passing a
garden in which an ass was drawing water from a well. "I have
already hit upon a way," answered another of the three. "Put me
into the machine, and you take the ass to the fair and sell him."
As it was said, so it was done. When his companions had gone, the
student that had remained in the place of the ass stood still.
"Arre!" [Footnote 184] shouted the gardener, who was at work not
far off.

    [Footnote 184: Geho!]

The improvised ass neither started nor shook his bell, and the
gardener mounted to the machine, in which, to his great
consternation, he found his ass changed into a student. "What is
this?" he cried. "My master," said the student, "some ill-natured
witches transformed me into an ass, but I have fulfilled the term
of my enchantment and returned to my original shape."

The poor gardener was disconsolate, but what could be done? He
unharnessed the student, and, bidding him go with God-speed, set
out sorrowfully for the fair to buy another beast. The very first
that presented itself was his own, which had been bought by a
company of gipsies. The moment he cast his eyes upon it, he took
to his heels, exclaiming, "Let some one buy you that don't know
you."

_Yo te cono cí ciruelo_--I knew you when you were a
plum-tree--is a common saying. The people of a certain village
bought a plum-tree of a gardener, for the purpose of having it
converted into an effigy of St. Peter. When the image was
finished and set up in the church, the gardener went to see it,
and, observing the somewhat lavish coloring and gilding of its
drapery, exclaimed:

  "Gloriosisimo San Pedro,
   Yo te cono cí ciruelo,
   Y de tu fruta comi;
   Los misagros que tu hagas
   Que me me los cuelgan á mi!"

  "Most glorious Saint Peter!
   I knew you when you were a plum-tree,
   and ate of your fruit;
   the miracles you do,
   let them hang upon me."

_Ya saco raja_--He has got a share--is often said, and we
trace it to Estremadura, where the live-oak groves are divided
into rajas; _raja_ being the name of an extension yielding
acorns enough to feed a given number of hogs. When the
_rajas_ are public property, they are distributed at a
trifling rent to the poorer householders, who are, as will be
supposed, very anxious to have them. But to obtain one is
difficult, for the _ayuntamientos_, or town councils,
generally give them to their _protégés_ and hangers-on; and,
from this circumstance, "He has got a hog-pasture," has come to
be said of any person that by skill, cunning, audacity, or good
luck succeeds in obtaining an advantage difficult to get, or of
which the getting depends upon some one else.

_El que tiene capa escapa_--He that wears a cloak
escapes--dates from the giving way of the new bridge at Puerto
Santa Maria, under the weight of the great crowd that had
collected upon it. To prevent thefts and disturbances,
Captain-General O'Kelly issued an order to the effect that no
person wearing a cloak should be allowed to cross the bridge. In
consequence of this order, no one wearing a cloak fell into the
river.

{710}

It is usual to indicate that a person is poor by saying, _El
esta á la cuarta pregunta_--He is at the fourth question. This
assertion is derived from the interrogation of witnesses for the
defence in suits when, among other circumstances, that of poverty
is wished to be proved. This extreme being comprehended in the
fourth question, as follows: "Does the witness know, of his own
knowledge, that the party he represents is poor, and possesses
neither landed property nor income; so that he has absolutely no
means of support except the product of his own labor?"

----------

    The Pearl And The Poison.

        From The French.


  Chanced it, where along the strand
      Softly foaming broke the sea,
  Lay an oyster on the sand
      'Mid her neighbors merrily:
  And her shelly doors, ablaze
  With the sapphire's thousand rays,
  She had opened to the sigh
  Of the zephyrs flitting by.
  Fell into her bosom there
      Just a single drop of rain--
      Just a rain-drop dull and plain:
  When, behold! a jewel rare--
  A sudden pearl exceeding fair!

  Chanced it on the heath hard by
      That a viper, lurking dread,
  Uttered then her hissing cry--
      To the zephyr raised her head:
  When upon her dart accurst
  Fell a rain-drop like the first:
  Just a drop of poison more
  To recruit her venom's store.

  With twofold nature are our hearts endued,
  Nor open less to evil than to good:
  Responding kindly to the tiller's care,
  The soil becomes what skilful hands prepare.
  Dear parents, take you heed. If yours the will
      To guard your children's sacred innocence,
      Be timely care and foresight the defence;
          And drop by drop instil
      Into their little spirits thoughts of good,
          To be their daily food.
      If you are wise, through years to come
          A pearl of a child will make you blest:
      If not, you'll cherish in your home
          A very poison to your rest.

-------

{711}

        Foreign Literary Notes.

The testimony of so distinguished an authority as M. E. Littré,
of the French Institute, is now added to that of Digby, Maitland,
Montalembert, and so many others, to show that the middle ages
were not "barbarous." M. Littré, as is well known, is very far
from being a Catholic; but, treating the subject with his great
erudition from a purely historical point of view, he shows, in
his _Etudes sur les Barbares et le Moyen Age_, that, after
the frightful degeneration of the Roman world--a degeneration
aggravated and precipitated by the violent immixtion of barbarous
peoples--the period of the middle ages was an era of renovation
in institutions, in letters, and in morals; a renovation, slow,
it is true, but certain and continuous; a renovation entirely due
to Catholicity, revivifying by powerful and fecund impulsion the
antique foundation formed by pagan society, and augmenting it by
all that Christianity possesses superior to paganism. On this
beneficial and constantly civilizing influence of the church,
which formed the moral unity of a world whose material unity had
disappeared, re-educating people fallen into infancy, rescuing
letters by her schools, clearing the forests by her monks,
founding social and political institutions worthy of the name,
and the like of which the Roman empire had never seen--for the
reason that all its conceptions of man and of liberty were false,
and it could never raise itself to the idea of a spiritual power
that was independent of the lay power--on all these points, so
worthy the attention of the historian, there are, particularly in
the first two chapters, some admirable pages. M. Littré speaks
with admiration of the spread of monachism in the west, and
distinctly recognizes the many great blessings that followed in
its train. He (p. 3) reproaches Gibbon with having ignored the
importance of the religious fact of Christianity. And yet his
"naturalism" has led him astray from the conclusion to which the
invincible logic of his own presentation of facts must bring him.

----

A valuable addition to biblical criticism is, unquestionably, the
lately published _Saint Paul's Epistle to the Philippians_.
A revised text, with introduction, notes, and dissertations. By
J. B. Lightfoot, D.D., Hulsean Professor of Divinity, and Fellow
of Trinity College, Cambridge. London, Macmillan. 8vo, 337 pp.
This book forms the second volume of an exegetical work that is
to embrace all the epistles of St. Paul. Galatians has already
been published. The present volume is particularly valuable for
its introduction of the results of the latest archeological and
historical research. The commentaries on Seneca and the doctrines
of the Stoics are interesting, as also the remarks on the [Greek
text] in verse 13 of first chapter.

----

A distinguished priest of the Oratory, H. de Valroger, has
recently published an able and learned disquisition on biblical
chronology. He terminates it thus: "No more than the Bible has
the church laid down a dogmatic system of precise dates strictly
connected and confining the primitive history of the world and of
man within narrow and inflexible limits. No more than the Bible
does the church deprive astronomers, geologists, paleontologists,
archaeologists, or chronologists of the liberty of ascertaining
scientifically the period of time elapsed since the creation of
the world and of man, or since the deluge, which terminated the
first of the reign of humanity."

----

In the Foreign Literary Notes of our number for June, we noticed
an important publication by the Abbé Lamy on the Council of
Seleuciae, a translation from one of the numerous productions of
early Syrian literature, so rich in works relative to the church,
its history, its discipline, and its dogmas. And, in this
connection, it may be proper here to note a typographical
transposition seriously interfering with a correct reading of the
notice in question, namely, the six paragraphs of the first
column of p. 432 that precede "Concilium Seleuciae et
Ctesiphonti," etc., should follow the second paragraph on the
second column of the same page.

{712}

This work of the Abbé Lamy is one out of many recent publications
showing the great attention lately given to the monuments of
early Syrian literature by theologians of Europe. Especially in
Germany is the activity great in this new field. It has long been
known that a serious chronological break existed in this
literature, covering a period of nearly three hundred years,
stretching from the translation of the Scriptures to the
classical period of Syrian patristic literature.

Only of late years has this void been partially filled by the
important work of Cureton, (W.,) entitled, _Ancient Syriac
Documents relative to the earliest Establishment of Christianity
in Edessa_. With a preface by W. Wright. London: Williams &
Norgate. 1864. This work of Cureton was preceded by his
_Spicilegium Syriacum_, containing remains of Bardesan,
Meliton, Ambrose, and Mara bar Serapion. London: Francis &
Rivington. 1855.

In connection with these may be mentioned Cardinal Wiseman's
_Horae Syriacae_, Rome, 1828; Pohlmann, _S. Ephraemi Syri
Commentariorum in S. Scripturum;_ Lamy, _Diss. de Syrorum
fide et disciplina in re eucharistica; S. Ephraemi Syri Rabulae,
Balaei aliorumque opera selecta_. Oxford, Clarendon. 1865.

----

An interesting historical controversy has for some time been
going on between M. Cretineau Joly, of Paris, and the Rev. Father
Theiner, Prefect of the Archives of the Vatican, concerning the
authenticity of the memoirs of Cardinal Consalvi, published by M.
Cretineau Joly, in 1864. Father Theiner, in his History of the
Concordat, throws serious doubts upon the genuineness of these
memoirs. On the other hand, M. Joly, in his lately published
_Bonaparte, the Concordat of 1801, and the Cardinal
Consalvti_, defends his position, and declares that he
translated with the most conscientious exactitude the memoirs in
question, "such as they were confided to me at Rome, such as I
now possess them in MSS. at Paris, such as any one is free to
test by examination."

----

_Logicae, Metaphysicae, Ethicae Institutiones quas tradebat
Franciscus Battaglinius, Sacerdos, Philosophiae Lector_.
Bologna, typogr. Felsinea. 1869. 1 vol. in 8vo, 712 pp. This work
is a collection of the lectures delivered at the Seminary of
Bologna, by Professor Battaglini. The spirit of the learned
professor's philosophy is, as he himself states, _secundum divi
Thomae doctrinas_. No slight task, certainly, to bring the
"Angelic Doctor" within the grasp of the young theological
student.

The work has attracted the attention of many of the French
clergy, and is highly approved by them.

----

There appears to be serious danger that the French people are in
a way soon to know all about the Bible. Besides the numerous
copies of the sacred Scriptures already in existence in France,
the publisher Lethielleux now has in press the first volume of a
new edition of the entire Bible, which will give the Latin text
of the Vulgate, with the French translation, and a full body of
commentaries--theological, moral, philological, and historical,
edited so as to include the results of the best works in France,
Italy, Germany, and elsewhere, with a special introduction for
each book, by the Abbé Drach, D.D., and the Abbé Bayle, Professor
of the Faculty of Aix.

----

The mantle of Mai and of Mezzofanti has fallen upon Cardinal
Pitra, recently appointed to the important position of librarian
of the Vatican. The office could not be filled by one more
erudite and worthy of it in every respect, and his holiness could
hardly have made a better choice. Cardinal Pitra is well known as
the author of several learned works in theological and canonical
science. Like a true Benedictine, his life has been devoted to
study and scientific

{713}

A succession of articles lately given in the _Revue des Deux
Mondes_, by M. d'Haussonville, [Footnote 185] has thrown fresh
light on the long and interesting struggle between Pope Pius VII.
and Napoleon; between moral and physical force, between the
inspiration of heaven and the inspiration of the world. M.
d'Haussonville, by the publication of numerous documents until
now unpublished, and by the letters and despatches of Napoleon
the First, lately given to the world by the present imperial
government, has added a new interest to the sad story of the
captivity of the holy father, and the negotiations at Savona.

    [Footnote 185: Lately elected a member of the French
    Academy.]

The dignity, firmness, and elevated piety of the noble pontiff
stand out in more striking relief from their necessary comparison
with the rude and merciless tyranny of his oppressor, and have
wrung the strongest expression of admiration from sources the
most unexpected. In an article entitled, "The Papacy and the
French Empire," the _Edinburgh Review_ (October, 1868) says:

  "The meek resistance of Pius VII. to the overwhelming force
  which had crushed every independent power on the continent of
  Europe, was therefore a protest worthy of the sacred character
  of the head of the Latin Church in favor of the dignity and
  liberty of man; and, by the justice of Heaven, the victim
  survived the conqueror, the feeble endured, the mighty one
  perished."

----

Great activity prevails throughout Europe in the search for and
publication of documents, long buried in libraries and private
collections of MSS., which are calculated to throw light upon the
history and workings of the so-called Reformation. And this
activity is probably greatest in Switzerland, where every canton,
separately or with an adjoining canton, has its historical
society in active and industrious operation. German and French,
Catholic and Protestant, vie with each other in their
praiseworthy efforts to rescue from decay and ruin old
parchments, chronicles, protocols, and letters, that are
calculated to throw any light on the events of past centuries. In
this direction works the Protestant Berner in the _Helvetia
Sacra_, and the _Pius Verein_ promises great results in a
collection of which the first volume has lately appeared,
entitled, _Archiv für die Schweizerische
Reformnationsgeschichte. Herausgegeben auf Veranstaltung des
Schweizerischen Piusvereins_. Erster Band. Solothurn. 8vo, 856
pp. The central committee of this society consists of Count
Scherer Beccard, of Lucerne, and Prebendary Fiala and Professor
Barmwart, both of Solothurn. The volume announced contains
chronicles, monographs, and extracts from the archives of
Lucerne, the mere enumeration of which would be too much for our
space.

----

The old Benedictine abbey of La Cava, in Italy, has long been
known to possess in its archives a mass of documents and MSS.
said to contain treasures of diplomatic and archaeological
erudition. They cover the period from Pepin le Bref to Charles V.
Father Morcaldi, one of the most distinguished savants of Italy,
has undertaken their classification and publication. They will
fill, when printed, eight or ten folio volumes, and require from
five to seven years for publication.

----

A recent number of the _Literarischer Handweiser_, edited at
Münster by Dr. Franz Hülskamp and Dr. Herrmann Rump, contains an
article on Catholic journalism in the United States. Here is an
extract:

  "Since the cessation of the well-known Quarterly, edited by Dr.
  Brownson, American Catholics possess but one really first-class
  periodical, namely, _The Catholic World_, founded some
  four years since, and published at New York, in handsomely
  printed monthly numbers. This monthly, founded by Father
  Hecker, of the Congregation of the Paulists, a zealous convert,
  distinguished for his effective dialectic and polemic ability,
  is one of the most welcome manifestations in the field of North
  American periodical literature. Already, during the short
  period of its existence, it has gained numberless friends, and
  bears favorable comparison with the best productions of the
  European press. The influence and writings of Father Hecker and
  his collaborators are sufficient warrant that _The Catholic
  World_ has an important future before it in the field of
  defence and polemics, and that it will most probably be for
  many the guide to the bosom of the church."

----

{714}

Among new English books announced is _Mary, Queen of Scots, and
her Accusers; embracing a Narrative of Events from the Death of
James V., in 1552, until the close of the Conference at
Westminster, in 1569_. By John Hosack, Barrister in Law. The
work is to contain the "Book of Articles" produced against Queen
Mary at Westminster, which, it is said, has never hitherto been
printed, and will be published by Blackwood & Sons, Edinburgh.

If this work be in Mary's defence, it is not the first one--to
their credit be it said--produced by the Protestants of Scotland.
We confess to some surprise that some one of the many English
Catholic writers, with their peculiar facilities for reference to
authorities, have not taken up and exposed the scandalous malice
of Mr. Froude's attack on the memory of the unfortunate queen.
His desperate attempt to advocate the genuineness of the silver
casket letters, bold and ingenious though it be, is nevertheless
a failure, and its unfairness and sophistry should be exposed.

----------

         New Publications.

  Life Of Mother Margaret Mary Hallahan, O.S.D.,
  Foundress of the English Congregation of St. Catherine of
  Sienna, of the Third Order of St. Dominic.
  By her religious children.
  With a preface by the Right Rev. Dr. Ullathorne.
  New York: The Catholic Publication House,
  126 Nassau street. 1869.

All who are interested in the extraordinary, not to say
miraculous, revival of the Catholic faith in English-speaking
countries, will hail with delight the appearance of this book. It
is a simple and evidently a truthful narrative of the life of one
of those providential personages who, in all great movements,
stand out as beacon lights to mark their progress. Margaret Mary
Hallahan was born in London in 1802, of Irish parents, who had
fallen from a respectable position in life to honorable poverty.
She was their only child, and became a complete orphan at the age
of nine years. Her education had been provided for, as well as
circumstances would permit, by her kind-hearted father, in the
schools established in London by the Abbé Carron, a refugee
priest of the French revolution. Slender, indeed, were the
prospects of a poor Catholic orphan girl in the capital of a
country so full of bigotry as was England in 1811. Having spent a
short time in the orphan asylum at Somerstown, she was placed
under the care of a Madame Caulier, whose harsh discipline was
hardly compensated by occasional acts of kindness. In her
twentieth year, she was introduced by this lady to the family of
Doctor Morgan, once physician to George III. Being then an
invalid, he was attended by Margaret during the last six months
of his life; and after his death she became the bosom friend of
his daughter, Mrs. Thompson, whom she served, rather as a sister
than as a domestic, for twenty years. Five years of this time
were spent in England and fifteen in Belgium. In the latter
country she became a member of the Third Order of St. Dominic, on
the feast of St. Catherine of Sienna, in the year 1835.

On her return to England, in 1842, she took charge of the
Catholic schools of Coventry, where Father Ullathorne, of the
Benedictine order, was pastor. Her days were spent in the
education of young children, and her evenings in the instruction,
religious and secular, of the poor factory girls of the place.
{715}
In a short time, there was a visible improvement in the Catholic
community of Coventry; and Sister Margaret had the happiness of
beholding a religious procession, the first of the kind seen in
England since the change of religion, at the head of which was
borne her own image of the Blessed Virgin, the only treasure she
had carried with her from Belgium. A few pious companions, having
united with Sister Margaret in the performance of good works, she
and three others, by the advice of Father Ullathorne, and with
the authorization of the general of the Dominican order, received
the habit of the Third Order of St. Dominic, with a view to
living in community, on the 11th of June, 1844. On the 8th of
December, 1845, they made their religious profession. Soon after
this, Father Ullathorne was appointed by the holy see vicar
apostolic of the western district; and, having established his
residence at Bristol, it was deemed advisable for the young
community, of which he was the father and protector, to remove to
Clifton, near his episcopal city. This was in 1848; and when, in
1850, the Catholic hierarchy was reestablished in England, Bishop
Ullathorne, now transferred to Birmingham, founded the second
convent of the Dominican Sisters at Stow. This became the general
novitiate of the order in England, and here were established by
Mother Margaret her boarding and free schools, her orphanage, and
hospital for incurables. In 1858, she went to Rome to obtain of
the holy see the canonical erection of her community into a
congregation governed by a provincial prioress. Her request was
granted by a brief given in 1859, by which she was named
provincial prioress, which office she retained until her death,
in 1868. Here we may be allowed to quote the words of her friend,
Bishop Ullathorne, in his preface to her life:

  "And now behold this lonely and poor woman, made ripe in
  spiritual wisdom and in human experience, returning, a stranger
  and unknown, to the land of her birth. Yet God has already
  prepared a way for her, and she begins a spiritual work which
  slowly rises under her hands, from humble beginnings, into the
  highest character, and surrounds itself with numerous
  institutions of mercy and charity. Foundress of a congregation
  of the ancient Dominican order, she trained a hundred religious
  women, founded five convents, built three churches, established
  a hospital for incurables, three orphanages, schools for all
  classes, including a number for the poor; and, what is more,
  left her own spirit in its full vigor to animate her children,
  whose work is only in its commencement."

The history of her life will amply repay perusal. It is a
continual exemplification of her great maxim, _All for God_.
The most prominent feature in her administration of the affairs
of her order was, that she never allowed external employments,
undertaken for the benefit of her neighbor, to encroach in the
least upon the hours assigned for prayer and meditation. Her zeal
in decorating altars, and in providing all things necessary for
the decency of divine worship, knew no bounds.

We heartily recommend the life of Mother Margaret Mary to all our
readers.

----

  Die Jenseitige Welt.
  Eine Schrift Über Fegefeuer,
  Hölle Und Himmel.
  Von P. Leo Keel, Capitular des
  Stiftes Maria Einsiedeln.
  Einsiedeln, New York,
  and Cincinnati: Benziger. 1869.

The first two books of this work are out, and we anxiously expect
the third, on Heaven, a topic on which it is very difficult to
write anything worth reading, and on which very little has been
written in our modern languages. German books are generally
better than others, and a work which merits the praise of German
critics is sure to be solid. The present work is highly esteemed
in Germany, and we have examined the part which treats of
purgatory sufficiently to convince us that the author has written
something far superior in learning, and vigor of thought, to the
ordinary treatises on religious doctrines which are to be met
with. To those clergymen who are Germans, or who read the
language, we can recommend this book as well worth its price. It
is printed in the neatest and most attractive style.

{716}

  Warwick;
  or, the Lost Nationalities of America: A Novel.
  By Mansfield Tracy Walworth.
  New York: Carleton. 1869.

This novel is a remarkable production, exhibiting vivid
imagination, extensive and curious research, descriptive power of
a high order, chivalrous sentiments, and a lofty moral ideal, in
the author. Its principal scenes, events, and characters belong
to an ideal world entirely beyond the possibilities of real and
actual life, with an intermingling of some minor sketches drawn
from nature which show the author's power to depict the real if
he pleases to do so. It seems to us that the serious arguments
which are interspersed through the book, and the curious
speculations respecting the original inhabitants of America,
which are not without at least historical and scientific
plausibility, would be presented with far greater effect if they
were detached from a plot which is too absorbing to leave the
mind leisure to give them due attention. The moral effect
intended to be produced by the story itself would be also greater
if the characters were more real, the events more natural and
probable, and the scenes drawn more from real life. The great
praise, so seldom deserved, must be given to the author, that he
inculcates high moral and religious principles in an eloquent and
attractive manner, and will therefore undoubtedly exercise a
refining and elevating influence over the mind of many a young
reader who would reject graver lessons. Highly-wrought works of
fiction have become a necessity to a large class of readers, and
here is one which will give their imagination a wild ride on a
racer over a safe road. The young and accomplished author of
_Warwick_, will, we trust, follow up his literary career,
and produce other and maturer fruits of his genius, which will
add more renown to the illustrious name he bears.

----

   The Life Of John Banim, the Irish novelist,
   author of _Damon and Pythias_, etc., and one of the
   writers of _Tales by the O'Hara Family_.
   With extracts from his correspondence, general and literary.
   By Patrick Joseph Murray.
   Also selections from his poems.
   New York: D. & J. Sadlier & Co. 1869.

   The Ghost-hunter And His Family.
   By the O'Hara Family.
   New York: D. & J. Sadlier& Co. 1869.

John Banim was born in the city of Kilkenny, on the 3d day of
April, 1798. His parents were in humble life, but, through
industry and economy, were enabled to bestow upon their son the
inestimable advantage of a good literary education, while their
precepts and example united to secure for him a thorough
Christian training. His genius for novel writing manifested
itself at an early age. While in his sixth year, his ready fancy
gave birth to a story of no little merit.

  "He was not sufficiently tall to write conveniently at a table,
  even when seated, and having placed the paper upon his bedroom
  floor, he lay down beside it and commenced the construction of
  his plot. During three months he devoted nearly all his hours
  of play to the completion of his task; and when at length he
  had concluded, the writing was so execrable that he alone could
  decipher it. In this dilemma he obtained the assistance of his
  brother Michael, and of a school-fellow; they acted as
  amanuenses, relieving each other when weary of writing from
  John's dictation. When the tale was fully transcribed, it was
  stitched in a blue cover, and John determined that it should be
  printed. But here the important question of expense arose to
  mind, and, after long deliberation, the youthful author thought
  of resorting to a subscription publication. Accordingly the
  manuscript was shown to several of his father's friends, and,
  in the course of a week, the subscribers amounted to thirty, at
  a payment of one shilling each. Disappointment was again the
  lot of our little genius; for in all Kilkenny he could not
  induce a printer to undertake the issuing of his story. This
  was a heavy blow to his hopes; but honorable even as a child,
  he no sooner found that he could not publish the tale than he
  waited upon his subscribers for the purpose of restoring to
  them their shillings.
{717}
  All received him kindly and refused the money, telling him that
  they were quite satisfied with reading the manuscript."

In this little incident of his boyhood, the salient features of
the character of John Banim, the man and the author, are easily
discernible. His extreme facility of conception, his hurrying
energy of execution, his confidence in the merits of his
productions, his indomitable persistence in commanding public
attention, his patience and courage under defeat and
disappointment, and his scrupulous honesty of purpose, which
controlled alike his writings and his business relations, are all
contained and foreshadowed in the circumstances of this almost
infantile enterprise. Maturer years darkened the shadows,
deepened the lines, heightened the lights of Banim's character;
but such as he was, when he ran home from his school-mates in
their hours of play, "to see that 'Farrell the Robber' had not
stolen his mother," such also was he, till, in his last hours, he
begged of his brother,

  "That I would stand by while his grave was digging, and that,
  when his body was lowered to its last resting place, I should
  be certain the side of his coffin was in close contact with
  that of his beloved parent."

Of the literary life and achievements of Banim, of his privations
and discouragements, of his physical sufferings, and his
premature decay and death, the pages of Mr. Murray's book contain
a tolerably full description. It is to be regretted, however,
that the task did not fall into the hands of Michael Banim, his
brother and co-laborer in the O'Hara Tales. The work before us is
too evidently the accomplishment of "an outsider"--of one who
draws his information from letters, from books, from the accounts
and descriptions of others, and not of one who "knew his man,"
and delineates the results of his own personal sight and hearing.
John Banim was a man whose biographer should have been his most
intimate and dearest friend, whose choicest qualities those who
knew him most thoroughly could alone adequately value, and whom a
distant public can be taught fully to appreciate only by a writer
who himself has learned the lesson through long and close
association.

Of the works of Banim, (one of the best of which we have also
just received,) it is needless for us to make particular mention.
They are worthy to be classed among the standard fictions of the
century, whether for their rhetorical or dramatic power, and are
almost wholly free from the loose sensationalism which disgraces
the pages of so many modern tales. We have found them to
inculcate virtue and industry, to do honor to purity and
devotion, to abound in filial affection and religious fidelity to
duty; and there is no half-heartedness in our wish that they, and
such as they, may supplant, at least among Catholic readers, the
noisome volumes which come swarming faster and faster both from
the American and English press.

----

  Problematic Characters: A Novel.
  By Freidrich Spielhagen.
  New York: Leypoldt & Holt. 1869.

It seems unnecessary, to say the least, to translate from the
German pictures of life like those contained in this romance,
since there are innumerable English and American novels, filled
with the same sensuous details, and teeming with shameless
descriptions of illicit love. In all the family life introduced
to our notice in the course of this thick volume, the only
married pairs that are described as living comfortably together
are objects of ridicule, while men who make love to their
neighbors' wives, and the married women who respond to these
advances, are made to appear exceedingly interesting and lovely,
and their wicked words and deeds justified on the ground, so
popular in these days, _incompatibility_ in the conjugal
relations.

As might be expected from such immoral teaching, utter infidelity
follows in its wake.

{718}

Responsibility to God or man is ignored throughout these pages,
though much is said about the great eternal laws of nature, which
seems to mean, according to this author, unbelief in the God of
revelation; since the only persons who profess to have any faith
in the life beyond are proved arrant hypocrites, and excite only
our disgust by their assumed piety.

Such reading should be condemned without qualification, although
the style may be, as in this volume, graceful and polished, the
language vigorous, often piquant, the descriptions of natural
beauties glowing with light and warmth, social questions
discussed with equanimity and calmness--but the trail of the
serpent is over them all. We unhesitatingly pronounce this a
dangerous book--not _problematically_, only, but positively
bad reading.

----

  Walter Savage Landor. A Biography.
  By John Forster.
  8vo, pp. 693.
  Boston: Fields, Osgood & Co.

Mr. Forster has led us to expect so much from him, by his
excellent biography of Goldsmith and other works, that we are not
only disappointed but a great deal surprised by the defects of
the present bulky volume. Landor's life was a tempting theme to
one who knew it so well as Mr. Forster. Stretching far beyond the
ordinary limit of human longevity, crowded not perhaps with very
stirring incidents, yet with figures of deep historical and
literary interest, and curious for its extraordinary
manifestations of a strong character, it was a subject of which
an accomplished writer might have made one of the best
biographies in the language. Mr. Forster has committed a grave
fault, however, in being too diffuse, and, valuable as his book
must be to the student of Landor's history and times, it
certainly cannot be called very interesting. What with the
prolixity of the narrative, and the prolonged summaries and
analyses of Landor's writings, the reader is too often tempted to
close the book from utter weariness. Yet there is a remarkable
attraction in the life of that violent, wrongheaded, wonderful
old man of genius, who left so many enthusiastic friends, though,
it has been truly said, nobody could possibly live with him, and
who has enriched English literature with poetry worthy of the
classic ages of Greece, and prose among the purest and most
eloquent in the language, though there is probably no other
author of equal pretensions of whom the mass of readers are so
completely ignorant. For this reason, Mr. Forster's biography,
cumbrous as it is, deserves an extensive circulation, and it
contains so much merit, that we hope he may be induced to bring
it into better shape.

----

  Wandering Recollections Of A Somewhat Busy Life:
  An Autobiography.
  By John Neal.
  Boston: Roberts Brothers. 1869.

If the Messrs. Roberts had desired to issue a book "_for the
season_," they could hardly have selected one more appropriate
than this pleasant autobiography of John Neal. Like the life of
its author and subject, it is full of variety, "everything by
starts, and nothing long," and runs as naturally from the piling
up of bricks and mortar in the resurrection of Portland from the
ashes of 1866, to the traditions and incidents of two centuries
ago, as Mr. Neal himself seemed to slip from shop-keeping into
authorship, and from peddling into law.

It is a book that one can take up anywhere, and find somewhat of
amusement and instruction; and can lay down anywhere without
fearing to lose the train of thought or the thread of narrative.
There is method enough in it to entitle it to be called an
autobiography; there is also a complete justification of the
title which its author has appropriated to it. It is the pleasant
chat of an old man of seventy-three, over events and personages
into contact with whom extensive travel and a long life have
brought him; a "_potpourri_" of the memories and
observations of two continents and of over three-score years. Its
publishers have done for it in print and paper what the matter
and the manner of the work deserved; and if it finds its way into
the portmanteau of the summer tourists whether by mountain-side
or sea-side, it will hardly fail to be read, and so put to good
use otherwise perhaps wasted hours.

----

{719}

  Sogarth Aroon; Or, The Irish Priest.
  A Lecture. By M. O'Connor, S.J.
  Baltimore: Murphy & Co. 1869.

The author of this lecture was once the bishop of Pittsburg, a
prelate hardly second to any member of the American hierarchy in
learning and all the highest qualities of a bishop; and, as all
know, he resigned his dignity to become a simple Father in the
Society of Jesus, where, in spite of his broken health, he has
ever since been zealously laboring for the salvation of souls.
Father O'Connor has always been remarkable for his intense
devotion to his native country and to the best interests of
Irishmen. More than once, his learned and powerful pen and voice
have been employed in their cause. In this lecture he has once
again given a just and glowing tribute to the Irish priesthood.
There are some, both here and in Ireland, who are fearing lest
the tie which has bound the Irish people to their priests should
be weakened by the efforts of demagogues seeking political
influence, and by other causes of like nature. We trust this may
never be the case; but it behooves all who love the Irish people
truly to imitate Father O'Connor, and do everything in their
power to strengthen this tie, and keep alive the spirit of
Catholic faith in the bosoms of the children of the Martyr Church
of Ireland. We recommend this lecture to general circulation both
here and in Ireland, as an antidote to the poison which some
traitors to their race and their religion are seeking to
disseminate.

----

  Young Christian's Library, containing the lives of more than
  eighty eminent saints and servants of God.
  12 vols.
  Philadelphia: Henry McGrath. 1869.

This miniature library should be found in every Catholic
household. While necessarily abbreviated, "The Lives" it contains
are by no means mutilated condensations, and can be read, not
alone with much spiritual benefit, but with real pleasure, in so
admirable a manner has the editor performed his allotted task.
Hence, although specially designed for youth, we have no
hesitation in recommending it to persons advanced in years as an
excellent substitute for the Rev. Alban Butler's more elaborate
work, from which they are severally abridged. The series is very
beautifully got up, and reflects great credit on the taste and
liberality of the publisher.

----

  Appleton's Annual Cyclopedia For 1868.

This well-known annual sustains its reputation as a valuable
repertory of contemporaneous history. One great merit it has, is
the careful manner in which authentic documents are reproduced
_in extenso_. In regard to Catholic matters, it is, as
usual, guardedly respectful, evidently intending to be impartial
to every body. This is, of course, attempting the impossible, and
it is easy to see which way the drift and current of the work do
run. We say this in order that the younger and more inexperienced
Catholic students may understand that works of this kind,
proceeding from non-Catholic sources, are only to be used as
lexicons and books of reference, but never to be trusted as
guides or authorities for forming their opinions.

----

  The Habermeister.
  Translated from the German of H. Schmid.
  New York: Leypoldt & Holt.
  Price, $1.50.

In this novel we have a vivid picture of German peasant life. The
plot rests upon the assumption of unlawful authority, in the name
of an ancient custom, the necessity of which has long since
disappeared; and the catastrophe is brought about by the use made
of it by infamous persons. The characters are well delineated.
The rag-picker's ride and the grave scene will be found to
exhibit to advantage the talents of an author whose greatest
success lies in his description of men. The denouement is
satisfactory, although brought about by slightly distorting the
truth in regard to the convent reception-room. But the changes in
the butcher's character were impossible, if we regard terror as
the cause, for terror brings only degradation.

----

{720}

  The Irish Brigade, And Its Campaigns:
  with some account of the Corcoran
  Legion, and sketches of the principal officers.
  By Capt. D. P. Conyngham, A.D.C.
  Boston: Patrick Donahoe. Pp. 559. 1869.

In this, the second edition of Captain Conyngham's well-known
work, the publisher has left nothing to be desired, but has given
us a book which, with its clear type, good paper, handsome and
substantial binding, will compare not unfavorably with any recent
issue of the press.

----

THE CATHOLIC PUBLICATION SOCIETY will have ready, in a few days,
a new edition of _St. Liguori's Way of Salvation_, and a new
edition of the Douay Bible, 12mo, printed on fine paper. Also an
8vo edition, on superfine paper, illustrated.

----

THE CATHOLIC PUBLICATION SOCIETY is now printing a cheap edition
of Challoner's _Catholic Christian Instructed_, 24mo, to be
done up in strong paper covers, and sold at 20 cents per copy, or
_ten dollars_ for _one hundred copies_. This will
enable clergymen and others to distribute this valuable book
among non-Catholics. The Society will also print a cheap 12mo
edition (large type) of the some book, which will be sold at a
low price. At the same time, cheap editions will be issued of
_The Poor Man's Catechism_, (two editions,) _Poor Man's
Controversy_, Bossuet's _Exposition_. Gallitzin's
_Defence of Catholic Principles_, and Gallitzin's _Letters
on the Bible_. Also cheap editions, bound, of _The Following
of Christ_ are in press. These, with several other new
editions of valuable books, will be printed during the fall. The
new edition of Bishop Bayley's _History of the Church on New
York Island_ will be enriched by several new notes, and
portraits on steel of Bishops Concannon, Connolly, Dubois, and
Archbishop Hughes.

----

Messrs. John Murphy & Co.,
Baltimore, will soon publish _The Life of the Very Rev.
Frederick W. Faber, D.D._

Mr. Patrick Donahoe,
Boston, has in press a _Life of Christopher Columbus_,
translated from the French.

D. & J. Sadlier & Co.
are preparing for publication _Ten Working Designs for Catholic
Churches_. The work is highly recommended by several
archbishops and bishops.

----

         Books Received.

From Leypoldt & Holt, New York:
  Stretton. A Novel.
  By Henry Kingsley.
  With illustrations. Pp. 250. 1869.

From Lee & Shepard, Boston:
  Credo; an American Woman in Europe.
  Patty Gray's Journey from Boston to Baltimore.

From Benziger Bros., New York and Cincinnati:
  Cantarium Romanum.
  Pars Prima.
  Ordinariun Missae.

----------

{721}

           The Catholic World.

     Vol. IX., No. 54. September, 1869.

----------

	      Daybreak.

             Chapter XV.

     "The Coming Of The Messenger."


All through that terrible day, the two staid by Mr. Granger's
bedside, holding his hands, cooling his fevered face, and
watching for a sign of consciousness that came not. At evening
there was a struggle, short but sharp, and before they had
breathed forth the breath they caught as he started up, the soul
had broken loose, and a lifeless form sank back upon the pillow.

Do they listen to us when they are gone? Could he, in the first
surprise of sudden freedom, hear the cry, like that of a bereaved
Lear, that sought to follow him, "Oh! stay a little!" or the
weeping testimony of the other, "There stopped the noblest,
kindest heart that ever beat"?

But, listen though he might, from one he heard no word of
mourning or appeal after that. Since he was happy, and had no
longer any need of her, and since she had done all in her power
to do for him, she could now remember herself. That his
humiliating offer of an empty hand had been kindly meant, did not
lessen her resentment, but rather increased it. However confident
he had been that his interpretation of her perfectly frank
conduct was the true one, he should never have allowed her to
know it, she said. Her heart seemed hardened toward him, and all
her friendship dead. "How I have wasted myself!" was the bitter
comment with which she turned away from taking her last look at
him.

More than once, in the first days of their loss, that fiery anger
of an insulted heart broke forth. On their way home, as she sat
on the steamer-deck at night, slowly touching bead after bead of
her rosary, not praying, but waiting for a prayerful feeling that
might come, there came, instead, a recollection of the year
before. It rose and painted itself, like a picture, between her
and the wide, cool shade and sparkle of midnight sea and sky.
There was the home parlor, the window where she sat that day
after her retreat was over, so happy, half with heaven and half
with earth, the curtain fanning her, the vines swinging in and
out in the light breeze. She saw Mr. Granger come to her side and
drop a rosary into her hands, saw the silver glitter of his
pretty gift, and heard the words that accompanied it, "And
indeed, it should have been of gold, had not Jupiter been so
poor."

{722}

The words caught a new meaning as she recollected them.

"If not gold, then nothing!" she exclaimed; and, leaning over the
rail, flung his gift as far as she could fling it out over the
water.

The waning moonlight ran around the frosted chain and pearl
beads, as if some spirit hand had swiftly told every Pater and
Ave of them in expiation of that rash act. Then the waters caught
them, and they slipped twinkling down through the green deeps.

Margaret left the deck, and went down to where Mr. Lewis walked
to and fro, keeping his mournful watch. His face was pale, and
his eyes heavy. He looked perfectly grief stricken.

"What is the matter?" he asked. "Has any one spoken to you?"

"No; but I have been thinking." She leaned on his arm, and looked
down upon the casket at their feet. "That man thought that I
wanted him to marry me. Is it only a wicked pride, I wonder, that
rises up in revolt when I remember it? Should not there be a
better name? I could not be angry then, because he was dying; and
I forgot it till the next night, after all was over, when I went
in to see him. I was full of grief then, and had some silly
notion, just like me! of telling him, and that he would hear. The
wind had blown the hair over his forehead, and just as I started
to put it back, I recollected, and caught my hand away and left
him. I had nothing to say to him then, nor since. What did he
want to kill my friendship so for? His memory would have been
sweet to me.

It is poisoned." "Well," Mr. Lewis said, with a sort of despair,
"women are queer beings, and you are ultra womanish. One day you
will risk your life for a man, and the next you will look with
scorn upon him in his coffin. A better name than pride, do you
say? I call it the most infernal kind of pride. Where is your
gratitude, girl, toward the man who never had any but a kind word
and thought for you? He arranged everything for you, that first
night, just as much as he did for Dora, and made me promise that
you should never want for a friend while I live. You ought to
humble yourself, Margaret, and beg his pardon."

"Do you think so?" she asked faintly. "I hope that you are right.
I would rather blame myself than him."

"Of course I think so!" he answered indignantly. "Did he ever
give you one unkind look, even? Did he ever prefer any one else
before you? Did he ever allow any one to speak against you in his
presence? I never, before nor since, saw him take fire as he did
once when some one criticised you to him."

"Did he? Did he?" exclaimed Margaret, kneeling by the casket, and
laying her cheek to the cold wood. "Ah! that was indeed
friendship!"

In that softened mood she reached home.

When death, in visiting a household, is unaccompanied by sordid
cares, the lost one being necessary to our hearts alone; when the
living have no remorse for the past and no terror for the future
of their friend; when the silent face is peaceful; and when the
earth that opens to receive it is warm and full of life, like the
bosom of a mother where a sleeping child hides its face--then
death is more beautiful than life.

{723}

Thus this celestial visitant came to the Granger household; and
if an angel had alighted visibly in their midst, and folded his
white wings to tarry there a day, the presence could not have
been more sacred or more sweet. Every sign of gloom was banished.
The light was no more shut out than it always was in summer; all
the rooms were perfumed with flowers; and the master of the house
was not left alone, but lay at the front end of the long parlor
suite, in full sight of the family as they came and went.

Among the many callers who came that day was the Rev. Dr.
Kenneth, the old minister with whom we have seen Mr. Southard
taking theological counsel. This gentleman listened with
astonishment and indignation while Mrs. Lewis told him that Mr.
Granger had died a Catholic, and would have a requiem mass the
next morning.

"He must have been unduly influenced, madam!" said the minister
excitedly. "Mr. Granger would never have taken such a step of
himself. It is impossible!"

Somewhat embarrassed, Mrs. Lewis drew back, and disclosed Miss
Hamilton sitting in the shadow behind her, and, at the first word
of reply, gladly left the room, having no mind to stand between
two such fires, though the doctor's opponent looked too pale and
quiet to be very dangerous.

"With God all things are possible, Dr. Kenneth," was what
Margaret said. He regarded her sternly; yet after a moment
softened at sight of the utter mournfulness of her face.

"O child of many prayers!" he exclaimed, "whither have you
wandered?"

"Please don't!" she said. "I can not bear anything; and we don't
want any harsh words while he is here."

The doctor hesitated, and turned to go; but she stopped him.

"While I saw you standing out there and looking at him, I
remembered how often you used to come to my grandfather's, and
how you petted me when I was a little girl. One day I was trying
to carry you the large Bible, and I fell with it. Grandfather
scolded me; but you patted my head when you saw that I was on the
point of crying, and said that the Highest and the Holiest fell,
not once only, but thrice, under his burden. And you pulled my
curls, and said, laughing, that if strength dwelt in length of
locks, then I ought to be able to carry not only the Bible, but
the house. What makes the difference now? Are you harder? or am I
in less need of charity?"

"You have your friends," he said coldly, "those for whom you left
us."

"Not so," she replied. "I have those in this house; but in the
church I had only him out there. My church, here, at least, does
not receive converts as yours does. I suppose it must be because
they know that we are only coming home to our own Father's house,
and they think it would be presumptuous in them to come to meet
us, as if we needed to be welcomed."

"What! was no courtesy, no kindness shown you?" he asked
incredulously.

"Scarcely a decent civility," she replied. "But no matter about
that. Only, I want you to remember it, and to send my old friends
back to me. If they will not come, then their talk of religious
freedom is hardly sincere; and if you do not tell them, then I
shall think you unchristian. Indeed, doctor, when you have passed
me ill the street, without any notice, I haven't thought that you
were very good just then."

{724}

The doctor looked at her keenly. "I will be friends with you on
one condition," he said.

"And that?"

"Let Mr. Southard alone!" he said with emphasis.

Before she could utter a protestation, he had left the room.

The day crept past, and the night, and another day; and then
there was nothing for them to do but take up their life, and try
to make the best of it.

The first event to break the monotony came in September, when
Dora was baptized. All the family attended the ceremony, for the
time putting aside whatever prejudices they might feel. Then they
began to look eagerly for Mr. Southard's return.

He might be expected on the first Sunday of October, he wrote
most positively, but, for the rest, was very indefinite. He wrote
so vaguely, indeed, that his congregation were rather displeased.
His leave of absence had expired, yet he seemed to consider his
coming home a furlough. Rather extraordinary, they thought it.

Mr. Southard was not one of those pastors who live in a chronic
deluge of worsted-work from their lady friends. On his first
coming to the pulpit, there had been symptoms of such an
inundation; but he had checked them with characteristic
promptness, representing to the fair devotees the small need he
had of four-score pairs of pantoufles, even should his life be
prolonged as many years, and suggesting that those who had so
much leisure might profitably employ it in visiting and sewing
for the poor. But the repulse was given with such simplicity and
candor, and so utterly unconscious did he appear that any motive
could have prompted their labors save a profound conviction that
their pastor was shoeless, that even the most inveterate
needle-woman forgave him. He was not in the least sentimental, he
was indeed strict, and often cold, though never harsh.

Still, though he lacked many of the qualities of a modern popular
minister, his people were much attached to him. They trusted him
thoroughly, and they were proud of him. He had talent, culture,
and a high character and reputation. He was not a sensational
preacher; but his directness and earnestness were unique, and
occasionally his hearers were electrified by some eloquent
outburst, full of antique fire kindled at the shrines of the
prophets. It also did not go against him that he was the
handsomest man in the city, a bachelor, and rich enough in his
own right to dispense with a salary.

Great, therefore, was their delight when his return was
positively announced, and they set about preparing for it with a
good will.

The church was renovated, a new Bible and a sofa were purchased,
and a beautiful Catharine-wheel window, full of colored glass,
was put in over the choir. Receptions were arranged, flowers
bespoken, committees appointed, the barouche which was to take
him home from the depot was chosen, and the two dignitaries who
were to occupy it with him were, after due deliberation,
selected. All this was done decently and in order. Mr. Southard's
people were far from being of the vulgar, showy sort, and prided
themselves on being able to accomplish a good deal without any
fuss whatever. Even the newspaper chorus which proclaimed each
progressive step of the minister's homeward journey, as
Clytemnestra the coming of the sacred fire, sang in subdued
language and unobtrusive type. At last, all that was wanting was
the final announcement, in the Saturday evening papers, that the
reverend gentleman had arrived.
{725}
Indeed, the notice had been written, with all particulars, the
evening before, and had almost got into print, when it was
discovered that Mr. Southard had not arrived. The barouche had
returned from the depot without him, the two dignified personages
who went as escort suffering a temporary diminution of dignity
and an access of ill-temper. It is rather mortifying to see
people look disappointed that it is only you who have come, and
to know that not only have you lost the glory which was to have
been reflected on you from the principal actor in the scene, but
that your own proper lustre is for the time obscured. +

It was found, however, that a letter had been written by Mr.
Southard, not a pleasing one, by any means, to his disappointed
masters of ceremonies. He would be in his pulpit on Sunday
morning, he informed them; and after Sunday would be happy and
grateful to see any of his dear and long-tried friends who would
be so kind as to call on him. But till that time he did not feel
equal to the excitement of any formal reception. He had scarcely
recovered his strength after a long illness, he was fatigued with
travel, and also, he was returning to a house made desolate by
the death of one of his oldest and dearest friends.

"They are terribly wilted," Mr. Lewis said, as the family sat
around the centre-table that evening. "You never saw anybody so
grumpy as the deacons are. They are scandalized, moreover, in
view of the only way in which he can come now. Of course, he will
have to travel all night, and come into town Sunday morning.
There's Sabbath-breaking for you."

"One good thing," Mrs. Lewis said; "they have stopped ringing the
door-bell. I do believe there have been a hundred people here
to-day to ask if Mr. Southard had come."

"Auntie," said Aurelia, with a look of mild horror, "you don't
know what uncle said to the last gentleman who came. He told him
that when the minister made his appearance, he would hang out a
flag over the portico, and fire rockets from the front windows."

The three ladies were sewing, and Dora sat beside Margaret with a
catechism in her hand, learning the Acts.

"Aunt Margaret," whispered the child, "what do you think God told
me when I said, 'O my God! I firmly believe'? Says he,' Oh! what
a lying little girl you are!'"

"Why should he say that?" was the grave inquiry.

"Because I told him that I believed all the sacred truths; and
how can I believe when I don't know 'em? This is what I did; I
said, 'Please don't listen to me now, O Lord! I'm not talking to
you. I'm only learning my lesson.'"

"Come to bed now, my dear," said Margaret, "and we will talk
about it."

"I did not expect Mr. Southard to show so much feeling," Mrs.
Lewis said, when the two had gone out. "He received the news of
Mr. Granger's change of religion with such silent displeasure
that I supposed he would discard even his memory. He shows
courage, too, in still speaking of him as a friend; for some of
his people will be displeased."

"I'm sure, aunt," Aurelia replied rather hastily, "no one can say
that Mr. Southard ever lacked the courage to utter his
sentiments."

"No," Mrs. Lewis said in a very moderate tone, but looked sharply
into her niece's drooping face.

{726}

Aurelia had not looked up in speaking, and seemed to be engrossed
in her work; but there was a glistening of tears through the
thick lashes, and the delicate rose in her cheeks had grown
crimson-hearted. She seldom spoke with spirit; but when she did,
it always woke that rich bloom.

The bell rang again, and in a few minutes the parlor-door opened,
and the Rev. Doctor Kenneth came in.

"The servant told me that Mr. Southard has not arrived," he said;
"but as she did not absolutely forbid me, I came in to see the
rest of you."

They welcomed him cordially. The doctor had got in the way of
dropping in occasionally, and they were always glad to see him.
The venerable gentleman was something of a courtier, and knew how
to make himself all things to all men.

"I have my colleague at last," he said, "and to-morrow I promise
myself the pleasure of hearing Mr. Southard, if he comes."

Margaret returned to the parlor, and was pleasantly saluted by
the doctor who made room for her to sit beside him. She took the
place willingly, being especially pleased with him just then;
for, by his influence, her old friends were beginning to gather
about her, coldly at first, it is true, but that would mend in
time.

They resumed the conversation which her coming had interrupted.

"I have never denied that Mr. Maurice Sinclair might possess some
noble qualities," the doctor said, in his stateliest manner. "And
I have never said nor thought that he could rightly be called a
base man. But I have said, and I still think that he was a
dangerous man; and moreover, that last letter of his, instead of
softening my judgment, makes me condemn him all the more; for it
shows unmistakably what light he sinned against."

"But, doctor," interposed Aurelia's soft voice, "he seemed to be
a Christian at last."

"By no means, my dear," the doctor answered decidedly. "His
unbelief was nobler, that is all. The Christian soul strains
upward, and drops off the earthly; the pagan soul strains
outward, and grasps what is greatest on earth. He was a pagan. I
have always, during my whole ministry, had more fear of those who
stand on the border-lands between good and evil, than of those
who are clearly in the enemy's country. Do you want to take wine
with a drunkard? Certainly not. The faithful can resist a glaring
tempter; but let one of these gallant chieftains come up with his
mouth full of fine sentiments, and presto,

  'All the blue bonnets are over the border!'

But what can we preachers do when the ladies decide to canonize a
man? I'm afraid they are disposed to believe that a fine head
must deserve a fine crown."

"There's one exception, doctor," Mr. Lewis said, pointing to his
wife.

The lady appeared not to notice the allusion to herself, but
spoke in a musing, silvery voice, her eyes fixed dreamily on
space.

"What a wise arrangement of Providence it is, that interesting
masculine penitents should awaken the gushing philanthropy of
ladies, gentlemen standing aloof; while interesting feminine
penitents almost as invariably excite the pious charity of men,
ladies, in their turn, holding off. In both cases, there are the
feast and the skeleton quite correct. I recollect, doctor,
hearing you preach, years ago, a sermon on the Magdalen. It was
very edifying; but I was sorry that you found it necessary to
mention her golden hair. Indeed, I have always thought that the
old painters would have made a better point if they had
represented her as a plain, middle-aged woman, with great haggard
eyes, like pits of darkness through which the soul was
struggling, only a spark, but kindled to a conflagration which
should consume with holy fire that poor, desecrated clay of hers.
That is the true Magdalen; not your light Correggio, who might be
a _danseuse_ reading a French novel after the ballet."

{727}

The lady had dropped her careless air, and was speaking almost
vehemently. It seemed, indeed, that some personal experience lent
a poignancy to her convictions on the subject.

"I am glad of the chance to express my opinions," she said, "and
glad that you have made me angry enough to have courage to speak.
I protest against this pernicious indulgence which latter-day
Christians show to vice, persuading themselves that they are
charitable.'Swear him, and let him go,' as the soldier said of
the rattlesnake. When I see these sentimentalists seek out real
penitence where it hides speechless and ashamed, then I will call
them charitable, and not before. But no; real penitence is not
interesting. It cannot attitudinize, it stammers, it has red and
swollen eyes, it shrinks almost from being forgiven, it never
holds its head up again."

"But, madam," said the doctor, somewhat disconcerted, "all are
liable to mistakes; and in being too strict with doubtful
penitents, we may discourage the true ones."

"They are easily distinguished," she said curtly. "Besides, you
lose sight of another risk you run. You appear to take for
granted that none are tempted save those who fall. How do you
know how many may be holding on to their integrity by a mere
thread, struggling desperately but silently, needing every help,
in so precarious a condition that a breath, a word, may destroy
them? Such people do not speak; you hear nothing of them but the
crash of their fall. Or, if they fall not, you never know. To me,
that conflict is more pathetic, more tragical, than all the
paraded sighs and tears of those who have found that dishonesty
doesn't pay. Those who do right simply and purely for God's sake
are few and far between. Most people need the support of public
opinion and the approbation of those whom they look up to. Let it
be seen that, do what they may, if only they can excuse
themselves prettily and plausibly, they will be easily forgiven,
and set still higher than before, and what will be the result?
You can see it in society to-day. Charity, so-called, has
increased; has virtue increased?"

"If good women would not make themselves so disagreeable, as they
often do," Mr. Lewis said gruffly.

"Try to please them," his wife replied. "Praise them a little; be
agreeable yourselves, and see if they don't improve in that
respect. Meet a person with a glum face, and if that person is
sincere and sensitive, you are not likely to get smiles in
return."

Aurelia leaned toward her aunt, put an arm around her, and
whispered, "Dear auntie, you're an angel; but please don't say
any more."

"I do not like to hear men and women criticise each other," the
doctor said calmly, introducing a switch into the track of the
conversation. "They are neither of them fitted to think for and
judge the other. They, in the moral universe, are like earth and
sea in the physical. And as air is common to earth and sea, so
spirit, and all higher influences, are common to man and woman
alike."

{728}

"Yes," Miss Hamilton said, "and while the earth has gold, and
silver, and iron, and gems, the sea has only pearls, and they are
tears, woman's proper _parure_. And while the earth
maintains its place, and is not moved, the sea goes moaning
about, breaking itself on rocks, and climbing even to heaven,
only that it may fall again upon the land."

"Blessed showers!" said the doctor, who had watched her smilingly
while she spoke. "Be sure, Margaret, sooner or later those for
whose sakes you and your sisters have climbed to heaven with such
toil and pain will see some heavenly likeness in you, and hail
you as welcome messengers. Don't lose courage, dear. Don't join
the bitter waves that break themselves against the rocks, or the
sly, insidious waves that steal away the land and drag it down.
But let your part be with those who visit us by the way of
heaven. Wouldn't you rather we should look up when we want you,
though it were seldom, than look down, though it were often?"

She looked up, bright and blushing for a moment, like her old
self, trembling with gladness, she knew not why. It seemed to be
a prophecy of good tidings.

Into the silence that followed a deep sigh broke. They all looked
up, then rose, speechless, changed suddenly into a group of
mourners. For Mr. Southard stood before them with that in his
countenance which showed how much more plainly than even their
living faces he saw the shadow of one who was gone for ever.

Pallid with sickness, fatigue, and trouble, he came forward to
receive their almost voiceless welcomes.

"God knows," he said, "that if the choice had been with me, my
place, rather than his, should have been made vacant."


           Chapter XVI.

         A Deserted Flock.


Bostonians have been accused of putting too much Sabbath into
their Sundays; but long may it be before the noisy waves of
business or pleasure shall wash away that quiet island in the
weary sea of days. There is a suggestion of peace, if not of
sacredness, in the silence almost like that of the country, in
the closed doors and empty streets; and when the bells

  "Sprinkle with holy sounds the air, as the priest with the hyssop
   Sprinkles the congregation, and scatters blessings upon them,"

he must be insensible indeed who does not--at least,
momentarily--remember that there is another world than this.

On the morning after his return, Mr. Southard resumed his old
Sunday habit of breakfasting in his own room, and none of the
family saw him before service. He always went to his church
early, and alone, and never spoke to any one on the way.

"Margaret, you really ought to go with us this time," Mrs. Lewis
said. "I think you might unbend for once."

"To stoop from the presence of God to the presence of a creature
is bending too far," was the reply. "Such bending breaks. I and
my pet are going to see the heavens open, and the Lord descend;
are we not, Dorothea, gift of God?"

Mrs. Lewis turned herself about before the cheval-glass to see
the effect of a superb toilet that she had made in honor of the
occasion. "Ah! well," she said. "You may be right. I have indeed
a faithful heart, but a woefully skeptical head; shall we go
now?"

{729}

The night had been very sharp for the season; but when they all
went out together, the sun was shining warmly through the morning
haze, the air was still, and the dripping, splendid branches of
the October trees were hesitating between hoarfrost and dew, and
glittering with both. People in holiday attire, and with holiday
faces, went past, the bells clanged out, then paused, and left
only a tremulous murmur in the air, the very spirit of sound. Far
away, a chime rang an old-fashioned hymn, in that quaint, stiff
way that chimes have.

At a street-corner the party separated, and went their several
ways.

As the Lewises entered their own church, they involuntarily
exchanged a smile. Nothing could be prettier than that interior.
The side-lights were all shut out, and for the first time the new
window was unveiled, and threw its rich light over the choir, and
up the nave, kindling the flowers that profusely draped the
pulpit and platform, and edging with crimson the garnet velvet
cushions. The people in this church had usually easy elbow-room,
but to-day they permitted themselves to be crowded a little by
visitors. There were even chairs brought into the galleries; and
when the hour for service arrived, there was a row of gentlemen
standing behind the last pews. But there was no sound save the
soft rustle of ladies' dresses, and now and then a hushed
whisper. There was the most perfect decorum and composure, and a
silence that was respectful if not reverential. No belligerent
mutterings ever rose through the voice of prayer or praise within
these walls; no belated worshipper ever went tramping up to the
very front after service had begun; and moreover, neither in
this, nor in any other Protestant church, did visitors come with
opera-glasses and chattering tongues, to turn what was meant as a
place of worship into a place of amusement.

Quite late, Dr. Kenneth came up the aisle, and seated himself in
the Lewis pew; and while every one looked at him, the door
leading back from the platform to the vestry was opened, and
almost before they were aware, Mr. Southard had entered and taken
his place.

There was a soft stir and rustle all through the church, and the
choir sang an anthem--that beautiful one of Brasbury's:

  "How beautiful is Zion
     Upon the mountain's brow,
   The coming of the messenger,
     To cheer the plains below."

Mr. Southard sat with his eyes fixed on the cornice-wreath, and
let his congregation stare at him, and they did not scruple to
take advantage of the opportunity. The impression was not the one
they had expected to receive. He was too pale and spiritual, and
his expression was too much that of some lofty martyr fronting
death unmoved, a St. Sebastian, pierced with arrows, his soul
just pluming itself for flight through those lifted eyes.

Moreover, not only were all their flowers invisible to him, but
he never looked at their new window, though the light from one of
its golden panes streamed full in his face as he sat. Where was
the smiling glance that might, surely, have made one swift
scrutiny of their familiar faces, unseen so long? Where was the
prayer of thanksgiving that he had been brought safely back to
his people, after such an absence, and through so many dangers?
Where was the joyful hymn of praise?

When Mr. Southard rose, he repeated only the Lord's prayer; and
the first hymn he read was anything but joyful:

  "Nearer, my God, to thee,
     Nearer to thee,
   E'en though it be a cross
     That raiseth me."

{730}

"Dear me! doctor," Mrs. Lewis could not help whispering, "I do
wish that for to-day, at least, he could have hidden the cross
under the crown."

The text was unexpected: "_Little children, love one
another._"

Not a single war-note, not a word of that Aceldama from which he
had but just come, but an impassioned exhortation that, casting
aside all differences, dissensions, and uncharitableness, they
should love each other even as Christ had loved them.

Mr. Southard seldom displayed any strong feeling except
indignation or a lofty fervor; but now he seemed deeply moved,
and full of a yearning tenderness toward those whom he addressed.
And they, after the first, forgot their disappointment, and were
almost as much affected as he.

"Why do I choose for my text words which recall the sufferings of
our divine Lord?" he asked. "And why do I select words of parting
exhortation rather than words of greeting? Because the passion is
not yet ended; because Christ is no more a king to-day than he
was nineteen centuries ago; because even among those who call
upon his name, his commands, his entreaties are disregarded.
Still his sceptre is but a reed, his purple still covers the
marks of the lash, his brow still bleeds under its crown. Lastly,
because I am not a pastor returning joyfully to his flock, hoping
for no more partings, but one who comes sorrowfully to say
farewell, scarcely daring to hope for any other meeting with you.

"A pastor? And who is he that leadeth the flocks of the Lord? He
to whom the divine Shepherd hath given the charge, bidding him
go. Brethren, he has not spoken to me, save in rebuking. Instead
of green pastures, I have led you in the desert. For still
waters, I have brought you to the banks of Marah. Who is he in
whose hands the baptismal waters are cleansing, who can bind man
and woman as husband and wife, who can consecrate the bread and
wine, who can loosen its burden from the penitent soul? He who,
looking up the line of his spiritual descent, sees the tongues of
fire alighting upon his ancestors in the Lord. Bear with me, my
friends! At the head of my line stands the traitor who sat at
meat with Christ, and ate the bread he broke, and drank the wine
he blessed, and then betrayed him."

The congregation were too much startled and puzzled by this
sudden turn to notice that Doctor Kenneth's head was bowed
forward on the front of the pew, and that Aurelia Lewis was
leaning with her face hidden on her aunt's shoulder.

But Mr. Southard saw them, and grew yet paler. When he spoke
again, it was with difficulty.

"This is no place for me to stand and advocate doctrines denied
by you. Yet surely it is no treason to the trust you reposed in
me when you invited me to become your pastor, if I ask, if I
entreat that you will examine fairly and prayerfully before you
condemn my course.

"I dare not trust myself to thank you for all your past
friendship for me, to utter my wishes for your future good, or to
tell you how my heart is torn by this parting. I have only
strength to go.

"Do you ask whither I am going? After years of mental torment
unsuspected by you, and when at last my strength was deserting
me, and the waters were going over my soul, where did I find
refuge and safety? In that glorious old ship whose sails are full
of the breath of the Spirit, who has faith for an anchor, the
cross as her ensign, and St. Peter at the helm. Brethren, I am a
Roman Catholic, thank God!"

{731}

Immediately the congregation were in confusion, and one gentleman
stood up and called, "Stop, sir!"

The light that had sprung to Mr. Southard's face at the last
words dropped out again. He leaned over the pulpit, and commanded
silence with a gesture at once imploring and imperative.

"One word more!" he said. "Believe in my unaltered affection for
you; and believe also that though my hands are not anointed to
give benediction, I fervently pray that God may bless you now and
for ever. Farewell!"

He turned away from them, and walked slowly toward the
vestry-door. Before he had closed it behind him, a silence fell,
and he heard Doctor Kenneth's trembling voice exclaim, "Let us
pray!" Glancing back, Mr. Southard saw the old minister standing
with upraised hands in his deserted pulpit.

Where he passed the rest of that day, the family did not know. It
was early twilight when they saw him coming up the street toward
the house. By that time they had recovered from their first
excitement, all but Aurelia. She still kept her room.

Mr. Southard walked with a firm and dignified step, and his face
was perfectly serene. He even smiled when he saw Margaret
standing in the parlor window, watching for him.

"No servant shall open the door for him this time, at least," she
thought, and hastened to open it herself.

"Welcome home!" she said exultingly, holding out both hands to
him. "You did that nobly! A thousand times, welcome!"

Mr. Southard closed the door, then looked at her boldly, putting
her hands back. "Do not mock my empty life with so slight a gift
as mere kindness," he said. "If you give me your hand, give it to
me to keep."

She stood one instant wavering, then gave him her hand again.
"Keep it," she said.

Lingering behind him as he went to meet Mr. and Mrs. Lewis,
Margaret flung her pledged hand upward as if she flung a gauge.
"Louis Granger, you shall not look down and think that I am
breaking my heart for you!"


            Chapter XVII.

	   In Exitu Israel.


Some one tells of a wind so strong that he could turn and lean
his back against it, as against a post. Mr. Southard found some
such effect as this in the excitement caused by his change of
religion. For there are times when a strong opposition is
wonderfully sustaining. It fans the flame, and keeps the soul in
a lively glow, without any expenditure of our own breath.

Being thus saved the pains of maintaining his fervor, the new
convert took up tranquilly his religious studies, viewing from
the inside that church which heretofore he had seen only from the
outside. The study was an ever fresh delight; and as, one after
another, new beauties were revealed, and new harmonies unfolded
themselves, the miracle seemed to be, not that he should see now,
but that he should have been blind so long.

No one knows, save those who have been born away from this home
of the soul, the full delight of that succession of surprises and
discoveries in the search made by him who comes late to his
father's house. The first dawn or flash of faith, come as faith
may, shows only the door, and a dim and long-stretching
perspective. But once inside, with what wonder, what curiosity,
what incredulity, even, we wander about examining the treasures
of this new-found inheritance of ours.
{732}
Surely, we say, here we shall be disappointed. Here there will be
a shade on the picture. But, looking closely, we find instead a
still more eminent beauty. Nor are these varied discoveries
exhausted in a few months, nor in a few years, nor in many years.
Even when the noon of life has been spent in the quest, and
twilight comes, still there are

             "such suites to explore,
  Such closets to search, such alcoves to importune."

But the most spiritual of us are not all spirit; and when, after
a few weeks, the storm of denunciation against him subsided a
little, weary of its own violence, Mr. Southard began to feel the
vacuum left by his loss of occupation, and to depend more on the
home life.

Here the prospect was not without shadows. Mr. and Mrs. Lewis had
behaved nobly, and, after the first shock, had stood by him
through every trial. "Not that I am so fond of Catholicism," Mr.
Lewis said. "But I like to see a man who has a mind of his own,
and isn't afraid to speak it."

The shadow in this case was Mr. Lewis's niece, who showed an
unconquerable coldness toward her former minister. This was not
to him a matter of vital consequence, certainly, though it
troubled him more than he would have expected. She had always
looked up to him with undoubting faith as her religious guide.
Now he perceived with pain and mortification that he had not only
destroyed her respect for his own authority, but had made her
distrustful of all authority.

He attempted to justify himself to her; but she stopped him.

"I do not occupy myself in criticising your conduct and opinions,
Mr. Southard," she said; "and I would rather say nothing about
it."

For the first time, it struck him that Miss Lewis had a very
stately manner.

Neither was Miss Hamilton just what Mr. Southard wished his
promised wife to be to him, though he could scarcely have told in
what she was lacking. Her evident desire that for the present the
engagement should be unsuspected, even by their own family, he
did not find fault with, though it prevented all confidential
intercourse between them; but he would have preferred that she
had not been quite so positively friendly, and no more. It seemed
a little odd, too, that he should never, even by accident, find
her alone, though they had frequently met so in the old times.

Weary, at length, of waiting on chance, he requested an
interview, and stated his wishes. He would like to go to Europe
as soon as possible, and stay there a year. He could not feel
himself settled in the church, till he had been in Rome a
Catholic, having once been there an unbeliever. Of course he
would expect to take his wife with him. Why should they delay.
Why not be married at Christmas, and start so as to reach Rome
before Easter?

Margaret grew pale. "It is so soon," she said in a frightened
way. "And you know I cannot leave Dora. You might go without me."
Then, as his countenance fell, she added, trying to smile, "I
love my freedom, and want to keep it as long as I can. But when I
do take bonds on myself, I shall be very dutiful."

"I do not think that you will lose any freedom which you need
greatly desire to keep," he said gently, but with a shade of
disapproval. "And as to Dora, Mrs. Lewis would take good care of
her."

{733}

"Dora is a sacred charge to me, Mr. Southard," Margaret said
hastily; "not only her person, but her faith. I cannot intrust
her to any one else. Besides, she would break her heart if parted
from me. No one else can comfort her when--when she needs
comfort."

Mr. Southard considered awhile.

"I approve of your being careful to do your duty by the child,"
he said presently. "But, you know, some priest could have her
religious education under his supervision while we are gone. I
would not, on any account, urge you to violate a scruple of
conscience. Possibly, however, if you should consult your
confessor, he might decide that your duty to the child should
bend to your duty to me."

Margaret's face blushed up crimson, and her eyes emitted a spark.
"The confessor whom I shall consult when I name my wedding-day,
will be my own heart," she said, in anything but a humble tone of
voice.

Mr. Southard looked at her searchingly. "Can it be," he asked,
"that a lack of affection on your part is the cause of this
reluctance?"

"I esteem you highly, Mr. Southard," she replied faintly,
shrinking a little. "But I am not very reasonable, and you must
have patience with me. Please don't say any more now. This is
very sudden. I will think of it."

"Very well," he replied. "Perhaps when you have thought, you may
accede to my first proposal. It is not worth while to delay, you
know, when one's mind is made up."

"I must go now with Dora to make her first confession," Margaret
said, anxious to change the subject. "Will you excuse me? I am
afraid the storm may grow worse. The rain is falling gently now;
but you know the old proverb:

  'When the wind comes before the rain,
   You may hoist your topsails up again;
   But when the rain comes before the winds.
   You may reef when it begins.'"

"And a true proverb it is in more ways than one," Mr. Lewis said,
appearing at that moment. "When my wife begins by flying at me
and tearing my hair out, and then goes to crying afterward, I
hope for fair weather soon. But when she starts with a gentle
drip of tears, I always look out for squalls before it is over.
Remember that for your future guidance, Mr. Southard."

Margaret escaped from the room, and in a few minutes was on her
way to the church, with Dora half hidden under her cloak, and
nestled close to her side. As she rode along, feeling, some way,
as if they were flying from pursuit or from a prison, she
experienced one of those tender touches of recollection with
which the Spirit, ever following us, seeks to recall our wayward
hearts. "What should I do if I had no church to go to?" was the
thought that came; and as it came, the altar toward which she was
approaching, glowed through the chill November rain like the fire
in happy homes.

Outside, in the corridor leading to that familiar chapel of St.
Valentine, endeared by so many sacred and tender memories, they
paused a moment and recollected themselves.

"My dear little one, Christ Jesus the Lord is in there!"

"Do you truly think that he likes me?" whispered Dora
apprehensively, glancing askance at the lambent little flame that
burned inside.

"Oh! yes," was the confident answer. "He is very fond of you when
you are good."

The sweet face smiled again.

"Then I an't afraid of him, auntie. Come."

{734}

After an act of contrition on her own account, and a prayer for
the child, Margaret led Dora to the confessional, placed her on
her knees there, and, dropping the curtain behind her, retired to
wait at a distance.

Verifying the proverb, it was blowing quite violently when the
two started for home again. Margaret went directly up to her
chamber, having need to be alone. What was it striving within
her, what memory, almost at the surface of her mind, yet unseen,
like a flower in spring just ready to burst through the mould
that feels but knows it not? On her table was a bunch of English
violets that some one had left there for her. At the sight of
them, her trouble sharpened to pain that had yet some touch of
delight in it. The wind was full of voices, it caught the rain,
and lashed the windows, it shook the doors, and called sighingly
about the chimneys, and swung the vines against the panes. As she
leaned there wondering and troubled, a faint, sweet perfume from
the violets stole into her face. It was magical. She sank on her
knees and drew the flowers to her bosom.

"O my friend! how could I ever dream of forgetting you?"

How it came back, that rainy day at the seaside, the terror of
the tempest, the fire she had kindled, the watch she had kept,
the presentiment of sorrow, then the muffled figure coming down
the road, the rain, the wind, and his smile, all meeting her at
the door, and the perfume of the violets he had brought her!

Who knows not the power that perfumes have over the memory? The
influence of sound is evanescent, that which the eyes have seen
the imagination changes in time; but a perfume is the most
subtile and indestructible of reminders. You have walked in the
world's beaten ways many a year, till the country home of your
childhood is a picture almost effaced from your mind. Its tones
echo no more, its faces are faded, its scenes forgotten.

Some sultry summer day, wandering from the city, but only half
weaned from the thoughts of it, your listlessly straying feet
crush the warm, wild herbage, and a thick perfume of sweet-fern
rises about you. What does it mean? Thrilling to your
finger-tips, you bend and inhale that strange yet familiar scent.
Its touch is as potent as the touch of the rod of Moses.

  "A score of years roll back their tide
     Of mingled joy and pain;
   Dry-shod I cross the torrent's bed,
     And am a child again."

Old scenes come up: gray rocks start out, lichen-jewelled; there
are billows of butter-cups, mayweed, and clover, over which your
young fancies sailed moth-winged, and brought rich freights from
every port; the long lines of pole and stone fences are built up
again in a twinkling; the boiling spring leaps bubbling into the
heart of the sunshine; in the woods the cold, bright waters run
hurrying over the pebbles; there is the homestead, the smoke from
the chimney, the open windows, some one standing in the door,
some one calling you with a voice as real as your breath; there
are faces with eyes that see you, every feature plain, there are
hands stretched out.

How it rises and tramples on your present, that past that hides
but never dies! How your heart-strings strain with the vain
longing to stay for ever in this bright, recovered country, and
look no more on the desert and the land of bondage!

  "Flow back, O years! into your channel,
     Flow, and stop the way!
   Let me forget how vain the fancies
     Of that childish day."

{735}

If we did not know that every hope and sweetness in the past were
but seeds for future blossom and fruit; if we did not know that
childhood is but a bee's load of honey, but a babe's sip of milk,
to those flowing streams in the promised land; if we did not
believe that God's denial is brief, his bounty endless; that
surely he sees and marks every pain; and that he holds the
fulfilment of our utmost wish just at the verge of our utmost
endurance--if we were not sure of this, could human nature bear
the cross that sometimes is laid upon it? It could not!

Miss Hamilton did not appear at the dinner-table that day; but in
the evening Mr. Southard was summoned to her in the library. She
met him with an April face full of a grieved kind of joy, or a
joyful grief, crossed the room toward him when he came in, and
held out her hands to him.

"Forgive me!" she said hurriedly. "But, Mr. Southard, I cannot
marry you. I made a mistake. Don't be angry with me. I cannot
help it. And I think, too, that you mistook also."

"I do not understand this," he said, dropping her hand.

"I should never have thought of marrying, if I had not been angry
with him," she said. "That was wicked and foolish, and I have got
over it now. We are reconciled. I shall never forget him."

"Am I to understand that your remembrance of Mr. Granger is a bar
to your union with me?" asked Mr. Southard, regaining his
composure.

"An insurmountable bar!"

He bowed gravely. "Then there is no more to be said. I wish you
good-evening."

She watched him go; and when the door had closed, broke into a
soft laugh. "In exitu Israel;" she said. "I am free!"

The door opened again, and Mr. Lewis came in. "You here?" he
said. "I want to get the first volume of--But what's the matter
with you? I just met Mr. Southard going into his room. Have you
promised to marry him?"

"No, I have promised not to," Margaret said, smiling.

Mr. Lewis looked at her with a softening face, and eyes that grew
dim.

"I'm glad of it, Maggie," he said. My wife and Aurelia were sure
that you and he would make a match; and I couldn't say anything
against it. But I hated the thought of your forgetting
_him_."

There was no danger, indeed, of her forgetting him. It was
impossible for her. She had not one of those facile hearts that
rest here and there, on whatever offers, growing worn and
threadbare at last, till there is nothing left to give. Hers was
an imperious constancy which, having once chosen, did not know
how to change, and perpetually renewed itself, like a fountain,
as fresh to-day as it was a century ago. Such affection does not
absolutely need the happiness of earth; for its root is in the
soul, not in the flesh, and the time of its perfecting is
hereafter.


            Chapter XVIII.

              Daybreak.


As there are plants that need crushing to bring out their
perfume, so there are natures that become thoroughly amiable only
through pain and humiliation. Mr. Southard's was one of these.
Every blow that struck him made some breach in his puritanic
severity, and revealed some hidden grace of mind or heart. He had
possessed an intellectual humility, and had submitted himself
with all the force of his reason.
{736}
But such humility is like the weight of snow that in winter
presses the head of the slender sapling to earth, whence it is
ever ready to spring back again at the first fiery sun-touch. It
savored too much of the arrogant self-accusation of those who, as
Mr. Lewis said, think they are the sun because they have spots on
them. Now, he seemed really humble, he distrusted himself, and he
accepted kindness with a gratitude that touched the hearts of
those who gave it.

To Mrs. Lewis's surprise, he made a confident of her, and spoke
quite freely of his disappointment.

"I do not blame Margaret," he said. "It was ungenerous of me to
take advantage of her first moment of enthusiastic sympathy for
me to exact a promise from her. But the temptation was strong.
Existence with her would never be mere vegetation. She always
gets at the inside of life. However, since God has willed it
otherwise for me, I shall try to act like a Christian and like a
sensible man. All the difference it makes in my plans is that I
shall go away a little sooner."

They were sorry to have him go; for their esteem for him had
insensibly grown into affection, and their affection constantly
increased.

"I declare, I had no idea that I should feel so bad about it,"
Mr. Lewis said when the time came for good-byes. "Give me your
shawl to take out. I am going to the depot with you."

Margaret and Dora had taken leave of Mr. Southard, and were
standing in one of the front windows, watching to see him off.
Mrs. Lewis walked slowly out of the parlor with him.

"Where is Aurelia?" he asked, looking about. "I have not seen
her."

"Oh! she told me to say good-by for her," answered Mrs. Lewis
carelessly. He hesitated, and looked hurt. "I suppose she doesn't
care to take the trouble to see me," he said. "Tell her I said
good-by, and God bless her."

"I will do nothing of the kind!" said the lady, with emphasis.

Mr. Southard stared at her in astonishment.

"'Doesn't care to take the trouble!" she repeated indignantly.
"It is rather you who haven't cared to treat her with common
gratitude or civility. You have had eyes for only Miss Hamilton,
who didn't care a fig for you; while Aurelia, the poor simpleton!
who made a hero of you, and broke her heart because you were in
disgrace with the world and disappointed in love--you hadn't a
glance for. No; I won't say good-by to her. I will let her
believe that you went without remembering her existence, as you
came near doing. It will help her to forget you. There, take that
with my blessing, and good-by. The carriage is waiting."

"Where is she?" he exclaimed, his whole face changed, and become
alive all at once. "I shall not stir from the house till I have
seen her, if I have to wait a year."

"What will Miss Hamilton think of your constancy?" asked Mrs.
Lewis with a toss of the head.

"Madam," said Mr. Southard, "for me there is but one woman in the
world, and that is she who loved me without waiting to be asked.
Will you be so good as to tell Aurelia that I wish to see her in
the library?"

He went toward the library, and Mrs. Lewis leisurely returned to
the parlor, a curious little smile on her lips.

{737}

Aurelia Lewis was seated before the library fire, with her hands
folded in her lap.

As Mr. Southard paused an instant at sight of her, then came
hastily in and shut the door after him, she rose and looked at
him with an air of dignified composure. Her face was perfectly
colorless.

"Is it true," he began at once, "that you have sympathized with
me more than I knew? Tell me! A disappointment now would be too
cruel."

Aurelia's full bright eyes opened a little wider, and a faint
color warmed her cheeks; but she seemed too much astonished or
too indignant to speak. Yet after the first glance, she drooped a
little, and leaned on the back of her chair, as if, like that
fair Jewish queen, _for delicateness and overmuch tenderness,
she were not able to bear up her own body_.

How pure and sweet she was! Silent as dew. How utterly womanly
her untainted loveliness!

"Esther!" exclaimed Mr. Southard.

After ten minutes Mr. Lewis put his head out of the carriage
door, and made a sign to his wife, who was benevolently
contemplating him from the parlor. She raised the window.

"Where is Mr. Southard?" he asked.

"He is saying good-by to Aurelia," was the reply; and the window
went down again.

Minutes passed, but no Mr. Southard appeared. It was the day
before Christmas, and the air was too sharp to make a long
tarrying out doors agreeable.

"I've heard of eternal farewells, but I never before had the
honor of assisting at one," muttered Mr. Lewis; and having waited
as long as endurance seemed a virtue, he went into the house.

"Where is Mr. Southard?" he asked, looking round the parlor.

"In the library, saying good-by to Aurelia," replied his wife
suavely.

Mr. Lewis looked at Margaret.

"Will you tell me what she means? I don't believe her. She always
puts on that truthful look when she tells a lie."

Margaret laughed. "I think you may as well dismiss the carriage,"
she said.

In something less than half an hour Mr. Southard and Aurelia made
their appearance. They were received with great cordiality.

"I hope you liked your journey to Europe," said Mr. Lewis with
immense politeness. "Is the pope in good health?"

Mr. Southard was beyond the reach of mocking. "I have postponed
my journey till this lady can be ready to accompany me," he said.
"And I have convinced her that four weeks will be enough for her
preparation."

Aurelia went to lean on Margaret's shoulder. She was trembling,
but her face showed full contentment. "I would rather be Esther
than Vashti," she whispered.

"I'm delighted enough to forgive you even a greater impertinence
than that, if greater could be," was the whispered answer. "I am
not Vashti, though you are Esther."

The next day, after coming home from early mass, Margaret sat in
her chamber toward the east, with Dora and her two friends, Agnes
and Violet, leaning on her lap, and watching her face. She had
been telling them the story of that miraculous birth, and,
finishing, looked up into the morning sky, and forgot them;
forgot the sky, too, presently, with all its vapory golden
stretches, and glimpses of far-away blue, and saw instead her
life past, present, and to come. Looking calmly, she forgave
herself much, for had not God forgiven her? and hoped much, for
there was no room for despair; and grew content, for all that she
could desire was within her reach.

{738}

Beginning at the lowest, she had an assured home, kind friends,
and a dear and sacred duty in the care of this child. So far, all
was peace.

One step higher then. Could the friend who still lived on in her
heart forget her in that heaven to which her love had led him?
And, weak and childish though she was, with her impatience, her
scarcely broken pride, her obstinately clinging affection, could
she be altogether unlovely to him? Some strong assurance answered
no.

Higher yet her thought took its stand. There was faith, that
second sight by which the soul sets her steps aright as she
climbs, never missing the way. There was an unfading hope, and a
charity that embraced the world. There was God. And all were
hers!

As Margaret sat there, the three children leaned motionless,
hushing themselves lest they should break that beautiful trance.
It was no momentary glow of enthusiasm, no mere uprising of
feeling; for mounting slowly, through pain, and doubt, and
weakness, she had reached at last the heights of her soul, and
saw a wide, bright daybreak over the horizon of a loftier life.

----------

           A Glimpse Of Ireland.


I had long cherished the desire to visit Ireland, a country for
many reasons so interesting to every American Catholic. The
opportunity of making a brief tour in Europe during a summer
vacation having unexpectedly presented itself, I determined,
therefore, to leave the steamer at Queenstown and make the
journey to London by way of Dublin. On the 29th of July, 1867,
after a remarkably pleasant passage, we found ourselves, at an
early hour of the morning, in sight of the famous Skellig
rocks--called by sailors the Bull, Cow, and Calf--and thus gained
the welcome advantage of sailing all day in sight of the Irish
coast. The first impression one receives from the appearance of
the country between Valentia and Cork is sad and desolate; in
harmony with the tragic history of the suffering, oppressed race,
whose home is seen for the first time, by the voyager from the
New World, under one of its most barren and lonely aspects. The
only interest which can attract the eye and the mind is that of a
sort of wild and rugged grandeur, coupled with the historical
associations which give a charm to the names of Bantry and
Dingle. The lonely waters, where scarcely a sail was to be seen
during the live-long day, told of the suppression of the
industrial and commercial life of the Irish nation by the
long-continued tyranny of that power which absorbs all its
resources to feed its own greatness.

The long, barren stretches, showing scarcely a sign of vegetable,
animal, or human life, where for miles one could see only here
and there a little shealing and a few sheep cropping the brown,
scanty herbage, seemed to give the lie to the well-known, and, as
I afterward saw, well deserved appellation of "the Emerald Isle."
{739}
Expressions of surprise escaped from some of my
fellow-passengers, agreeable and intelligent American gentlemen,
who, like myself, were on their maiden trip to Europe; and from
some others of the party who were children of Irish parents,
looking for the first time on the land of their exiled ancestors.
The coast is frequently steep and precipitous, suggesting to the
memory the many tales of shipwreck in wild nights of tempest one
has read in boyhood. The Martello towers stand at intervals along
the horizon, like gigantic watchmen looking out seaward to spy
the smuggler or the foreign invader, and in the distance the line
of the Kerry Mountains completes the view of the wild, desolate
landscape. The heights of Bantry are rendered for ever sacred and
memorable by the martyrdom of the Franciscan fathers, Donald and
Healy, in the reign of Queen Elizabeth. They were revisiting the
ruined monastery of Bantry, for the purpose of ministering to the
spiritual wants of their poor, persecuted flock, when they were
seized by the agents of the glorious reformation, tied back to
back, and hurled headlong down the precipice into the ocean. What
a wonder that the Irish people are so insensible to the value of
a gospel brought to them with so much pains and trouble, so
kindly presented to them, enforced by such lovely examples of
Christian virtue, and supported so long, notwithstanding their
obstinacy, at such great expense!

Early in the morning, we stopped our engines off the Cove of
Cork, a little steamer boarded us, the freight and baggage were
speedily, though, in the case of rocking-chairs, not very safely,
tumbled aboard of her decks, under the herculean direction of our
fat boatswain. Three cheers went up from the City of Paris, which
steamed off grandly for Liverpool, and we puffed in, not grandly
but very pleasantly, toward Queenstown. The Cove of Cork is
world-renowned for its beauty and excellence as a haven for
ships, but desolate-looking from the fact that it is better
supplied with fortresses, cannon, and ships of war than with the
peaceful, plenty-bringing steamers and sailing-vessels of
commerce. I once heard a little American boy utter the
exclamation, as we were entering the port of Havana and espied
the soldiers on duty, "How afraid they must be, guarding
everything that way!" It appears to be the same case in Ireland.
The English government is very much afraid of its Irish subjects,
if we may measure its fears by the display of force which meets
the eye everywhere. The only consolation which a sincere lover of
the Irish people can find in looking upon this state of things
is, that, since the endurance of this coercive tyranny is for the
time a necessary evil, the force is so very irresistible as
effectually to prevent the bloody horrors which would follow a
general insurrection. A young English officer, whom I met at the
hotel in Cork, expressed his regret that an open rebellion had
not broken out, which, he said, would have been an affair of a
month, and which of course would only have increased the miseries
and riveted the chains of the Irish people. For myself, I could
not help shuddering at the thought of the fearful tragedy which
would have been enacted if the people had been goaded by
demagogues to such an attempt, and blessing God that the efforts
of these madmen had failed. It is plain enough that Ireland
cannot be governed in this way much longer.
{740}
There is but one hope and one method for the English crown to
retain Ireland as a portion of the British empire; which is, to
win the willing loyalty of the people by an ample redress of
their grievances, and the inauguration of a policy which has in
view the real good of the Irish people.

Our little steamer landed us at about eight in the evening; the
officers were very polite and obliging, and we were soon ashore
on the sacred soil, with our luggage in the hands of a couple of
lively gossoons, and our steps free to go anywhere we pleased.

As soon as one steps ashore on the Irish soil, he feels that he
is in the land of frolic and drollery. The irrepressible and
indomitable spirit of the Celtic race rebounds under the strokes
of adversity like an india-rubber ball under the blows of a bat.
"The harder you do knock him down, the higher he do bounce." My
fellow-voyagers who came ashore at Queenstown fell into a state
of hilarity at once which was wonderful to behold, and which
continued during their whole stay in Ireland. They held their
sides and laughed uproariously, not, be it understood, with any
feeling of contempt or ridicule--for they were gentlemen, and
altogether free from snobbish prejudice or religious bigotry--but
from pure, genial sympathy with the comedy which was going on in
the crowd that pressed eagerly around the welcome passengers from
America, contending for their luggage. Old women whose vivacity
old age had only sharpened, and little boys who were so many
Flibbertigibbets in fun and smartness, with huge cars drawn by
diminutive donkeys, on which they piled pyramids of trunks, if
they were lucky enough to get them; boys with barrows, and boys
with only hands and shoulders--struggled and jibed and danced and
scolded, and rushed upon every passenger as he emerged from the
barrier, in a good humored and tumultuous manner that can only be
appreciated by one who has seen it. We pushed off for the last
train to Cork, followed by a dozen runners of the Queenstown
hotels, vociferating the praises of their several houses,
assuring us that the train had left five minutes before, and
urging us most affectionately to go up the next morning after a
good night's sleep, by the boat, that we might enjoy the scenery
of the beautiful river Lee. This piece of advice was good, and I
recommend every traveller to follow it. We turned a deaf ear to
it, however, reached the train in time, and in half an hour were
comfortably deposited in the well-known and most excellent
Imperial Hotel of Cork.

The rather singular English name of Cork is not, as one is apt to
suppose, our common word designating a certain very light
substance, and applied without any reason or propriety that
anybody can see to a very substantial city and county. It is a
corruption of the Irish word _Carroch_, signifying a valley,
which has been Anglicized, like many other foreign words, by a
most perverse and stupid English custom of changing them into
English words of somewhat similar sound. The first beginning of
the city was a monastery founded in the seventh century by St.
Finnbar, whom I recognized as an old acquaintance, from the
cathedral dedicated to his honor at Charleston, S. C., by the
illustrious Bishop England, who was a native of Cork. The old
cathedral of St. Finnbar, which was rebuilt in 1735, has been
demolished, to make way for a new one, which I most devoutly hope
may never be built on the sacred spot consecrated by the ancient
Irish monk until this shall revert to its rightful possessors.
{741}
Another holy site, that of Gil Abbey, which is extremely
picturesque and beautiful, is occupied by the Queen's College.
The Sisters of Mercy are fortunate enough to possess another
pleasant spot, rising to a wooded hill, which was also the seat
of an ancient monastery, and where is now situated their very
neat and commodious convent. There are three very good Catholic
churches in the city--St. Patrick's, St. Mary's, and Holy
Trinity; the latter founded by F. Matthew, and containing a
stained glass window as a memorial of O'Connell. The Mardyke, an
avenue shaded with elms for the distance of a mile, is a pleasant
walk, and I passed an hour there in company with a small party of
friends, from New York, in a most amusing and agreeable manner,
surrounded by a group of children with whom we soon established a
most intimate friendship by means of plums. The Irish children
are remarkable for their beauty, their blooming health, and for a
mixture of fun and innocence, of brightness and simplicity, of
boldness and modesty, indicating a state as near to that of
unfallen childhood as I can imagine. The pranks of the young
Corkonians afford a source of unfailing amusement to the stranger
within their gates; but I was most amused by the boys with
donkeys, who were to be seen riding in state to school in the
morning, and, in the afternoon, all about the environs scattered
in groups on the grass, ready to exchange a biting sarcasm with
every passing coachman, while their dear little friends, the
donkeys, fed quietly near by. It would be useless, however, to
attempt to describe all that is droll and comic in the population
of Cork, for it seems as if it were the business of their lives
to be as funny as they can, for their own delight and that of the
beholder.

Cork is a fine, well-built town, of 90,000 inhabitants, the third
in importance in Ireland. The environs are extremely beautiful. I
was there at midsummer; the weather was perfect, and I could see
to the best advantage the tilth and verdure which make the
Emerald Isle so famous. Certainly, they have not been
exaggerated, and no one can wonder at the praise which the
Irishman bestows upon his soil, or the intense love which he
cherishes for it. I only wonder that those who were born and bred
there can ever be contented elsewhere; and surely nothing but the
most unendurable poverty and want would ever drive such numbers
of them into exile. Perhaps the most picturesque objects which
meet the eye, in the country, are the white farm-houses with
thatched roofs, standing in their neat little flower-gardens,
their walls covered with honeysuckle or other creeping vines. The
only thought which mars the pleasure of looking on the rich
meadows, the waving fields, the herds of superb cattle, and
flocks of fat sheep, is, that the outward show of beauty and
prosperity is obtained by the sacrifice of the poor people, and
enjoyed by a small number only. If you drive out, your carriage
is followed by a troop of ragged, fleet-footed young beggars; and
if you chance to pass a factory when the hour for stopping work
has come, you may see a long procession of young women,
bareheaded, barefooted, ragged, and emaciated, who are glad to
work for a shilling a day.

The most interesting place to visit in the neighborhood of Cork
is Blarney Castle. I am ashamed to say that I was afraid to go on
a jaunting-car, although at Dublin I made the experiment with
great success and pleasure. It seemed to me, when I looked at the
jaunting-car for the first time, that it would shake one off as
soon as it turned a corner.
{742}
We accordingly drove out to Blarney in an open carriage, going by
the road to Kanturk, and returning by Sunday-Well road. Aside
from the merely jocose associations of the Blarney-stone, the
old, ivy-clad tower is an extremely interesting and picturesque
object, and the grounds of the demesne, so celebrated in Irish
lyrics, are charming. The cromlech and pillar stones, on which
are inscriptions in the ancient Ogham characters, carry back the
imagination to an antiquity almost without limits, and suggest
the thought that perhaps as long ago as the time of King David,
or even the Exodus, Druids may have performed their sacred rites
in these still groves. Our guide was a poor little sickly
humpbacked boy of sixteen rejoicing in the _sobriquet_ of
Lord John Russell, and possessing very sharp wits and
inexhaustible good-humor. Every one about the castle seemed to
take especial delight in a standing joke at his expense, that he
was an old man with a heavy family. The poor fellow seemed to
enjoy our company very much, and expressed the intention of
emigrating to America. The only reason he could give was that the
weather was too warm in summer at Blarney. At the castle gate his
jurisdiction terminated, and we were handed over to another
amusing original, the lame old gardener, who has many a story to
tell of Walter Scott, and Tom Moore, and Father Prout. As for the
Blarney-stone, I will not say how many of our party kissed it. In
Lord John Russell's opinion, there was no need of our doing so;
he was sure we had one of our own in America which we had all
kissed frequently before leaving home. Whoever has spent an
afternoon at Blarney, in genial company, will admit that it was
one of the pleasantest days of his life, if his soul is not too
full of steam and railroads to be capable of simple and natural
enjoyments.

The journey by rail from Cork to Dublin is a most tantalizing
one. Flying at full speed through several counties, one catches
glimpses at every moment of places and scenes of historic
interest and natural or artificial beauty, which he longs to
visit and inspect at leisure. The distance is one hundred and
sixty-five miles; the railway is an admirable one; everything
about the way stations is neat and attractive, and the route
passes in a direct line through the counties of Cork, Limerick,
Tipperary, King's, Queen's, and Kildare. Among the objects of
interest which are passed are the abbeys of Mourne, Bridgetown,
Kilmallock, Knocklong, Holy Cross, Thurles, Templemore, Moore
Abbey, Old Connell, Kildare Cathedral, with St. Bridget's chapel;
the castles of Barrett, Carrignacenny, Kilcolman, which the poet
Spenser received as his share in the spoliation; Charleville; the
Rock of Dunamase, with the ruins of Strongbow's Castle; the Rock
of Cashel; the Hill of Allen, where Fin McCoul lived; several
round towers; the famous bog of Allen; the Curragh of Kildare;
and quantities of others--which keep one perpetually, and to a
great extent vainly, looking out of window, first on one side,
then on the other, while you are hurried over a country every
step of which is rich in history, poetry, and legend, and should
be slowly traversed on foot and at leisure. Three of my agreeable
companions of the voyage were with me in the same carriage; a
very pleasing gentleman, with his son, a bright youth of sixteen,
joined us an hour or two before reaching Dublin, and they were as
curious about America, especially Indians, and our sea-voyage, as
we were about the antiquities and curiosities of Ireland.
{743}
Our trip was therefore wanting in nothing to make it lively and
agreeable, and we were finally deposited at the Gresham Hotel,
Sackville street, Dublin, in high good humor, and quite ready for
a good dinner.

As I had only that evening and the following day to remain in
Dublin, I was obliged to content myself with a superficial view
of the city, and a visit to a few places of particular interest.
In its general features, Dublin is at least equal to our finest
American towns of the same class, although more quiet, and
showing signs of stagnation in commercial prosperity. Its
agreeable climate makes it a delightful place of residence at all
seasons of the year, especially in the summer.

My first visit was made to the scene of the life and labors of
the saintly Catherine McAuley, foundress of the Sisters of Mercy,
the convent in Baggott street, where also repose her mortal
remains--a lovely spot for the cradle of a religious order, and
suggestive of the time, I hope not far distant, when Ireland
shall once again be full of these sacred homes of the monastic
life, as she was before the spoliation of her holy places by the
ruthless minions of Henry and Elizabeth. I visited also Clontarf,
the scene of Brian Boru's decisive victory over the Danes, and
death, and went to see what is said to have been his harp, and is
undoubtedly a relic of very ancient times, at the museum of
Trinity College. The college is a most attractive place, and
delightfully situated, on ground of course originally stolen from
the Catholic Church, and endowed out of the spoils of
monasteries. Quite in keeping with its origin is the fact that
its library contains a large number of valuable manuscript
records, originally stolen from the papal archives. The learned
body which rules within its classic halls has also made itself
remarkable by sustaining a claim, perhaps the most absurd ever
advanced by persons professing to be scholars, namely, that the
Protestant Church of Ireland is the lineal and legitimate
successor, in a direct, unbroken line, of the ancient church of
Saint Patrick. This is adding insult to injury. As if it were not
enough to rob the Irish people of their property, to persecute,
torture, exile, and massacre them by millions, on account of
their fidelity to their hereditary faith, their title to the very
name of Catholic must be denied to them, and arrogated for the
intruders who have forced themselves into their heritage by the
point of the bayonet and the violation of treaties. Two terrible
antagonists have arisen, however, out of their own camp to smite
these pretenders; Dr. Maziere Brady, an Irish Protestant
clergyman, and Froude, the English historian. The former
gentleman, in several learned and unanswerable works, has
demonstrated the regular, unbroken succession of the present
Catholic hierarchy and people of Ireland, from the bishops and
faithful who preceded the reign of Henry VIII., and has shown
that the Irish Protestant Church is nothing but an English
colony. The learned and accomplished Dr. Moran, also, whom I had
the pleasure of meeting, has written with great ability and
research upon the same topics.

Stephen's Green, which is near by Trinity College, witnessed the
burning of the heroic martyr Archbishop O'Hurley, tortured and
put to death, at the instigation of the infamous Loftus,
archbishop of Dublin. A few days later, I saw in the private
chapel of Archbishop Manning, at London, a cloth stained with the
blood of Archbishop Plunkett, another illustrious martyr, who was
publicly executed by the English government on false charges.
{744}
I venerate the relics of the older martyrs, and the places made
sacred by the hallowed memories of other countries and ages far
remote; but nothing stirs my blood like the holy mementoes of the
men who suffered in Ireland and England, for the faith, under the
tyranny of the apostate sovereigns and bishops of Great Britain.
These men are our fathers in the faith, the heroes who fought our
battles, from whom we have received the precious heritage we
enjoy in comparative peace. Their memory ought to be kept alive
and honored among us, in every possible way, as a powerful
incitement to imitate their example, and a means of endearing to
our people that religion which has been handed down, bathed in
the blood of so many noble Christians.

St. Patrick's Cathedral is the most interesting and venerable
monument of antiquity in Dublin. My fellow-travellers were
astonished at seeing a Protestant St. Patrick's, with a statue of
the great apostle over the principal door. Probably most
Americans who have not made themselves specially familiar with
Irish history fancy that most of the fine churches of Dublin are
Catholic churches. Perhaps many of them are not aware that every
church, graveyard, glebe-house, abbey, every rood of land, every
building, and every farthing of revenue belonging to the Catholic
Church in Ireland, has been confiscated by the English
government. In Dublin, out of eighty-four churches, forty
belonged to the English church, and only twenty to the Catholics,
in 1866. At the close of the last century there was not a
Catholic church in Dublin, nor could there be one according to
law. All the churches and other institutions in Dublin are
therefore the creation of the present century, the fruit of the
free-will offerings of the poor people, and a few wealthy
persons, such as Catherine McAuley, who consecrated her handsome
fortune entirely to religion.

St. Patrick's dates from the year 1190, though the spire was
added in the fourteenth century. It has been thoroughly repaired
and renovated, at a cost of one hundred thousand pounds, which
was given by the well-known brewer, Mr. Guinness. It contains one
of St. Patrick's holy wells, which is visible through an opening
in the floor, and guarded with great respect. Tradition says that
the saint baptized the first Irish convert in this fountain. This
is probably not true; but it is very likely that he did use it
for baptism, and perhaps baptized in it the first converts in
that part of the country. There are some ancient monuments of
bishops and knights, and some modern ones of persons who have
figured during the Protestant ascendency--Brown and Loftus,
Swift, Stella, and the late Dr. Whately, who was Dr. Trench's
immediate predecessor. It is painful enough to see the old
churches and abbeys of England in the hands of aliens from the
faith, although the mass of the people have fallen away and
cannot appreciate the fearful loss they have suffered, in the
substitution of a creature of parliament in the place of the
spouse of Christ. In Ireland, where the people remain fervently
and devoutly Catholic, it is a far more painful sight to witness
their ancient shrines and holy places in the hands of the
descendants of their spoilers, who are unable to make any use,
even for Protestant worship, of the greater part of them.
{745}
While the respectable sexton, whose appearance was that of a
faded dean, was showing me the church for the consideration of a
shilling, I was busily occupied in my own mind invoking St.
Patrick to take his own again, bring back the altars, restore the
unbloody sacrifice, and cause the chants of High Mass to resound
once more within the walls of the venerable cathedral dedicated
to his honor. It is a great consolation to reflect that since
then the death-blow has been levelled at the state church by the
same power which created it. And although justice has not yet
been done to the Catholic people of Ireland, or any step taken to
restore to them the sacred property of which they have been
robbed, there is the greatest reason to hope that, in the course
of events, they will yet regain it by fair and peaceable means,
without violence or revolution.

Two other objects which interested me greatly, were the chamber
of the Irish House of Lords, preserved still in the same state as
when the last session was held in it, and the tomb of O'Connell,
at the beautiful cemetery of Glasnevin.

The next morning I bade adieu to Ireland from the deck of the
Kingstown and Holyhead steamer, and although it was only a
passing glimpse I had obtained of this fair island, I shall
always be thankful to have had even this glimpse.

Ireland has the strongest claims on the love and gratitude of all
Catholics throughout the English-speaking world. Her Celtic race,
although distinct in character, language, and history from the
people whose mother tongue is English, has been brought into such
close relations with it, and is now blending with it to such a
remarkable extent in this country, and other British colonies,
that its history becomes as interesting to us as the early
history of England. Moreover, although a handful of English and
Scotch remained true to the faith during the revolution of the
sixteenth century, it is to Ireland that is due the honor of
holding aloft the banner of religion, around which are now
grouped one fifth of the bishops owning allegiance to St. Peter.
American converts are especially bound to gratitude to that Irish
people who, above all others, have been the founders of the
Catholic Church throughout the largest portion of our republic.
For fourteen centuries, that people has handed down and witnessed
to the faith which St. Patrick brought from France and Rome in
the fifth century, when St. Augustine was yet scarcely cold in
his grave. Without disparaging the great services which other
nationalities have rendered to religion in our country, it is
undoubted that, in our portion of it, it is through the Irish
succession chiefly that we communicate with past ages, and
through their rich life-blood that our Catholicity has become
vigorous. As Catholics and as Americans, we are the natural
friends of Ireland and the Irish. One very good and pleasant way
of showing this friendship is, for those who have money enough to
travel, to spend a portion of their time and money in Ireland.
The advantage will be mutual. Those who are in search of health,
pleasure, and improvement, cannot spend a month or two more
delightfully or beneficially than on such a tour. On the other
hand, the money spent, whether in purchases or in alms to the
poor, will do great good, and the sympathy, kindness, respect for
their religion and themselves, manifested toward the people so
long borne down by the _peine forte et dure_ of oppression
and contempt, will be fully appreciated by their warm hearts, and
encourage them to hope for the full coming of that better day
whose dawning already appears in the horizon.

{746}

It is much to be desired that the good beginning already made by
several excellent writers, in publishing books on the religious
history of Ireland, should be actively followed up. A
well-written, popular history, with illustrations, of all the
principal places of interest in the secular and ecclesiastical
history of the country, with sketches of the monastic
institutions formerly flourishing; of the old churches, and
episcopal sees; and lives of the saints and great men who have
flourished, especially the martyrs, would be of the greatest
service to religion. Such a volume would enable the Catholic
tourist to visit the country with the greatest possible advantage
and pleasure, beside the more important help it would give in
strengthening the faith and devotion of the rising generation in
Ireland, and the countries to which she has sent her colonies.
The richest and most abundant field is open to literature of all
kinds, both of the lighter and the more solid character, and it
is to be hoped that it will be thoroughly explored and well
worked by those who are true and faithful to the ancient,
valiantly defended faith of the Island of Saints.

----------

            Primeval Man.
          [Footnote 196]

    [Footnote 186: _Primeval Man_. An Examination of some
    Recent Speculations. By the Duke of Argyll. New York:
    Routledge & Sons. 1869. 16mo, pp. 210.]


There are few more active or able members of the English House of
Lords or of the British ministry than the Scottish Duke of
Argyll, and, if we could forget the treason to the Stuarts and
the Scottish nation of some of his ancestors, there are few
scholars and scientific men in the United Kingdom whom we should
be disposed to treat with greater respect. He is at once a
statesman, a scientist, and a theologian; and in all three
capacities has labored earnestly to serve his country and
civilization. In politics, he is, of course, a whig, or, as is
now said, a liberal; as a theologian, he belongs to the Kirk of
Scotland, and may be regarded as a Calvinist; as a man of
science, his aim appears to be to assert the freedom and
independence of science, without compromising religion. His work
on the _Reign of Law_, reviewed and sharply criticised in
this magazine for February, 1868, was designed to combat the
atheistic tendencies of modern scientific theories, by asserting
final causes, and resolving the natural laws of the physicists
into the direct and immediate will of God.

In the present work, quite too brief and sketchy, he treats of
the primeval man, and maintains man's origin in the creative act
of God, against the developmentists and natural selectionists,
which is well, as far as it goes. He treats, also, of the
antiquity of man, and of his primeval condition. He appears
disposed to allow man a higher antiquity than we think the facts
in the case warrant; but, though he dissents, to some extent,
from the theory of the late Anglican Archbishop of Dublin, we
find him combating with great success the savage theory of Sir
John Lubbock, who maintains that man began in the lowest form of
barbarism in which he can subsist as man, and has risen to his
present state of civilization by his own spontaneous and
unassisted efforts--a theory just now very generally adopted in
the non-Catholic world, and assumed as the basis of the modern
doctrine of progress--the absurdest doctrine that ever gained
currency among educated men.

{747}

The noble duke very properly denies the origin of species in
development, and the production of new species by "natural
selection," as Darwin holds, and acceded to by Sir Charles Lyell
and an able writer in _The Quarterly_ for last April. The
duke maintains that man was created man, not developed from a
lower species, from the tadpole or monkey. But, while he asserts
the origin of species in the creative act of God, he supposes God
supplies extinct species by creating new species by successive
creative acts; thus losing the unity of the creative act, placing
multiplicity in the origin of things, and favoring that very
atheistical tendency he aims to war against. His _Reign of
Law_, though well-intended, and highly praised by our amiable
friend, M. Augustin Cochin, of _Le Correspondant_, showed us
that the noble author has failed both in his theology and
philosophy. In resolving the natural laws into the will of God
enforcing itself by power, he fails to recognize any distinction
between first cause and second cause, and, therefore, between the
natural and the supernatural. God does all, not only as first
cause, or _causa eminens_, as say the theologians, but as
the direct and immediate actor, which, of course, is pantheism,
itself only a form of atheism. Yet we know not that his grace
could have done better, with Calvinism for his theology, and the
Scottish school, as finished by Sir William Hamilton, for his
philosophy. To have thoroughly refuted the theories against which
he honorably protests, he must have known Catholic theology, and
the Christian view of the creative act.

We have no disposition, at present, to discuss the antiquity
either of man or the globe. If the fact that God, _in the
beginning_, created heaven and earth, and all things therein,
visible and invisible, is admitted and maintained, we know not
that we need, in the interest of orthodoxy, quarrel about the
date when it was done. Time began with the externization of the
divine creative act, and the universe has no relation beyond
itself, except the relation of the creature to the creator.
Considering the late date of the Incarnation, we are not disposed
to assign man a very high antiquity, and no geological or
historical facts are, as yet, established that require it for
their explanation. We place little confidence in the hasty
inductions of geologists.

But the primitive condition of man has for us a deeper interest;
and we follow the noble duke with pleasure in his able refutation
of the savage theory of Sir J. Lubbock. Sir John evidently holds
the theory of development, and that man has been developed from a
lower species. He assumes that his primitive human state was the
lowest form of barbarism in which he can subsist as man. With
regard to man's development from lower animals, it is enough to
say that development cannot take place except where there are
living germs to be developed, and can only unfold and bring out
what is contained in them. But we find in man, even in the lowest
form of savage life, elements, language or articulate speech, for
instance, of which there are no germs to be found in the animal
kingdom. We may dismiss that theory and assume at once that man
was created, and created man. But was his condition in his
primitive state that of the lowest form of barbarism? Is the
savage the primitive man, or the degenerate man?
{748}
The former is assumed in almost every scientific work we meet; it
is defended by all the advocates of the modern doctrine that man
is naturally progressive. Saint-Simon, in his _Nouveau
Christianisme_, asserts that paradise is before us, not behind
us; and even some who accept the Biblical history have advanced
so little in harmonizing their faith with what they call their
science, that they do not hesitate to suppose that man began his
career, at least after the prevarication of Adam, in downright
savagism. Even the learned Döllinger so far falls in with the
modern theory as to make polished gentilism originate in
disgusting fetichism.

The noble duke sufficiently refutes the theory of Sir John
Lubbock, but does not seem to us to have fully grasped and
refuted the assumptions on which it is founded. "His two main
lines of argument," he says, (page 5,) "connect themselves with
the two following propositions, which he undertakes to prove,
First, that there are indications of progress even among savages;
and second, that among civilized nations there are traces of
barbarism."

The first proposition is not proved or provable. The
characteristic of the savage is to be unprogressive. Some tribes
may be more or less degraded than others. The American Indian
ranks above the New Hollander; but, whether more or less
degraded, we never find savages lifting themselves by their own
efforts into even a comparatively civilized state. Niebuhr says
there is no instance on record of a savage tribe having become a
civilized people by its own spontaneous efforts; and Heeren
remarks that the description of the tribes eastward of the
Persian Gulf along the borders of the Indian Ocean, by the
companions of Alexander, applies perfectly to them as we now find
them. No germs of civilized life are to be found among them, or,
if so, they are dead, not living germs, incapable of development.
The savage is a thorough routinist, the slave of petrified
customs and usages. He shows often great skill in constructing
and managing his canoe, in making and ornamenting his bow or his
war-club; but one generation never advances on its predecessor,
and the new generation only reproduces the old. All the arts the
savage has have come, as his ideas, to a stand-still. He is
stern, sad, gloomy, as if oppressed by memory, and exhibits none
of the joyousness or frolicsomeness which we might expect from
his fresh young life, if he represented the infancy or childhood
of the race, as pretended.

Even in what are called civilized heathen nations we find a
continual deterioration, but no indication of progress in
civilization, or in those elements which distinguish civilized
from barbaric or savage life. Culture and polish may be the
concomitants of civilization, but do not constitute it. The
generations that built the pyramids, Babylon, Nineveh, Thebes,
Rome, were superior to any of their successors. No subsequent
Greek poet ever came up to Homer, and the oldest of the Vedas
surpass the powers of the Indian people in any generation more
recent than that which produced them. The Chinese cannot to-day
produce new works to compare with those of Confucius. Where now
are the once renowned nations of antiquity whose ships ploughed
every sea, and whose armies made the earth tremble with their
tread? Fallen, all have fallen, and remain only in their ruins,
and the page of the historian or song of the bard.
{749}
If these nations, so great and powerful, with many elements of a
strong civilization, could not sustain themselves from falling
into barbarism, how pretend that the lowest and most degraded
savages can, without any foreign assistance, lift themselves into
a civilized state?

The second proposition, that civilized nations retain traces of
barbarism, proves nothing to the purpose. These traces, at most,
prove only that the nations in which we detect them have passed
through a state of barbarism, as we know modern nations have; not
that barbarism was, in any form, the primitive condition of the
race. It is not pretended that no savage tribe has ever been
civilized; what is denied is, that the race began in the savage
state, or that, if it had so begun, it could ever have risen by
its own natural forces alone to civilization. There is no
evidence that the cruel and bloody customs, traces of which we
find in civilized nations, were those of the primeval man. The
polished and cultivated Romans were more savage in their customs
than the northern barbarians who overthrew their civilization,
much to the relief of mankind. When the late Theodore Parker drew
a picture of the New Zealander in order to describe Adam, he
proceeded according to his theory of progress, but without a
shadow of authority. We find a cruelty, an inhumanity, an
oppression, bloody and obscene rites, among polished nations--as
Rome, Syria, Phoenicia, and modern India--that we shall look in
vain for among downright savages; which shows that we owe them to
cultivation, to development, that is, to "development," as the
noble duke well says, "in corruption."

But these traces of so-called barbarism among civilized nations
are more than offset by remains of civilization which we find in
savage tribes. Sir J. Lubbock and others take these remains as
indications of progress among savages; but they mistake the
evening twilight deepening into darkness, for that of the morning
ushering in the day. This is evident from the fact that they are
followed by no progress. They are reminiscences, not promises. If
germs, they never germinate; but have been deprived of their
vitality. To us, paganism bears witness in all its forms that it
has degenerated from its _normna_, or type; not that it is
advancing toward it. We see in its incoherence, its incongruities
and inequalities, that it is a fall or departure from something
higher, more living and more perfect. Any one studying
Protestantism, in any of its forms, may see that it is not an
original system of religion; that it is a departure from its
type, not an approach to it; and, if we know well the Catholic
Church, we see at once that in her is the type that Protestantism
loses, corrupts, or travesties. So paganism bears unmistakable
evidence of what we know from authentic history, that, whether
with polished gentiles or with rude savages and barbarians, its
type, from which it recedes, is the patriarchal religion. We know
that it was an apostasy or falling away from that religion, the
primitive religion of the race, as Protestantism is an apostasy
or falling away from the Catholic Church. Protestantism, in the
modern world, is what gentilism was in the ancient; and as
gentilism is the religion of all savage or barbarian tribes, we
have in Protestantism a key for explaining whatever is dark or
obscure in their history. We see in Protestant nations a tendency
to lose or throw off more and more of what they retained when
they separated from the church, and which before the lapse of
many generations, if not arrested, will lead them to a hopeless
barbarism. The traces of Catholic faith we find in them are
reminiscences, not prophecies.

{750}

We find with the lowest and most degraded savages, language, and
often a language of great richness, singular beauty and
expressiveness. Terms for which savages have no use may sometimes
be wanting, but it is rare that the language cannot be made to
supply them from its resources. In the poorest language of a
savage tribe, there is always evidence of its having been the
language of a people superior in ideas and culture to the present
condition of those who speak it. Language, among savage tribes,
we take to be always indicative of a lost state far above that of
barbarism; and it not only refutes the theory of natural
progress, but, as far as it goes, proves the doctrine of
primitive instruction by the Creator, maintained by Dr. Whately,
and only partially accepted by his Grace of Argyll.

Language is no human invention, nor the product of individual or
social progress. It requires language to invent language, and
there is no individual progress out of society, and no society is
possible without language. Hence, animals may be gregarious, but
not sociable. They do not, and never can, form society. Max
Müller has disposed of the bow-wow theory, or the origin of
language in the imitation of the cries of animals, and also of
the theory that supposes it to originate in the imitation of the
sounds of nature, as buzz, rattle, etc.; for if a few words could
originate in this way, language itself could not, since there is
much more in language than words. The more common theory, just
now, and which has respectable names in its favor, is that God is
indeed the author of language, but as _causa eminens_, as he
is of all that nature does; that is, he does not directly teach
man language, but creates him with the power or faculty of
speaking, and making himself understood by articulate speech. But
this theory will not bear examination.

Between language and the faculty of using it there is a
difference, and no faculty creates its own object. The faculty of
speaking could no more be exercised without language, than the
faculty of seeing without a visible object. Where there is no
language, the faculty is and must be inoperative. The error is in
supposing that the faculty of using language is the faculty of
creating language, which it cannot be; for, till the language is
possessed and held in the mind, there is nothing for the faculty
of speech to operate on or with. To have given man the faculty of
speech, the Creator must have begun by teaching him language, or
by infusing it with the meaning of its words into his mind. We
misapprehend the very nature and office of language, if we
suppose it can possibly be used except as learned from or taught
by a teacher. Man, as second cause, can no more produce language
than he can create something from nothing. If God made us as
second causes capable of creating language, why can we not do it
now, and master it without a long and painful study? Since the
faculty must be the same in all men, why do not all men speak one
and the same dialect?

We will suppose man had language from the first. But there is no
language without discourse of reason. A parrot or a crow may be
taught to pronounce single words, and even sentences, but it
would be absurd to assert that either has the faculty of
language. To have language and be able to use it, one must have
knowledge, and the sense of the word must precede, or at least be
simultaneous with the word. Both the word and its meaning must be
associated in the mind.
{751}
How then could the Creator give man the faculty of language,
without imparting to him in some way the ideas and principles it
is fitted to express, and without expressing which it cannot be
language? He must do so, or there could be no _verbum
mentis_, and the word would be spoken without meaning.
Moreover, all language is profoundly philosophical, and conforms
more nearly to the reality of things than any human system yet
attained to, not only by savages, but by civilized and cultivated
men; and whenever it deviates from that reality, it is when it
has been corrupted by the false systems and methods of
philosophers. In all languages, we find subject, predicate, and
copula. The copula is always the verb _to be_, teaching
those who understand it that nothing existing can be affirmed
except by being and in its relation to being, that is God, who is
QUI EST. Were ignorant savages able distinctly to recognize and
embody in language the ideal formula, when no philosopher can
ever apprehend and consider it unless represented to him in
words? Impossible.

We take language, therefore, as a reminiscence among savages of a
previous civilization, and a conclusive proof that, up to a
certain point at least, the primeval man, as Dr. Whately
maintains, was and must have been instructed by his Maker. As
language is never known save as learned from a teacher, its
existence among the lowest and most degraded barbarians is a
proof that the primeval man was not, and could not have been an
untutored savage. The Anglican archbishop, having, as the
Scottish duke, no proper criterion of truth, may have included in
the primitive instruction more than it actually contained. An
error of this sort in an Anglican should surprise no one. Truth
or sound philosophy from such a source would be the only thing to
surprise us. We do not suppose Adam was directly instructed in
all the mechanic arts, in the whole science and practice of
agriculture, or in the entire management of flocks and herds, nor
that he had steam-engines, spinning-jennies, power-looms,
steamboats, railroads, locomotives, palace-cars, or even
lightning telegraphs. We do not suppose that the race, in
relation to the material order, received any direct instructions,
except of the most elementary kind, or in matters of prime
necessity, or high utility to his physical life and health. The
ornamental arts, and other matters which do not exceed man's
natural powers, may have been left to man to find out for
himself, though we have instances recorded in which some of them
were taught by direct inspiration, and many modern inventions are
only the reproduction of arts once known, and subsequently lost
or forgotten.

It is not difficult to explain how our modern advocates of
progress have come to regard the savage as the primeval man, and
not as the degenerate man. Their theory of natural progress
demands it, and they have always shown great facility in
accommodating their facts to their theories. They take also their
starting-point in heathenism of comparatively recent origin, and
study the law of human development in the history of gentilism.
They forget that gentilism originated in an apostasy from the
patriarchal or primitive moral and religious order, and that,
from the first, there remained, and always has remained, on earth
a people that did not apostatize, that remained faithful to
tradition, to the primitive instruction and wisdom.
{752}
They fail to consider that, language confounded and the race
dispersed, those who remained nearest the original seats of
civilization, and were separated by the least distance from the
people that remained faithful, became the earliest civilized or
polished gentile nations, and that those who wandered further
into the wilderness--receding further and further from light,
losing more and more of their original patrimony, cut off from
all intercourse with civilization by distance, by difference of
language, and to some extent, perhaps, by physical changes and
convulsions of the globe, degenerated gradually into barbarians
and savages. Occasionally, in the course of ages, some of these
wandering and degenerate tribes were brought under the influence
of civilization by the arts, the arms, and the religion of the
more civilized gentile nations. But in none has the gentile
civilization, in the proper sense of the term, ever risen above
what the gentiles took with them from the primitive stock, when
they apostatized. Protestant nations are below, not above, what
they were at the epoch of the Reformation. The reformers were
greatly superior to any of their successors.

But our philosophic historians take no account of these things,
nor of the fact that history shows them no barbaric ancestors of
the Egyptians, Indians, Assyrians, Babylonians, Syrians,
Phoenicians, etc. They find, or think they find, from the Greek
poets and traditions, that the ancestors of the Greeks and
Romans, each a comparatively modern people, were really savages,
and that suffices them to prove that the savage state is the
primeval state of the race! They find, also, that a marvellous
progress in civilization, under Christianity has been effected,
and what hinders them from concluding that man is
_naturally_ progressive, or that the savage is able, by his
own efforts, to lift himself into civilized life? Have not the
northern barbarians, who overthrew the Roman empire of the west,
and seated themselves on its majestic ruins, become, under the
teachings and the supernatural influences of the church, the
great civilized nations of the modern world? How, then, pretend
to deny that barbarians and savages can become civilized by their
own spontaneous efforts and natural forces alone?

Whether any savage tribe was ever civilized under gentilism is,
perhaps, doubtful; but if the philosophers of history would take
the right line, instead of a collateral line or bastard branch of
the human family, and follow it from Adam down, through the
patriarchs, the synagogue, and the Catholic Church, they would
find that there has always been a believing, a faithful, an
enlightened, and a civilized people on earth, and they never
would and never could have imagined any thing so untrue as that
man began "in the lowest form of barbarism in which he can
subsist as man." We have no indication of the existence of any
savage or barbarous tribes before the flood; nor after the flood,
till the confusion of language at Babel, and the consequent
dispersion of the human race; that is, till after the gentile
apostasy, of which they are one of the fruits. Adam, by his fall,
lost communion with God, became darkened in his understanding,
enfeebled in his will, and disordered in his appetites and
passions; but he did not lose all his science, forget all his
moral and religious instruction, and become a complete savage.
Besides, his communion with God was renewed by repentance and
faith in the promised Messiah, or incarnate Son of God, who
should come to redeem the world, and enable man to fulfil his
destiny, or attain his end.

{753}

We do not by any means deny progress. We believe in it with St.
Paul, and struggle for it in individuals and in society. We only
do not believe in progress or perfectibility by the simple forces
of nature alone, or that man is naturally progressive. Existences
have two movements or cycles: the one, their procession, by way
of creation, from God as first cause; the other, their return,
without absorption in him, to God as their final cause or
beatitude, as we have on several occasions very fully shown. In
the first cycle, man is explicated by natural generation, and his
powers are determined by his nature, or the physical laws of his
existence. In the second cycle, his explication is by
regeneration, a supernatural act; and his progress is directed
and controlled by the moral law prescribed by God as final cause,
and is limited only by the infinite, to which he aspires, and, by
the assistance of grace, may attain. The first cycle is initial,
and in it there is no moral, religious, or social progress; there
is only physical development and growth. It is under the natural
laws of the physicists, who never look any further. The second
cycle is teleological, and under the moral law, or the natural
law of the theologians and the legists. In this teleological
cycle lies the whole moral order, as distinguished from the
physical; the whole of religion; its means, influences, and ends;
and, consequently, civilization, in so far as it has any moral or
religious character, aims, or tendency.

Civilization, we are aware, is a word that has hardly a fixed
meaning, and is used vaguely, and in different senses. It is
derived from a word signifying the city--in modern language, the
state--and relates to the organization, constitution, and
administration of the commonwealth or republic. It is used
vaguely for the aggregate of the manners, customs, and usages of
city life, and also for the principles and laws of a well ordered
and well-governed civil society. We take it chiefly in the latter
sense, and understand by it the supremacy of the moral order in
secular life, the reign of law, or the subjection of the passions
and turbulent elements of human nature in the individual, the
family, and society to the moral law; or, briefly, the
predominance of reason and justice over passion and caprice in
the affairs of this world, and therefore coincident with liberty,
as distinguished from license. The race began in civilization,
because it began with a knowledge of the law of human existence,
man's origin and destiny, and of the means and conditions of
gaining the end for which he exists; and because he was placed in
the outset by his Maker in possession of these means and
conditions, so that he could not fail except through his own
fault. Those who reject, neglect, or pervert the moral order,
follow only the natural laws, separate from the communion of the
faithful, and remain in the initial cycle, gradually become
barbarians, superstitious, the slaves of their own passions,
cruel and merciless savages, even if still cultivated, refined,
and mild-mannered.

We place civilization, then, in the second cycle or movement of
existences, under the moral law, and must do so or deny it all
moral basis or moral character. What is not moral in its aims and
tendencies, or is not in the order of man's return to God as his
last end, we exclude from civilization, as no part of it, even if
called by its name. There is no civilization where there is no
state or civil polity; and there can be no state or civil polity,
though there may be force, tyranny, and slavery, out of the moral
order.
{754}
The state lies in the moral or teleological order, and is under
the moral law--the law prescribed by God as final cause. It
derives all its principles from it, and is founded and governed
by it. Its very mission is the maintenance of justice, freedom,
and order; and, as far as it goes, to keep men's faces towards
the end for which they are created. And hence the concord there
is, or should be, between the state and the church.

Most of those things, it will be seen from this, after which the
gentiles seek, and which the moderns call civilization, may be
adjuncts of civilization, in the sense of our Lord, when he says,
"Seek first the kingdom of God and his justice, and _all these
things shall be added_ unto you;" but they do not constitute
civilization, are not it, nor any part of it. Here is where
modern gentilism errs, no less than did the ancient. Take up any
of the leading journals of the day, and you will find what with
great emphasis is called modern civilization is in the initial
order, not the teleological; and is only a development and
application of the natural laws of the physicists, not the
natural or moral law of the theologians and legists. The press
and popular orators called, a few years ago, Cyrus W. Field, who
had taken a leading share in laying a submarine telegraph from
the western coast of Ireland to the eastern coast of
Newfoundland, a "second Messiah." When, after much urging and
some threats, President Lincoln proclaimed, as a war measure, the
emancipation of the slaves in certain States and parts of States
then at war with the general government, the press and orators
that approved, both at home and abroad, forthwith pronounced him
also a "second Messiah," and without stopping to inquire whether
the emancipation would be any thing more than the exchange of one
form of compulsory physical labor for another, perhaps no better.
Now, when a new Atlantic cable is laid from France to
Massachusetts, we are told in flaring capitals and lofty periods
that it is another and a glorious triumph of modern
civilization--of mind over matter, man over nature. If our San
Francisco friend succeeds in constructing an aerial ship, with
which he can navigate the air, it will be a greater triumph still
of modern civilization, and the theologians and moralists will
have to hide their heads. All this shows that civilization, by
the leaders of public opinion in our day, is placed wholly in the
physical order, and consists in the development and application
of the natural laws to the accomplishment of certain physical
ends or purposes of utility only in the first cycle of our
existence, and without the least moral significance. So
completely have we become devoted to the improvement of our
condition in the initial order, that we forget that life does not
end with it, or that the initial exists only for the
teleological, and that our development and application of the
physical laws of nature imply no progress in civilization, or the
realization of a moral ideal.

But whatever success we may have in developing and applying to
our own purposes the physical laws of man and the globe he
inhabits, we must remember that no success of that sort initiates
us into the second cycle, or the life of our return to God. To
enter that life we must be regenerated, and we can no more
regenerate than we can generate ourselves. Here, we may see why
even to civilization the Incarnation of the Word is necessary.
The hypostatic union of the divine and human natures in the
divine person of the Word carries the creative act to its summit,
completes the first cycle, and initiates the second, into which
we can enter only as we are reborn of Christ, as we were born in
the first cycle of Adam.
{755}
Hence, Christ is called the second Adam, the Lord from heaven.
Civilization, morality, salvation, are in one sense in the same
order and under one and the same law.

Progress being possible, except in the sense of physical
development, only in the movement of return to God as final
cause, and that movement originating in the Incarnation only, it
follows that those nations alone that are united to Christ by
faith and love, either united to him who was to come, as were the
patriarchs and the synagogue, before the Incarnation, or to him
in the church or the regeneration, as are Catholics since, are or
can be progressive, or even truly civilized nations. They who
assert progress by our natural forces alone, confound the first
cycle with the second, generation with regeneration, and the
natural laws, which proceed from God as first cause, with the
natural or moral law which is prescribed by God as final cause.
It is a great mistake, then, to suppose, as many do, that the
mysteries of faith, even the most recondite, have no practical
bearing on the progress of men and nations, or that it is safe,
in studying civilization, to take our point of departure in
gentilism.

In accordance with our conclusion, we find that gentile nations,
ancient or modern, are really unprogressive, save in the physical
or initial order; which is of no account in the moral or
teleological order. We deny not the achievements of Protestant
nations in the physical order; but, in relation to the end for
which man exists, they not only do not advance beyond what they
took with them from the church, but are constantly deteriorating.
They have lost the condition of moral and spiritual progress,
individually and collectively, by losing communion with Christ in
his church; they have lost Christ, in reality, if not in name;
and by losing the infallible word preserved by the church alone,
they have lost or are losing the state, civil authority itself,
and finding themselves reduced to what St. Paul calls "the
natural man." They place all their hopes in physical success,
always certain to fail in the end, when pursued for its own sake.

We have raised and we raise here no question as to what God might
have done, or how or with what powers he might have created man,
had he chosen. We only take the plan he has chosen to adopt; and
which, in his providence and grace, he carries out. In the
present decree, as say the theologians, he has subjected the
whole teleological order to one and the same law; and
civilization, morality, and Christian sanctity are not separable
in principle, and depend on one and the same fundamental law.
Gentilism divorces religion and the state from morality; and
modern heresy recognizes no intrinsic relation between them. It
tells us religion is necessary to the stability of the political
order; that Christianity is the basis of morality, and that it is
the great agent of progress; but it shows us no reason why it is
or should be so, and in its practical doctrine it teaches that it
is not so. Every thing, as far as it informs us, depends on
arbitrary appointment, and without any reason of being in the
system of things which God has seen proper to create. Hence,
people are unable to form to themselves any clear view of the
relation of religion and morality, of morality and civilization,
or to arrive at any satisfactory understanding of the purpose and
law of human existence; and they either frame to themselves the
wildest, the most fanciful, or the most absurd theories, or give
the whole up in despair, sink into a state of utter indifference,
and say, "Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die."
{756}
They simply vegetate in vice or crime, or, at best, only take
themselves to the study of the physical sciences, or the
cultivation of the fine arts. We have shown that their
difficulties and discouragements are imaginary, and arise from
ignorance of the divine plan of creation, and the mutual relation
and dependence of all its parts. One divine thought runs through
the whole, and nothing does or can stand alone. We study things
too much in their analysis, not enough in their synthesis.

----------

       Translated From The German
        Of Conrad Von Bolanden.

              Angela.


          Chapter III.

      Quod Erat Demonstrandum.


On the following day, Richard went to the weather-cross. He did
not meet Angela. She must have been unusually early; for the
flowers had evidently just been placed before the statue.

He returned, gloomy, to the house and wrote in his diary:

  "May 14th.--She did not meet me today, and probably will not
  meet me again. I should have left the book where it was; it
  might have awakened her gratitude; for I think she left it
  purposely, to give me an opportunity to make her acquaintance.

  "How many young women would give more than a book to get
  acquainted with a wealthy party. The 'Angel' is very sensitive;
  but this sensibility pleases me, because it is true womanly
  delicacy.

  "She will now avoid meeting me in this lonely road. But I will
  study her character in her father's house. I will see if she
  does not confirm my opinion of the women of our times. It was
  for this purpose alone that I accepted Siegwart's invitation.
  Angela must not play Isabella; no woman ever shall. Single and
  free from woman's yoke, I will go through the world."

He put aside the diary, and began reading Vogt's Physiological
Letters_.

At three o'clock precisely, Richard with the punctual doctor left
Frankenhöhe. They passed through the chestnut grove and through
the vineyard toward Salingen. The doctor pushed on with long
steps, his arms swinging back and forth. He was evidently pleased
with the subject he had been reading. He had, on leaving the
house, shaken Richard by the hand, and spoken a few friendly
words, but not a syllable since. Richard knew his ways, and knew
that it would take some time for him to thaw.

They were passing between Siegwart's house and Salingen when they
beheld Angela, at a distance, coming toward them. She carried a
little basket on her arm, and on her head she wore a straw hat
with broad fluttering ribbons. Richard fixed his eyes attentively
on her. This time, also, she did not wear hoops, but a dress of
modest colors. He admired her light, graceful movement and
charming figure. The blustering doctor moderated his steps and
went slower the nearer he came to Angela, and considered her with
surprise. Frank greeted her, touching his hat. She did not thank
him, as before, with a friendly greeting, but by a scarcely
perceptible inclination of the head; nor did she smile as before,
but on this account seemed to him more charming and ethereal than
ever. She only glanced at him, and he thought he observed a
slight blush on her cheeks.

{757}

These particulars were engrossing the young man's attention when
he heard the doctor say,

"Evidently the Angel of Salingen."

"Who?" said Richard in surprise.

"The Angel of Salingen," returned Klingenberg. "You are surprised
at this appellation; is it not well-merited?"

"My surprise increases, doctor; for exaggeration is not your
fashion."

"But she deserves acknowledgment. Let me explain. The maiden is
the daughter of the proprietor Siegwart, and her name is Angela.
She is a model of every virtue. She is, in the female world, what
an image of the Virgin, by one of the old masters, would be among
the hooped gentry of the present. As you are aware, I have been
often called to the cabins of the sick poor, and there the quiet,
unostentatious labors of this maiden have become known to me.
Angela prepares suitable food for the sick, and generally takes
it to them herself. The basket on her arm does service in this
way. There are many poor persons who would not recover unless
they had proper, nourishing food. To these Angela is a great
benefactor. For this reason, she has a great influence over the
minds of the sick, and the state of the mind greatly facilitates
or impedes their recovery.

"I have often entered just after she had departed, and the
beneficial influence of her presence could be still seen in the
countenances of the poor. Her presence diffused resignation,
peace, contentment, and a peculiar cheerfulness in the meanest
and most wretched hovels of poverty, where she enters without
hesitation. This is certainly a rare quality in so young a
creature. She rejoices the hearts of the children by giving them
clothes, sometimes made by herself, or pictures and the like. Her
whole object appears to be to reconcile and make all happy. I
have just seen her for the first time; her beauty is remarkable,
and might well adorn an angel. The common people wish only to
Germanize 'Angela' when they call her 'Angel.' But she is indeed
an angel of heaven to the poor and needy."

Frank said nothing. He moved on in silence toward the
weather-cross.

"I have accidentally discovered a singular custom of your
'angel,' doctor. There is at the weather-cross a Madonna of
stone. Angela has imposed upon herself the singular task of
adorning this Madonna, daily, with fresh flowers."

"You are a profane fellow, Richard. You should not speak in such
a derisive tone of actions which are the out-flowings of pious
sentiment."

"Every one has his hobby. What will not people do through
ambition? I know ladies who torture a piano for half the night,
in order to catch the tone of the prima-donna at the opera. I
know women who undergo all possible privations to be able to wear
as fine clothes, as costly furs, as others with whom they are in
rivalry. This exhaustive night-singing, these deprivations, are
submitted to through foolish vanity. Perhaps Angela is not less
ambitious and vain than others of her sex. As she cannot dazzle
these country folk with furs or toilette, she dazzles their
religious sentiment by ostentatious piety."

"Radically false!" said the doctor. "Charity and virtue are
recognized and honored not only in the country, but also in the
cities. Why do not your coquettes strive for this approval?
Because they want Angela's nobility of soul.
{758}
And again, why should Angela wish to gain the admiration of the
peasants? She is the daughter of the wealthiest man in the
neighborhood. If such was her object, she could gratify her
ambition in a very different way."

"Then Angela is a riddle to me," returned Richard. "I cannot
conceive the motives of her actions."

"Which are so natural! The maiden follows the impulses of her own
noble nature, and these impulses are developed and directed by
Christian culture, and convent education. Angela was a long time
with the nuns, and only returned home two years ago. Here you
have the very natural solution of the riddle."

"Are you acquainted with the Siegwart family?"

"No; what I know of Angela I learned from the people of
Salingen."

They arrived at the platform. Klingenberg stood silent for some
time admiring the landscape. The view did not seem to interest
Richard. His eyes rested on Angela's home, whose white walls,
surrounded by vineyards and corn-fields, glistened in the sun.

"It is worth while to come up here oftener," said Klingenberg.

"Angela's work," said Richard as he drew near the statue. The
doctor paused a moment and examined the flowers.

"Do you observe Angela's fine taste in the arrangement of the
colors?" said he. "And the forget-me-nots! What a deep religious
meaning they have."

They returned by another way to Frankenhöhe.

"Angela's pious work," began Richard after a long pause, "reminds
me of a religious custom against which modern civilization has
thus far warred in vain. I mean the veneration of saints. You, as
a Protestant, will smile at this custom, and I, as a Catholic,
must deplore the tenacity with which my church clings to this
obsolete remnant of heathen idolatry."

"Ah! this is the subject you alluded to yesterday," said the
doctor. "I must, in fact, smile, my dear Richard! But I by no
means smile at 'the tenacity with which your church clings to the
obsolete remnants of heathen idolatry.' I smile at your queer
idea of the veneration of the saints. I, as a reasonable man,
esteem this veneration, and recognize its admirable and
beneficial influence on human society."

This declaration increased Frank's surprise to the highest
degree. He knew the clear mind of the doctor, and could not
understand how it happened that he wished to defend a custom so
antagonistic to modern thought.

"You find fault," continued Klingenberg, "with the custom of
erecting statues to these holy men in the churches, the forest,
the fields, the houses, and in the market?"

"Yes, I do object to that."

"If you had objected to the lazy Schiller at Mayence, or the
robber's poet Schiller, as he raves at the theatre in Mannheim,
or to the conqueror and destroyer of Germany, Gustavus Adolphus,
whose statue is erected as an insult in a German city, then you
would be right."

"Schiller-worship has its justification," retorted Frank. "They
erect public monuments to the genial spirit of that man, to
remind us of his services to poetry, his aspirations, and his
German patriotism."

"It is praiseworthy to erect monuments to the poet. But do not
talk of Schiller's patriotism, for he had none. But let that
pass; it is not to the point. The question is, whether you
consider it praiseworthy to erect monuments to deserving and
exalted genius?"

{759}

"Without the least hesitation, I say yes. But I see what you are
driving at, doctor. I know the remorseless logic of your
inferences. But you will not catch me in your vise this time. You
wish to infer that the saints far surpassed Schiller in nobility
and greatness of soul, and that honoring them, therefore, is more
reasonable, and more justifiable, than honoring Schiller. I
dispute the greatness of the so-called saints. They were men full
of narrowness and rigorism. They despised the world and their
friends. They carried this contempt to a wonderful extent--to a
renunciation of all the enjoyments of life, to voluntary poverty
and unconditional obedience. But all these are fruits that have
grown on a stunted, morbid tree, and are in opposition to
progress, to industry, and to the enlightened civilization of
modern times. The dark ages might well honor such men, but our
times cannot. Schiller, on the contrary, that genial man, taught
us to love the pleasures of life. By his fine genius and his odes
to pleasure, he frightened away all the spectres of these
enthusiastic views of life. He preached a sound taste and a free,
unconstrained enjoyment of the things of this beautiful earth.
And for this reason precisely, because he inaugurated this new
doctrine, does he deserve monuments in his honor."

"How does it happen then, my friend," said the doctor, in a
cutting tone that was sometimes peculiar to him, "that you do not
take advantage of the modern doctrine of unconstrained enjoyment?
Why have you preserved fresh your youthful vigor, and not
dissipated it at the market of sensual pleasures? Why is your
mode of life so often a reproach to your dissolute friends? Why
do you avoid the resorts of refined pleasures? Why are the
coquettish, vitiated, hollow inclinations of a great part of the
female sex so distasteful to you? Answer me!"

"These are peculiarities of my nature; individual opinions that
have no claim to any weight."

"Peculiarities of your nature--very right; your noble nature,
your pure feelings rebel against these moral acquisitions of
progress. I begin with your noble nature. If I did not find this
good, true self in you, I would waste no more words. But because
you are what you are, I must convince you of the error of your
views. Schiller, you say, and, with him, the modern spirit,
raised the banner of unrestrained enjoyment, and this enjoyment
rests on sensual pleasures, does it not?"

"Well--yes."

"I knew and know many who followed this banner--and you also know
many. Of those whom I knew professionally, some ended their days
in the hospital, of the most loathsome diseases. Some, unsatiated
with the whole round of pleasures, drag on a miserable life, dead
to all energy, and spiritless. They drank the full cup of
pleasure, and with it unspeakable bitterness and disgust. Some
ended in ignominy and shame--bankruptcy, despair, suicide. Such
are the consequences of this modern dogma of unrestrained
enjoyments."

"All these overstepped the proper bounds of pleasure," said
Richard.

"The proper bounds? Stop!" cried the doctor. "No leaps, Richard!
Think clearly and logically. Christianity also allows enjoyment,
but--and here is the point--in certain limits. Your progress, on
the contrary, proclaims freedom in moral principles, a disregard
of all moral obligations, unrestricted enjoyment--and herein
consists the danger and delusion. I ask, Are you in favor of
restricted or unrestricted enjoyment?"

{760}

Frank hesitated. He felt already the thumbscrew of the
irrepressible doctor, and feared the inferences he would draw
from his admissions.

"Come!" urged Klingenberg, "decide."

"Sound reason declares for restricted enjoyment," said Frank
decidedly.

"Good; there you leave the unlimited sphere which godless
progress has given to the thoughts and inclinations of men. You
admit the obligation of self control, and the restraint of the
grosser emotions. But let us proceed; you speak of industry. The
modern spirit of industry has invoked a demon--or, rather, the
demoniac spirit of the times has taken possession of industry.
The great capitalists have built thrones on their money-bags and
tyrannize over those who have no money. They crush out the
work-shop of the industrious and well-to-do tradesman, and compel
him to be their slave. Go into the factories of Elfeld, or
England; you can there see the slaves of this demon
industry--miserable creatures, mentally and morally stunted,
socially perishing; not only slaves, but mere wheels of the
machines. This is what modern industry has made of those poor
wretches, for whom, according to modern enlightenment, there is
no higher destiny than to drag through life in slavery, to
increase the money-bags of their tyrants. But the capitalists
have perfect right, according to modern ideas; they only use the
means at their command. The table of the ten commandments has
been broken; the yoke of Christianity broken. Man is morally and
religiously free; and from this false liberalism the tyranny of
plutocracy and the slavery of the poor has been developed. Are
you satisfied with the development, and the principles that made
it possible?"

"No," said Frank decidedly. "I despise that miserable
industrialism that values the product more than the man. My
admissions are, how ever, far from justifying the exaggerated
notions of the saints."

"Wait a bit!" cried Klingenberg hastily. "I have just indicated
the cause of this wretched egotism, and also a
consequence--namely, the power of great capitalists and
manufacturers over an army of white slaves. But this is by no
means all. This demon of industry has consequences that will ruin
a great portion of mankind. Now mark what I say, Richard! The
richness of the subject allows me only to indicate. The
progressive development of industry brings forth products of
which past ages were ignorant, because they were not necessary
for life. The existence of these products creates a demand. The
increased wants increase the outlay, which in most cases does not
square with the income, and therefore the accounts of many close
with a deficit. The consequences of this deficit for the
happiness, and even for the morals of the family, I leave
untouched. The increased products beget luxury and the desire for
enjoyment; the ultimate consequences of which enervate the
individual and society. Hence the phenomenon, in England, that
the greater portion of the people in the manufacturing towns die
before the age of fifteen, and that many are old men at thirty.
Enervated and demoralized peoples make their existence
impossible. They go to the wall. This is a historical fact. Ergo,
modern industry separated from Christian civilization hastens the
downfall of nations."

{761}

"I cannot dispute the truth of your observations. But you have
touched only the dark side of modern industry, without mentioning
its benefits. If industry is a source of fictitious wants, it
affords, on the other hand, cheap prices to the poor for the most
necessary wants of life; for example, cheap materials for
clothing."

"Very cheap, but also very poor material," answered Klingenberg.
"In former times, clothing was dearer, but also better. They knew
nothing of the rags of the present fabrication. And it may be
asked whether that dearer material was not cheaper in the end for
the poor. When this is taken into consideration, the new material
has no advantage over the old. I will freely admit that the
inventions of modern times do honor to human genius. I
acknowledge the achievements of industry, as such. I admire the
improvements of machinery, the great revolution caused by the use
of steam, and thousands of other wonders of art. No sensible man
will question the relative worth of all these. But all these are
driven and commanded by a bad influence, and herein lies the
injury. We must consider industrialism from this higher
standpoint. What advantage is it to a people to be clothed in
costly stuffs when they are enervated, demoralized, and
perishing? Clothe a corpse as you will, a corpse it will be
still. And besides, the greatest material good does not
compensate the white factory-slaves for the loss of their
liberty. The Lucullan age fell into decay, although they feasted
on young nightingales, drank liquified pearls, and squandered
millions for delicacies and luxuries. The life of nations does
not consist in the external splendor of wealth, in easy comfort,
or in unrestrained passions. Morality is the life of nations, and
virtue their internal strength. But virtue, morality, and
Christian sentiment are under the ban of modern civilization. If
Christianity does not succeed in overcoming this demon spirit of
the times, or at least confining it within narrow limits, it will
and must drive the people to certain destruction. We find decayed
peoples in the Christian era, but the church has always rescued
and regenerated them. While the acquisitions of modern
times--industrialism, enlightenment, humanitarianism, and
whatever they may be called--are, on the one hand, of little
advantage or of doubtful worth, they are, on the other hand, the
graves of true prosperity, liberty, and morality. They are the
cause of shameful terrorism and of degrading slavery, in the
bonds of the passions and in the claws of plutocracy."

Frank made no reply.

For a while they walked on in silence.

"Let us," continued Klingenberg, "consider personally those men
whose molten images stand before us. Schiller's was a noble
nature, but Schiller wrote:

  "'No more this fight of duty, hence no longer
      This giant strife will I!
    Canst quench these passions evermore the stronger?
      Then ask not virtue, what I must deny.

  "'Albeit I have sworn, yea, sworn that never
      Shall yield my master will;
    Yet take thy wreath; to me 'tis lost for ever!
      Take back thy wreath, and let me sin my fill.'

Is this a noble and exalted way of thinking? Certainly not.
Schiller would be virtuous if he could clothe himself in the
lustre of virtue without sacrifice. The passionate impulses of
the heart are stronger in him than the sense of duty. He gives
way to his passions. He renounces virtue because he is too weak,
too languid, too listless to encounter this giant strife bravely
like a strong man. Such is the noble Schiller. In later years,
when the fiery impulses of his heart had subsided, he roused
himself to better efforts and nobler aims.

{762}

"Consider the prince of poets, Goethe. How morally naked and poor
he stands before us! Goethe's coarse insults to morality are well
known. His better friend, Schiller, wrote of him to Koerner, 'His
mind is not calm enough, because his domestic relations, which he
is too weak to change, cause him great vexation.' Koerner
answered,' Men cannot violate morality with impunity.' Six years
later, the 'noble' Goethe was married to his 'mistress' at
Weimar. Goethe's detestable political principles are well known.
He did not possess a spark of patriotism. He composed hymns of
victory to Napoleon, the tyrant, the destroyer and desolator of
Germany. These are the heroes of modern sentiment, the advance
guard of liberty, morality, and true manhood! And these heroes so
far succeeded that the noble Arndt wrote of his time, 'We are
base, cowardly, and stupid; too poor for love, too listless for
anger, too imbecile for hate. Undertaking every thing,
accomplishing nothing; willing every thing, without the power of
doing any thing.' So far has this boasted freethinking created
disrespect for revealed truth. So far this modern civilization,
which idealizes the passions, leads to mockery of religion and
lets loose the baser passions of man. If they cast these
representatives of the times in bronze, they should stamp on the
foreheads of their statues the words of Arndt:

  "'We are base, cowardly, and stupid; too poor for love, too
  listless for anger, too imbecile for hate. Undertaking every
  thing, accomplishing nothing; willing every thing, without the
  power of doing any thing."'

"You are severe, doctor."

"I am not severe. It is the truth."

"How does it happen that a people so weak, feeble, and base could
overthrow the power of the French in the world?"

"That was because the German people were not yet corrupted by
that shallow, unreal, hollow twaddle of the educated classes
about humanity. It was not the princes, not the nobility, who
overthrew Napoleon. It was the German people who did it. When, in
1813, the Germans rose, in hamlet and city, they staked their
property and lives for fatherland. But it was not the enlightened
poets and professors, not modern sentimentality, that raised
their hearts to this great sacrifice; not these who enkindled
this enthusiasm for fatherland. It was the religious element that
did it. The German warriors did not sing Goethe's hymns to
Napoleon, nor the insipid model song of 'Luetzows wilder Jagd,'
as they rushed into battle. They sang religious hymns, they
prayed before the altars. They recognized, in the terrible
judgment on Russia's ice-fields, the avenging hand of God.
Trusting in God, and nerved by religious exaltation, they took up
the sword that had been sharpened by the previous calamities of
war. So the feeble philanthropists could effect nothing. It was
only a religious, healthy, strong people could do that."

"But the saints, doctor! We have wandered from them."

"Not at all! We have thrown some light on inimical shadows; the
light can now shine. The lives of the saints exhibit something
wonderful and remarkable. I have studied them carefully. I have
sought to know their aims and efforts. I discovered that they
imitated the example of Christ, that they realized the exalted
teachings of the Redeemer. You find fault with their contempt for
the things of this world. But it is precisely in this that these
men are great.
{763}
Their object was not the ephemeral, but the enduring. They
considered life but as the entrance to the eternal destiny of
man--in direct opposition to the spirit of the times, that dances
about the golden calf. The saints did not value earthly goods for
more than they were worth. They placed them after self-control
and victory over our baser nature. Exact and punctual in all
their duties, they were animated by an admirable spirit of
charity for their fellow-men. And in this spirit they have
frequently revived society. Consider the great founders of
orders--St. Benedict, St. Dominic, St. Vincent de Paul! Party
spirit, malice, and stupidity have done their worst to blacken,
defame, and calumniate them. And yet, in a spirit of
self-sacrifice, the sons of St. Benedict came among the German
barbarians, to bring to them the ennobling doctrines of
Christianity. It was the Benedictines who cleared the primeval
forests, educated their wild denizens, and founded schools; who
taught the barbarians handiwork and agriculture. Science and
knowledge flourished in the cloisters. And to the monks alone we
are indebted for the preservation of classic literature. What the
monks did then they are doing now. They forsake home, break all
ties, and enter the wilderness, there to be miserably cut off in
the service of their exalted mission, or to die of poisonous
fevers. Name me one of your modern heroes, whose mouths are full
of civilization, humanity, enlightenment--name me one who is
capable of such sacrifice. These prudent gentlemen remain at home
with their gold-bags and their pleasures, and leave the stupid
monk to die in the service of exalted charity. It is the
hypocrisy and the falsehood of the modern spirit to exalt itself,
and belittle true worth. And what did St. Vincent de Paul do?
More than all the gold-bags together. St. Vincent, alone, solved
the social problem of his time. He was, in his time, the
preserver of society, or rather, Christianity through him. And
to-day our gold-bags tremble before the apparition of the same
social problem. Here high-sounding phrases and empty declamation
do not avail. Deeds only are of value. But the inflated spirit of
the times is not capable of noble action. It is not the modern
state--not enlightened society, sunk in egotism and gold--that
can save us. Christianity alone can do it. Social development
will prove this."

"I do not dispute the services of the saints to humanity," said
Frank. "But the question is, Whether society would be benefited
if the fanatical, dark spirit of the middle ages prevailed,
instead of the spirit of modern times?"

"The fanatical, dark spirit of the middle ages!" cried the doctor
indignantly. "This is one of those fallacious phrases. The saints
were not fanatical or dark. They were open, cheerful, natural,
humble men. They did not go about with bowed necks and downcast
eyes; but affable, free from hypocrisy, and dark, sullen
demeanor, they passed through life. Many saints were poets. St.
Francis sang his spiritual hymns to the accompaniment of the
harp. St. Charles played billiards. The holy apostle, St. John,
resting from his labors, amused himself in childish play with a
bird. Such were these men; severe toward themselves, mild to
others, uncompromising with the base and mean. They were all
abstinent and simple, allowing themselves only the necessary
enjoyments. They concealed from observation their severe mode of
life, and smiled while their shoulders bled from the discipline.
Pride, avarice, envy, voluptuouness, and all the bad passions,
were strangers to them; not because they had not the inclinations
to these passions, but because they restrained and overcame their
lower nature.

{764}

"I ask you, now, which men deserve our admiration--those who are
governed by unbounded selfishness, who are slaves to their
passions, who deny themselves no enjoyment, and who boast of
their degrading licentiousness; or those who, by reason of a pure
life, are strong in the government of their passions, and
self-sacrificing in their charity for their fellowmen?"

"The preference cannot be doubtful," said Frank. "For the saints
have accomplished the greatest, they have obtained the highest
thing, self-control. But, doctor, I must condemn that
saint-worship as it is practised now. Human greatness always
remains human, and can make no claims to divine honor."

The doctor swung his arms violently. "What does this reproach
amount to? Where are men deified? In the Catholic Church? I am a
Protestant, but I know that your church condemns the deification
of men."

"Doctor," said Frank, "my religious ignorance deserves this
rebuke."

"I meant no rebuke. I would only give conclusions. Catholicism is
precisely that power that combats with success against the
deifying of men. You have in the course of your studies read the
Roman classics. You know that divine worship was offered to the
Roman emperors. So far did heathen flattery go, that the emperors
were honored as the sons of the highest divinity--Jupiter.
Apotheosis is a fruit of heathen growth; of old heathenism and of
new heathenism. When Voltaire, that idol of modern heathen
worship, was returning to Paris in 1778, he was in all
earnestness promoted to the position of a deity. This remarkable
play took place in the theatre. Voltaire himself went there.
Modern fanaticism so far lost all shame that the people kissed
the horse on which the philosopher rode to the theatre. Voltaire
was scarcely able to press through the crowd of his worshippers.
They touched his clothes--touched handkerchiefs to them--plucked
hairs from his fur coat to preserve as relics. In the theatre
they fell on their knees before him and kissed his feet. Thus
that tendency that calls itself free and enlightened deified a
man--Voltaire, the most trifling scoffer, the most unprincipled,
basest man of Christendom.

"Let us consider an example of our times. Look at Garibaldi in
London. That man permitted himself to be set up and worshipped.
The saints would have turned away from this stupidity with
loathing indignation. But this boundless veneration flattered the
old pirate Garibaldi. He received 267,000 requests for locks of
his hair, to be cased in gold and preserved as relics. Happily he
had not much hair. He should have graciously given them his
moustaches and whiskers."

Frank smiled. Klingenberg's pace increased, and his arms swung
more briskly.

"Such is the man-worship of modern heathenism. This
humanitarianism is ashamed of no absurdity, when it sinks to the
worship of licentiousness and baseness personified."

"The senseless aberrations of modern culture do not excuse saint
worship. And you certainly do not wish to excuse it in that way.
There is, however, a reasonable veneration of human greatness.
Monuments are erected to great men. We behold them and are
reminded of their genius, their services; and there it stops. It
occurs to no reasonable man to venerate these men on his knees,
as is done with the saints."

{765}

"The bending of the knee, according to the teaching of your
church, does not signify adoration, but only veneration," replied
Klingenberg. "Before no Protestant in the world would I bend the
knee; before St. Benedict and St. Vincent de Paul I would
willingly, out of mere admiration and esteem for their greatness
of soul and their purity of morals. If a Catholic kneels before a
saint to ask his prayers, what is there offensive in that? It is
an act of religious conviction. But I will not enter into the
religious question. This you can learn better from your Catholic
brethren--say from the Angel of Salingen, for example, who
appears to have such veneration for the saints."

"You will not enter into the religious question; yet you defend
saint-worship, which is something religious."

"I do not defend it on religious grounds, but from history,
reason, and justice. History teaches that this veneration had,
and still has, the greatest moral influence on human society. The
spirit of veneration consists in imitating the example of the
person venerated. Without this spirit, saint-worship is an idle
ceremony. But that true veneration of the saints elevates and
ennobles, you cannot deny. Let us take the queen of saints, Mary.
What makes her worthy of veneration? Her obedience to the Most
High, her humility, her strength of soul, her chastity. All these
virtues shine out before the spiritual eyes of her worshippers as
models and patterns of life. I know a lady, very beautiful, very
wealthy; but she is also very humble, very pure, for she is a
true worshipper of Mary. Would that our women would venerate Mary
and choose her for a model! There would then be no coquettes, no
immodest women, no enlightened viragoes. Now, as saint-worship is
but taking the virtues of the saints as models for imitation, you
must admit that veneration in this sense has the happiest
consequences to human society."

"I admit it--to my great astonishment, I must admit it," said
Richard.

"Let us take a near example," continued Klingenberg. "I told you
of the singular qualities of Angela. As she passed, I beheld her
with wonder. I must confess her beauty astonished me. But this
astonishing beauty, it appears to me, is less in her charming
features than in the purity, the maidenly dignity of her
character. Perhaps she has to thank, for her excellence, that
same correct taste which leads her to venerate Mary. Would not
Angela make an amiable, modest, dutiful wife and devoted mother?
Can you expect to find this wife, this mother among those given
to fashions--among women filled with modern notions?"

While Klingenberg said this, a deep emotion passed over Richard's
face. He did not answer the question, but let his head sink on
his breast.

"Here is Frankenhöhe," said the doctor. "As you make no more
objections, I suppose you agree with me. The saints are great,
admirable men; therefore they deserve monuments. They are models
of virtue and the greatest benefactors of mankind; therefore they
deserve honor. '_Quod erat demonstrandum_.'"

"I only wonder, doctor, that you, a Protestant, can defend such
views."

"You will allow Protestants to judge reasonably," replied
Klingenberg. "My views are the result of careful study and
impartial reflection."

{766}

"I am also astonished--pardon my candor--that with such views you
can remain a Protestant."

"There is a great difference between knowing and willing, my
young friend. I consider conversion an act of great heroism, and
also as a gift of the highest grace."

Richard wrote in his diary:

  "If Angela should be what the doctor considers her! According
  to my notions, such a being exists only in the realm of the
  ideal. But if Angela yet realizes this ideal? I must be
  certain. I will visit Siegwart to-morrow."

            To Be Continued.

----------

           From The German

        The Flight Into Egypt.


  Greenwood tent, new splendors wear,
     Let thy festal tree-tops glisten;
     Stag, come here to look and listen;
  For the world's joy draweth near!
     Flowers, unclose your lids, that clearer
     Light your dew-wet eyes may mirror.
        Blossom! blossom!
	On her bosom
  Lo! the mother bears the Child!

  Glad-winged birds, from forest dim,
     Hither fly, where peace long-sought is;
     Sing melodious jubilates,
  With the blessèd cherubim.
     Morning airs, come quick! with tender
     Thrill breathe on the branches slender;
        Breathe and hover!
	Rough ways over
   Comes the mother with the Child!

   Stag, birds, trees, and breezes blest,
      Triumph in harmonious numbers--
      Fear not to disturb the slumbers
   Of the Babe upon her breast.
      Gently lull him with your voices,
      O'er whom all the world rejoices!
         Sing, adore him!
         Bend before him!
   Hail the mother with the Child!

----------

{767}

  Hon. Thomas Dongan, Governor of New York. [Footnote 187]

    [Footnote 187: Authorities: O'Callaghan's _Documentary and
    Colonial Histories of New York_. Bancroft's _History of
    the United States_. Lingard's _History of England_.
    Bishop Bayley's _History of the Catholic Church in New
    York_. O'Callaghan's _Journal of the Legislature of New
    York_, especially a note thereto, by George H. Moore, Esq.
    Shea's _History of the Catholic Missions_. Campbell's
    _Life and Times of Archbishop Carroll_. DeCourcy and
    Shea's _Catholic Church in the United States_, etc.]


The student of Catholic history may be permitted to recall, with
an honorable pride, the illustrious name and recount the eminent
public services of Colonel Thomas Dongan, who, while the only
Catholic, was one of the most able and accomplished, of the
colonial governors of New York. His life and exploits are but
little known, even among Catholics; and while his merits place
him without a superior in the honored list of our governors, it
yet remains, for the Catholic historian especially, to rescue his
fame from obscurity, and to weave together, from scattered
historical fragments, the story of a career at once brilliant and
useful, checkered and romantic. As soldier, ruler, exile,
nobleman, or Christian gentleman, he is equally entitled to a
distinguished place among the remarkable men of his age. His
position was a most difficult and delicate one--a Catholic ruler
over Protestant subjects, at a time when religious rivalries and
animosities formed the mainspring of public and private political
action. It is no small achievement that, in so trying an office,
he acquitted himself to the satisfaction of friend and foe; and
that Protestant and Catholic historians unite in commending his
wise and honorable course. As a patriot, he has won our national
gratitude; for it is to his courage and address that we are
indebted for the invaluable service of having extended the
northern frontier of our republic to the great lakes. His
devotion to civil and religious liberty places his name with that
of Calvert, in the hearts of Catholics; while both should be
hallowed together by all lovers of free government.

The subject of this memoir was descended from a noble and ancient
Irish family, distinguished for an energy of character and
enterprising spirit which he did not allow to expire with his
ancestors. His father was Sir John Dongan, baronet, of
Castletoun, in the county of Kildare, Ireland. He was also nephew
to Richard Talbot, Earl of Tyrconnel, who figured conspicuously
in the reign of Charles II., as he did in that of James II. This
Earl of Tyrconnel, uncle to Governor Dongan, was one of those
against whom Titus Oates informed. He was made
lieutenant-governor of Ireland, and afterward lord deputy, on the
recall of Clarendon, by James II.; and he aimed at rendering
Ireland independent of England, in the event of the Prince of
Orange succeeding in his efforts to gain the throne. In
furtherance of his patriotic designs, Earl Tyrconnel solicited of
James permission to hold an Irish parliament; but that monarch,
suspecting his purpose, rejected the measure.

Thomas Dongan was born in 1634; and, after being well-grounded in
his religion, and in secular learning, was trained to the
profession of a soldier. He entered the military service of
France, and served as colonel of a French regiment, under Louis
XIV.[Footnote 188]

    [Footnote 188: We find his name rendered in French documents
    as _Colonel D'Unguent_.]

{768}

His services there were so highly prized that it was with great
difficulty and at considerable sacrifice that he was able to
withdraw from it. In 1677-8, after the English parliament had
forced Charles II. to break with Louis XIV., an order was issued
commanding all British subjects in the service of France to
return home. Colonel Dongan obeyed the order of his own
sovereign; and he himself informs us that he was obliged to quit
"that honorable and advantageous post, and resisted the
temptations of greater preferment, then offered him, if he would
continue there; for which reason the French king commanded him to
quit France in forty-eight hours, and refused to pay him a debt
of sixty-five thousand livres, then due him for recruits and
arrears, upon an account stated by the intendant of Nancy." No
subsequent efforts of Colonel Dongan succeeded in appeasing the
French king's resentment, or in securing the payment of his
claim.

On his return from the French service to England, he was
appointed, by Charles II., a general officer in the English army,
then destined for Flanders, and had an annual pension of £500
settled on him for life, in consideration of his losses in
France. But it is regarded as quite certain that he did not go to
Flanders under this appointment, to defend and support the
English garrisons in that country, then menaced by the French;
for, in the same year, he was appointed lieutenant-governor of
Tangier, a position which he accepted, and continued to fill
until the year 1680.

At this time, the American province of New York was under the
proprietary government of James, Duke of York, whose deputy's
administration of the affairs of the colony had produced great
discontent among the people. His governor, Andros, had been
recalled to answer the charges of the people; had returned to New
York, acquitted by the duke, and resumed the imposition of the
heavy system of taxation which had weighed so heavily on the
citizens, and produced such discontent. But the resistance of the
people, not stopping short even of calling in question the
supreme authority of the duke, seconded by the remonstrances of
William Penn, finally had the desired effect. Andros was
recalled, and Colonel Dongan appointed to succeed him as governor
of New York. His commission from the Duke of York, bearing date
September 30th, 1682, contains the following appointing clause:

  "And whereas, I have conceived a good opinion of the integrity,
  prudence, ability and fittness of Coll. Thomas Dongan, to be
  employed as my Lieutent there, I have therefore thought fitt to
  constitute and appoint him ye said Coll. Thos to be my Lt and
  Govr within ye lands, islands, places aforesaid (except the
  said East and West New Jersey) to performe & execute all and
  every the powers wch are by the said lettrs pattents granted
  unto me to be executed by me, my Deputy, Agent or Assignes."

The written instructions received by the new governor from the
Duke of York, bearing date January 27th, 1683, direct him: First,
to call together the council of the duke, consisting of
Fredericke Phillipps, Stephen Courtland, and other eminent
inhabitants, not exceeding ten councillors. Second, and most
important of all, to issue warrants to the sheriffs of the
counties for an election of a general assembly of all the
freeholders of the province, to pass laws "for the good weale and
government of the said Colony and its Dependencyes, and of all
inhabitants thereof."
{769}
The assembly was not to exceed eighteen members, and was to
assemble in the city of New York. Third, to give or withhold his
assent to such laws as the general assembly might pass, as he
might approve or disapprove of the same, etc. Fourth, the laws so
passed to be permanent. Fifth, "And I doe hereby require and
command you yt noe man's life, member, freehold, or goods, be
taken away or harmed in any of the places undr yor government but
by established and knowne laws not repugnant to, but as nigh as
may be agreable to the laws of the kingdome of England." Sixth,
to repress "drunkennesse and debauchery, swearing and blasphemy,"
and to appoint none to office who may be given to such vices; and
to encourage commerce and merchants. Seventh, to exercise general
discretionary powers, except that of declaring war, without the
duke's consent. The eighth relates to assessment of the estates
of persons capable of serving as jurors. Ninth, to establish
courts of justice, and to sell the royal lands. Tenth, to pardon
offences. Eleventh, to erect custom-houses and other public
buildings. Twelfth, to organize the militia. Thirteenth, to
settle the boundaries of the province. Fourteenth, to encourage
planters, and to lay no tax on commerce, except according to
established laws. Fifteenth, to purchase Indian lands. Sixteenth
relates to the granting of a liberal charter to the city of New
York. Seventeenth, to send reports, by every ship, of the
progress of the colony, and to regulate internal trade; and
eighteenth, to devote his life, time, etc., to the faithful
discharge of his duties.

The admirable document of which the foregoing is a brief
synopsis, containing as it does the general principles of all
good government, was, no doubt, designed to meet the former evils
complained of by the people of New York. That the influence of
Colonel Dongan, during the eight months or so that he remained in
England between his appointment and departure for New York, was
wholesomely exerted in impressing a liberal and enlightened
character upon the policy and instructions of the home
government, cannot be doubted. No one was better fitted by
experience, good judgment, and inclination, for such a task. The
document itself, the most just and liberal that ever emanated
from an English sovereign, goes far to vindicate the name and
character of James II.

The new governor arrived at New York on the 25th of August, 1683,
and entered upon the duties of his office--duties rendered more
delicate and embarrassing by the excitement through which the
community had just passed, the high and extravagant expectations
built upon a new appointment, made with the view of remedying old
complaints, and by the fact that he himself was a professed and
zealous Catholic, while the community whose destinies he was
commissioned to guide were almost without exception Protestants,
and peculiarly inclined, at that time, to look with distrust and
hatred upon all "Papists." That such was the case, we are told by
all the historians of the state and city; but that, by his
address, good government, and enlightened policy, Governor Dongan
soon removed this difficulty, we have the same authority for
asserting. Smith says of him, "He was a man of integrity,
moderation, and genteel manners, and, though a professed papist,
may be classed among the best of our governors;" and adds "that
he surpassed all his predecessors in a due attention to our
affairs with the Indians, by whom he was highly esteemed."
{770}
Valentine writes, that "he was a Roman Catholic in his religious
tenets, which was the occasion of much remark on the part of the
Protestant inhabitants of the colony. His personal character was
in other respects not objectionable to the people, and he is
described as a man of integrity, moderation, and genteel manners,
and as being among the best of the governors who had been placed
in charge of this province." And Booth also writes of him, "He
was of the Roman Catholic faith, a fact which rendered him, at
first, obnoxious to many; but his firm and judicious policy, his
steadfast integrity, and his pleasing and courteous address, soon
won the affections of the people, and made him one of the most
popular of the royal governors." Colden, in his history of the
Five Nations, calls him an "honest gentleman," and "an active and
prudent governor."

The governor at once organized his council, which, as well from
necessity as from prudent policy, was composed of gentlemen of
the Dutch Reformed and English churches. Regarding his functions
as purely civil, he did not, in the government of the colonists,
who were Protestants, advance his views upon subjects not
connected with civil government offensively before them, as they
feared he would do. He might have induced over from the old
country members of his own church to form his council; but
neither duty nor prudence recommended this measure. Catholics,
however, were no longer excluded from office, nor from the
practice of their religion. The governor had a chapel, in which
himself, his suite, his servants, and all the Catholics of the
province, could attend divine service according to their own
creed. A Jesuit father, who accompanied him from England, was his
chaplain.

He proceeded at once, according to his instructions, to issue his
warrants for the election of a general assembly. This was an
auspicious beginning of his administration, as it was a
concession from the Duke of York for which the people had long
struggled. This illustrious body, consisting of the governor, ten
councillors, and seventeen representatives elected by the people,
assembled in the city of New York, on the 17th of October, 1683.
As he was the first, so he was the most liberal and friendly
royal governor, that presided over the popular legislatures of
New York; and the contests between arbitrary power and popular
rights, which distinguished the administration of future
governors, down to the Revolution, did not have their origin
under his administration. The first act of the general assembly
was the framing of a charter of liberties--the first guaranty of
popular government in the province; and Governor Dongan, as he
was the first governor to sign the charter of civil and religious
liberty in New York, was, not many years afterward, the first
citizen persecuted for his religion after its adoption. This
noble charter ordained,

  "That supreme legislative power should for ever reside in the
  governor, council, and people, met in general assembly; that
  every freeholder and freeman might vote for representatives
  without restraint; that no freeman should suffer but by the
  judgment of his peers, and that all trials should be by a jury
  of twelve men; that no tax should be assessed, on any pretext
  whatever, but by the consent of the assembly; that no seaman or
  soldier should be quartered on the inhabitants against their
  will; that no martial law should exist; that no person,
  professing faith in God, by Jesus Christ, should, at any time,
  be in any way disquieted or questioned for any difference of
  opinion in matters of religion."

{771}

It was provided that the general assemblies were to convene at
least triennially; new police regulations were established;
Sunday laws were enacted; tavern-keepers were prohibited from
selling liquor except to travellers; children were prohibited
from playing in the street, citizens from working, and Indians
and negroes from assembling, on the Sabbath; twenty cartmen were
licensed, on condition that they should repair the highways
gratis, when called on by the mayor, and cart the dirt from the
streets beyond the limits of the city. The inhabitants were
required to sweep the dirt of the streets together every Saturday
afternoon, preparatory to its removal by the cartmen. On the 8th
of December, 1683, the city was divided into six wards, each of
which was entitled to elect an alderman and councilman annually,
to represent them in the government of the city. The appointment
of the mayor was reserved to the governor and council, and was
not made elective by the people until after the American
Revolution.

In 1685, on the death of Charles, the Duke of York succeeded to
the English crown, under the title of James II. Governor Dongan,
by special orders from the home government, proclaimed King James
throughout the province. Indian and French disturbances having
ceased, all was now quiet along the northern frontier, and the
governor, skilfully availing himself of the opportunity, caused
the king's arms to be put upon all the Indian castles along the
Great Lake, and they, he writes to Secretary Blathwayt, submitted
willingly to the king's government. In 1686, Governor Dongan
received a new commission, bearing date on the 10th of June of
that year. This was a very different document from his first
commission, and manifests the change in favor of arbitrary power
which took place in the sentiments and policy of James on his
accession to the throne. The general assembly was abolished and
the legislative power was vested in the governor and council,
subject to the approval of the king; they were also authorized to
proclaim and enforce martial law, to impose taxes, etc. It has
been erroneously stated by one of our historians that James, in
this document, instructed Governor Dongan "to favor the
introduction of the Roman Catholic religion into the province--a
course of policy which the governor, himself a Catholic, was
reluctant to adopt;" whereas, the only provision therein relating
to religion is in these words:

  "And wee doe, by these presents, will, require, and command you
  to take all possible care for the Discountenance of Vice and
  encouragement of Virtue and good-living, that by such example
  the Infidels may bee invited and desired to partake of the
  Christian Religion."

According to this commission, the general assembly was dissolved
on the 6th of August, 1685, and no other was convened during the
reign of James. Notwithstanding this radical change in the
organic law of the province, the mild, liberal, and judicious
administration of the governor caused the exercise of arbitrary
power to be but lightly felt by the people.

In 1686, Governor Dongan signalized his administration by
granting, in the name and by the authority of the king, the
celebrated charter of the city of New York known as the _Dongan
Charter_, bearing date the 22d of April of that year. This
document constitutes to this day the basis and foundation of the
municipal laws, rights, privileges, public property, and
franchises of the city. It was confirmed and renewed by Governor
Montgomery, on the 15th day of January, 1730, in the reign of
George II.
{772}
This charter was granted on the petition of the mayor and common
council of the city of New York, addressed "To the Right
Honorable Colln. Dongan, Esqr., Lieutennant & Governor & Vice
Admirall under his Royall Highness, James Duke of York and
Albany, &c., of New York and Dependencyes in America." In this
petition are recited the ancient privileges and incorporation of
the city, and especially the fact that the whole island of
Manhattan had been made a part of the corporation, and all the
inhabitants thereof were subject to the government of the city;
and praying a re-grant and confirmation of the same, and of all
their ancient rights and privileges. The charter itself confirms
all the ancient franchises and grants to the city, and confers
many new ones upon it; it grants to the city the waste or
unappropriated lands on the island, and concedes the right of
local or municipal legislation, the ferries, markets, docks,
etc., and covers thoroughly the whole ground of municipal
government. It would seem, from an endorsement made on the
petition in the office of the home government, by the secretary
through whose hands it passed, that the new charter should be
granted on the express condition that the old charter be
surrendered; "otherwise, they may keep all their Old Priviledges
by virtue of that, and take ye additions by this new one, without
Subjecting their Officers, &c., to the approbation & Refusall,
&c., of ye governors."

Among other public measures and acts of Governor Dongan may be
mentioned, that he proposed to the home government the
establishment of post-offices, or "post-houses," as they were
called, all along the Atlantic coast within the English
dominions, and the establishment of a mint. French Protestants,
resorting to the colony for trade or business of any kind, were
not to be molested. The fort was supported for one year at his
private expense, during the insufficiency of the public revenue
under Collector Santen. He obtained a release from the Ranseleers
to the lands in Albany, and then granted a charter to that town;
and he endeavored to bring about the union of New Jersey and
Connecticut, under one and the same government with New York, as
a measure of public safety and strength. In 1686, the governor's
salary was raised from £400 to £600 per annum. The governor's
residence was at the fort, and there was attached to the office
the products or rents of a farm, called, at various times, the
governor's, duke's, or king's farm, and of another smaller piece
of land, called the queen's garden, which were subsequently
granted to and remain to this day the property of the corporation
of Trinity Church. It may also be mentioned, as an evidence of
Governor Dongan's popularity, that there is to be found, in a
list of the titles of acts passed by the general assembly in
1684, the following title, "A Bill for a present to the
Governor."

We are told by the historians that "considerable improvements
were made in the city in Governor Dongan's time." [Footnote 189]

    [Footnote 189: Valentine.]

The city wall, erected in 1653, on the present line of Wall
street, which derived its name from this circumstance, ran
through the farm of Jan Jansen Damen; and from Broadway to Pearl
street, the lands north of the wall were, in Governor Dongan's
time, in possession of Damen's heirs, who were now induced to
part with the same, so that the wall was removed and these
valuable lots brought at once into the market, and were soon
improved.
{773}
Afterward, Governor Dongan determined still further to enlarge
the city, to demolish the old fortifications, which were in a
state of decay, and to erect new defences further out. Wall
street was laid out on the site of the old city wall. "The street
was afterwards favored by the erection of the city hall on the
site of the present custom-house, and of Trinity Church, facing
its westerly extremity, and soon became one of principal streets
of the city." In 1687, a new street was laid out between
Whitehall street and Old Slip, and the corporation sold the lots
on condition that the purchasers should build the street out
toward the water and protect it against the washing of the tide.
These improvements were not carried into effect until several
years afterward. This is the present Water street. In the second
year of Governor Dongan's administration, 1684, the vessels of
New York consisted of three barques, three brigantines,
twenty-six sloops, and forty-six open boats; facts which convey
some notion of the commerce and prosperity of New York at that
time.

Governor Dongan manifested great activity and energy in the
conduct of public affairs. His report on the condition of the
colony is a document replete with intelligence, vigor, and
practical experience, and shows that no part of the colony,
however remote, escaped his attention and care; and no branch of
the public service was neglected by him. Mr. Santen, the
collector of the port, became a defaulter to the amount of £3000,
and was the occasion of great embarrassment and loss to Governor
Dongan, who, however, on his part, acted promptly in the
premises, by seizing the books of the delinquent official,
causing him to be arrested and brought before the council for
trial, and, on his proving refractory, sending him to England.
While in England, the displaced collector preferred charges
against Governor Dongan, who defended himself in that able and
conclusive document, or report, on the condition of the colony,
addressed to the lords of the home government, to which allusion
has just been made. The following extract will show how
characteristically he defended himself against one of Mr.
Santen's charges:

  "To the Tenth: Concerning my Covetousness, as hee is pleased to
  term it. Here, (if Mr. Santen speaks true, in saying I have
  been covetous,) it was in the management of this small Revenue
  to the best advantage, and had Mr. Santen been as just as I
  have been careful, the King had not been in debt, and I had
  more in my pocket than now I have."

This document also shows how active Governor Dongan was to secure
the beaver and other Indian trade for the province; his zeal
would not stop short of confining the French to the other side of
the great lakes, and William Penn and his people south of a line
drawn from a point on the Delaware "to the falls in the
Susquehanna." [Footnote 190]

    [Footnote 190: Wyalusing Falls, Bradford County,
    Pennsylvania.]

The report is also full of valuable suggestions on the future as
well as the past and present government of the province, and
contains valuable statistics relating to the courts of justice,
the public revenues, trade and commerce, population, the Indians,
shipping, agriculture, and every other public interest.

Governor Dongan distinguished his administration in an especial
manner by his attention to the relations and interests of the
province connected with the Indian tribes within and adjoining
it; and he is admitted by historians to have surpassed all his
predecessors in this department of public affairs, and to have
been held in the greatest esteem by the Indians themselves.
{774}
While seeking their alliance, their trade, and their submission
to his government, he ever treated them with frankness,
generosity, and true friendship. The grateful savages always
addressed him by the friendly name of "Corlear;" [Footnote 191]
"and the name of 'Dongan, the white father,' was remembered in
the Indian lodges long after it had grown indifferent to his
countrymen at Manhattan." His master-stroke of Indian policy was
in gaining the alliance of the Five Nations, securing their
submission to the English government in preference to that of
France, and carrying our northern frontier to the great lakes.

    [Footnote 191: This was the name of one of the old Dutch
    inhabitants, who had conferred a great boon upon the Indians,
    and by his timely intervention saved a large number of them
    from a contemplated massacre in one of their wars. Whenever
    afterward they wished to address a person in terms of strong
    attachment and confidence, they called him "_Corlear_."]

The Five Nations were a confederacy of the five most powerful
Indian tribes of the north: the Mohawks, the Oneidas, the
Onondagas, the Cayugas, and the Senecas. They were usually
called, by the French, by the name of "Iroquois." Their
confederation dates back beyond the limits of their history, as
known to the white race; and both, like that of other nations in
their origin, are only known to us through dim traditions and
fabulous exaggerations. They were united when the French came to
Canada; for we are told, that, "when Champlain arrived in Canada,
he found them united in a war against the Adirondacks, or
Algonquins; and, as he settled in the country of the latter, he
accompanied them in one of their hostile incursions, and, by the
assistance of the French, a body of the Five Nations was
defeated." They long felt a resentment for this act of hostility,
although they received missionaries from the French, and, in a
great measure, embraced the Christian faith. On the arrival of
the Dutch, a trade sprang up between the inhabitants of New
Amsterdam and the Indians of the Five Nations; and the latter, by
exchanging their furs for fire-arms, became more powerful and
more terrible to their enemies. It does not seem that the Dutch
government laid any claim to their country, or to their
allegiance; though Governor Dongan, in his controversy with the
French, claimed that his pretensions were based upon a Dutch
title. Their form of government was federal, like our own. Each
nation had its own separate government, for the regulation of
their local and individual affairs, and a general government in
all things relating to their common interests. They were the most
powerful, the most permanent, and the most capable Indian
organization in America. Like the Romans, they incorporated the
nations they conquered into the confederacy, with equal rights;
or, if this were impracticable, they destroyed their enemies
entirely. Such was their power that they exacted tribute from
neighboring tribes. In 1715, the Tuscaroras of North Carolina
were aggregated to the original confederacy, which was thereafter
known by the name of the Six Nations.

Governor Dongan soon perceived the importance of securing the
friendship and alliance of these powerful and warlike tribes. The
Dutch had made a treaty of peace with the Five Nations, which had
never been openly broken; but as it was necessary to keep
treaties with the Indians constantly renewed, in order to prevent
them from being forgotten; and, as the Indians had considered
themselves, on several occasions, slighted by the English
governors, they had more than once invaded the territories of the
latter.
{775}
The French in Canada, as the first Europeans who had visited
their country, claimed it and the allegiance of the tribes.
French missionaries, men of heroic self-sacrifice and profound
piety, were among them, preaching the Gospel, receiving their
confessions of faith, offering up the Christian sacrifice in
their midst, and doing all in their power to improve their
temporal and spiritual condition. It was natural, it was probably
necessary, that these pious missionaries should bring their
flocks in contact with their own government; and, while their
mission and holy office among the Indians were utterly divested
of all political or worldly motives, they could not avoid being
powerful instruments, with the French government, in securing the
advancement of French interests among those nations. Governor
Dongan, on the other hand, had by his kindness and frankness
completely gained their confidence, and was succeeding well in
cementing the relations between himself and the Five Nations. He
soon discovered the presence of the French missionaries in their
midst an obstacle to this policy; and, at the same time, as a
Catholic, he felt a profound interest in their religious
enlightenment, and in their adherence to the church of which he
was himself a devoted member. To avoid the conflict which might
arise between the duty he owed, on the one hand, to his church
and his conscience, and, on the other, to his king, he resolved
on the plan of insisting upon his claim to the allegiance of the
Five Nations, claiming the country to the great lakes, and upon
the withdrawal of the French missionaries, and the substitution
of English Jesuit missionaries in their place. Though receiving
little encouragement from the home government in these measures,
Governor Dongan carried them so far into effect as to secure the
withdrawal of the French missionaries from three of the Five
Nations, and to obtain the services of English Jesuits at New
York, destined for the Indian missions, in the place of French
priests. Father Harrison arrived in New York in 1685, and Father
Gage arrived there in 1686. But, in consequence of their
ignorance of the Indian language, they were compelled to remain
in the city while studying it and preparing for the mission. War,
too, soon rendered the field of their missionary zeal and labor
inaccessible to them, and the sequel of events shows that it was
neither their own nor the good fortune of the Indians that they
should ever reach it. A Catholic writer [Footnote 192] thus
alludes to Governor Dongan's position on this, to him, delicate
subject:

  "There can be no doubt that Governor Dongan, on coming among
  the New Yorkers, found that if the measures for converting the
  Indians were to proceed, the political interests of his own
  country required that English missionaries should take the
  place of the French Jesuits, some of whom were incorporated
  among the Five Nations. The historians of New York assert that
  no previous governor had made himself so well acquainted with
  Indian affairs, or conducted the intercourse between the
  settlers and Indians with so much ability and regard to the
  interests of the subjects of Great Britain; while, at the same
  time, he was held in high esteem by the Indians themselves. And
  it is mentioned, to his honor, by the same historians, who are
  unsparing in their condemnation of his religion, that he did
  not permit the identity of his faith with that of the Catholic
  missionaries of France to prevent him from opposing their
  residence among the Indian tribes in his province; their
  influence being calculated to promote the interests and policy
  of France, and weaken the authority of the English. But it was
  loyalty to his own government, and a just regard for the
  interests confided to him, and not indifference to the pious
  work of Christianizing the Indians, that induced Governor
  Dongan to oppose the missions of the French."

    [Footnote 192: Campbell's _Life and Times of Archbishop
    Carroll_.]

{776}


Another Catholic author [Footnote 193] thus writes on the same
subject:

    [Footnote 193: Shea's _Hist. Cath. Missions_.]

  "The English colony of New York had now passed under the sway
  of Colonel Dongan, one of the most enterprising and active
  governors that ever controlled the destinies of any of the
  English provinces. His short but vigorous administration showed
  that he was not only thoroughly acquainted with the interests
  of England, but able to carry them out. A Catholic, who had
  served in the French armies, he was biassed neither by his
  religion nor his former services in the duties of the station
  now devolved upon him. ... Claiming for England all the country
  south of the great lakes, he it was who made them a boundary.
  His first step was to extend the power of New York over the
  five Iroquois cantons, and bind those warlike tribes to the
  English interest. His next, to recall the Caughnawagas to their
  ancient home, by promises of a new location on the plains of
  Saratoga, where a church should be built for them, and an
  English Jesuit stationed as their missionary. In this plan he
  found his efforts thwarted by the missionaries, who, French by
  birth and attachment, looked with suspicion on the growing
  English influence in the cantons, as fatal to the missions
  which had cost so much toil, and who relied little on Dongan's
  fair words, and subsequent promise to replace them by English
  members of their society."

The same author, in another work, expresses his confidence in the
sincerity of Governor Dongan's intentions and promises, and
points to the three English Jesuits brought to New York by him,
as proof of both. [Footnote 194]

    [Footnote 194: _New York Doc. Hist._ Letter of Mr. Shea,
    iii. 110.]

The French government of Canada was equally bent on reducing the
Five Nations to subjection to the king of France. It required no
serious pretexts to induce the French to carry their plans into
effect by open war; and pretexts were not long wanting. The
murder of a Seneca chief at Mackinaw; an attack by the Iroquois
on a French post in Illinois; the seizure of a flotilla--fanned
the embers of war into a flame, and the subjugation of the Five
Nations seemed to be at hand. A large Canadian army was organized
for this purpose. It is said by historians, and with probable
truth, that the French king had remonstrated with James II.
against Colonel Dongan's interference with the French missions,
and that James had instructed his governor to desist from this
policy; also, that James, on hearing of the designs of the
Canadians on the Five Nations, supposing that these warlike and
refractory tribes, either as subjects or enemies, would be always
a thorn in the side of his province, while within its limits,
ordered Colonel Dongan not to interfere with those designs. But
Colonel Dongan entertained very different views on these
subjects. Not only did he insist on replacing the French Jesuits
with English members of the same society, but he also proposed,
both to the home government and to the governors of Maryland and
Virginia, that these two provinces should unite with New York in
resisting the encroachments of the French. He also proposed to
the home government a plan of emigration from Ireland to New
York, and that one of his own nephews should be appointed to
conduct and manage the enterprise. He wrote to the home
government on this subject as follows:

  "It will be very necessary to send over men to build those
  forts [the proposed forts along the northern frontier.] ... My
  lord, there are people enough in Ireland, who had pretences to
  estates there, and are of no advantage to the country, and may
  live here very happy. I do not doubt, if his majesty think fit
  to employ my nephew, he will bring over as many as the king
  will find convenient to send, who will be no charge to his
  majesty after they are landed."

{777}

Governor Dongan, notwithstanding his instructions to the
contrary, "was far too honorable to see his allies, (the Five
Nations,) murdered in cold blood, in obedience to the will of his
superiors." He sent his messengers to warn the Iroquois of the
impending danger, and invited them to meet him at Albany, to
renew the old treaty of peace, which had been long ago made
between them and the Dutch, and which had almost faded from the
memories of the chiefs.

Both met punctually at the appointed rendezvous; and Colonel
Dongan made one of his most characteristic and effective speeches
to them, in which he explained his claims upon them, demonstrated
the hostility of the French and his own friendship for them, made
promises of future aid, and proposed an alliance. The treaty here
entered into "was long respected by both parties." The clouds of
war now burst upon the Five Nations, but found them not
unprepared. Two invasions of the French were repelled, and
finally the invaders, weakened by sickness and unacquainted with
the Indian modes of war, returned with scattered ranks to their
own country, to await the terrible retaliation of an injured foe.
The warriors of the Five Nations burst with fury on the Canadian
settlements, "burning, ravaging, and slaying without mercy, until
they had nearly exterminated the French from the territory. The
war continued until, of all the French colonies, Quebec,
Montreal, and Three Rivers alone remained, and the French
dominion in America was almost annihilated; Governor Dongan
remaining," says the historian, "a firm friend of the Indians
during his administration, aiding them by his council, and doing
them every good office in his power." [Footnote 195]

    [Footnote 195: Booth's _History of the City of New
    York_.]

By his bold and independent course, so much at variance with the
views of his royal master, Governor Dongan incurred the
displeasure of James II., who suspended him from his functions,
and about April, 1688, the governor resigned his office. The
functions of the office of governor then devolved upon the
deputy-governor, Nicholson. Smith, the historian, says of
Dongan's removal from the office which he had graced so well, and
in which he had done so much for the good of his king and his
fellow-citizens, that "he fell into the king's displeasure
through his zeal for the true interest of the province."

The voluminous correspondence between Governor Dongan and Mons.
Denonville, governor of Canada, on the relations of the two rival
English and French colonies, published in the _Colonial_ and
_Documentary_ histories of New York, is replete with
interest, as containing valuable information concerning the
affairs of the day, and as fairly illustrating the character of
our governor. Though frequently running into bitter personalities
and irreconcilable conflict, the letters of these two officials
were not devoid of personal courtesies and amenities. Thus, we
see the French governor acting as a mediator with his sovereign
in behalf of Governor Dongan, in order that he might recover his
claim for services rendered in the French army; and we find
Governor Dongan, at one time, regretting that distance prevented
him from meeting and interchanging social civilities with his
rival; and, at another, sending to the Canadian governor a
present of oranges, which, he had heard, were a great rarity in
Canada, and regretting that the messenger's want of "carriage"
prevented him from sending more.

{778}

There was one point, however, upon which Governor Dongan was ever
uncompromising; this was his determination to claim the great
lakes as his boundary, and to submit to nothing short of this. He
carried his point even in his own day; for the royal arms of
England were emblazoned on the Indian castles along that border,
English forts defended it, and the Five Nations recognized the
king of England as their father. Though wars intervened, this
boundary was afterward recognized, by solemn treaty, as the line
dividing the English and French dominions in our day, the visitor
to the great lakes, and the tourist at the falls of Niagara, sees
the American flag floating where Governor Dongan planted its
predecessor, the standard of our English ancestors. Then,

  "Proudly hath it floated
     Through the battles of the sea,
   When the red-cross flag o'er smoke-wreaths played
     Like the lightning in its glee."
                       _Hemans_.

Now,

  "When Freedom from her mountain height
     Unfurled her standard to the air,
   She tore the azure robe of night,
     And set her stars of glory there."
                         _Drake_.

After his retirement from office, Governor Dongan spent his time
in New York and on Staten Island, in both of which places he had
acquired some property, but resided mostly on his estate on
Staten Island. He was offered the commission of a major-general
in the British army, and the command of a regiment in the service
of James II., all of which he declined to accept.

From the time that James II. ascended the English throne,
discontents began to arise among his Protestant subjects, on both
sides of the ocean, at the transfer of power from the Protestants
to the Catholics. The appointment of Governor Dongan, "a
professed papist," was offensive at first to the people of the
province of New York; but his upright administration, his
devotion to the best interests of the colony, and his personal
popularity, quelled all actual disturbance during his term of
office. We have seen that, soon after his arrival, civil and
religious liberty were guaranteed, and that he selected the
council from members of the Dutch Reformed Church, in order to
disarm all prejudices. He certainly was not disposed, however, to
debar himself and his fellow-Catholic subjects from the enjoyment
of that religious liberty which he had done so much to secure for
others. He had been accompanied to New York, in 1683, by Father
Thomas Harvey, S.J., who performed the divine services in the
governor's chapel, in the fort, and attended to the spiritual
wants of the governor, and of such Catholics as were in New York
during his administration. Fathers Harrison and Gage were sent
for, and arrived in New York afterward, with the view of
superseding the French missionaries among the Indians. It does
not appear that large numbers of Catholics emigrated to New York,
during his administration, for his plan for encouraging
emigration from Ireland was not carried into effect; yet it is
reasonable to suppose that the number of Catholics increased
somewhat under the favorable auspices of a Catholic governor.
And, although Matthias Plowman, the successor to Mr. Santer, the
late collector, was a Catholic, we do not find that Governor
Dongan filled many of the public offices in his gift with
Catholics. Mr. Nicholson, the deputy-governor, into whose hands
Governor Dongan resigned his office, was not appointed by him,
but was the deputy of Governor Andros, who had been appointed by
the home government governor of New England and New York, and
whose headquarters were at Boston; this Mr. Nicholson was said to
have been "an adherent of the Catholic faith." Religious
controversies ran high, however, during this period, and
historians generally inform us that plots were formed by the
Protestants, not only in England, under James, but also in the
province of New York, under Governor Dongan.
{779}
This seems probable from the readiness with which the people on
both sides of the Atlantic rose on their Catholic rulers as soon
as the opportunity presented itself. This opportunity was
afforded not long after Governor Dongan's retirement from office,
in 1689, on the invasion of England by William Prince of Orange,
and the abdication and flight of James II. from England.

The tone of public sentiment in New York in 1689 is thus
described by Bishop Bayley, in his treatise on the _History of
the Catholic Church on the Island of New York:_

  "Smith, describing the disposition and temper of the
  inhabitants of the colony at the time, shows that,
  notwithstanding the personal popularity of the governor, the
  increase of Catholics was looked upon with a suspicious eye. 'A
  general disaffection,' he says,'to the government prevailed
  among the people. Papists began to settle in the colony under
  the smiles of the governor. The collector of the revenues and
  several principal officers threw off the mask, and openly
  avowed their attachment to the doctrines of Rome. A Latin
  school was set up, and the teacher strongly suspected for a
  Jesuit; in a word, the whole body of the people trembled for
  the Protestant cause.' The news of the revolution in England,
  and the subsequent proceedings under Leisler, probably caused
  such Catholics as were in a situation to get away, to withdraw
  at the same time with the governor. The documents connected
  with Leisler's usurpation of authority, as published by
  O'Callaghan in his _Documentary History of New York_, show
  how studiously he appealed to the religious prejudices of the
  people, in order to excite odium against the friends of the
  late governor, and establish his own claims. The 'security of
  the Protestant religion,' and the 'diabolical designs of the
  wicked and cruel papists,' are made to ring their changes
  through his various proclamations and letters. Depositions and
  affidavits were published, in which it was sworn that
  Lieutenant-Governor Nicholson had been several times seen
  assisting at mass; that the papists on Staten Island 'did
  threaten to cut the inhabitants' throats,' and to come and burn
  the city; 'that M. De La Prearie had arms in his house for
  fifty men; that eighty or a hundred men were coming from Boston
  and other places, that were hunted away, (no doubt, not for
  their goodness,) and that there were several of them Irish and
  papists; that a good part of the soldiers that were in the fort
  already were papists,' etc. Among other depositions, is one of
  Andries and Jan Meyer, in which they declare that, 'being
  delivered from a papist governor, Thomas Dongan, they thought
  that the deputy-governor in the Fort would defend and establish
  the true religion; but we found to the contrary. There was a
  cry that all the images erected by Col. Thomas Dongan in the
  fort would be broken down and taken away; but when we were
  working in the fort with others, it was commanded, after the
  departure of Sir Edmond Andros, by said Nicholson, to help the
  priest, John Smith,' (supposed to be a name assumed for the
  sake of safety by one of the Jesuit fathers of New York,) 'to
  remove, for which we were very glad; but it was soon done,
  because said removal was not far off, but in a better room in
  the fort; and ordered to make all things ready for said priest,
  according to his will, and perfectly, and to erect all things
  as he ordered, from that time,'" etc.

Mr. Graham says of the state of public feeling prevailing at this
time in New York, that

  "An outrageous dread of popery had invaded the minds of the
  lower classes of the people, and not only diminished real and
  substantial evils in their esteem, but nearly extinguished
  common sense in their understandings, and common justice in
  their sentiments."

Deputy-Governor Nicholson took possession of the government in
August, 1688. On the 24th of that month, Governor Andros issued a
proclamation for a general thanksgiving throughout the English
provinces for the birth of a prince, the son of King James, and
heir to the English throne. But by the next mail news of quite a
different character arrived: the invasion of England by the
Prince of Orange, the flocking of the people to his standard, the
abdication and flight of King James, and the proclamation of
William and Mary as king and queen of England.
{780}
Mr. Nicholson and his followers recognized the authority of
William and Mary, and, claiming that the commissions issued under
James II. still held good, proposed to exercised the functions of
the public offices under them, until instructions should be
received from the new government at home. They were supported by
the more respectable and wealthy part of the citizens. But the
popular party took the opposite ground, and contended that all
the commissions were now invalid, and that the people should take
the government into their own hands until the will of their
present majesties should be heard from. They were led on by one
Jacob Leisler, a successful merchant, but a bitter bigot and
ambitious demagogue, and the leader of such as refused all social
intercourse with Catholics. Leisler had been appointed as early
as 1683, by Governor Dongan, commissioner of the Admiralty; but,
while holding this office, he was deeply disaffected, and had
previously gained some notoriety by his opposition to Rensselaer,
an Episcopal minister and suspected papist, at Albany, who had
been sent to the province by the Duke of York.

The revolution commenced in New York by the refusal of Leisler
and others to pay revenue and taxes to Mr. Plowman, the
collector, because he was a Catholic. The people of Long Island
deposed their magistrates and elected new ones, and despatched a
large body of militia to New York, "to seize the fort, and keep
off popery, French invasion, and slavery." The public money,
amounting to £773 12s., had been deposited, for safe keeping, in
the fort which was garrisoned by a few soldiers commanded by a
Catholic ensign. In order to secure this treasure, the popular
party assembled on the 2d of June, 1689, and seized the fort.
Leisler, who had refused to lead them to attack, on hearing of
its seizure, went, with forty-seven men, to the fort, was
welcomed by the citizens, and acknowledged as their leader. At a
meeting of the people, a so-called "Committee of Safety" was
appointed for the immediate government of the province, and
Leisler was appointed to the chief command. Then followed the
reign of terror described by Smith, Graham, and other historians.
Catholics were hunted down in every direction, and many
Protestants, suspected of being "papists" at heart, were treated
in the same manner. Orders were issued for the arrest of Governor
Dongan--who, since his retirement from office, had been quietly
residing on his estate at Staten Island--and all other Catholics,
who were compelled to fly for safety. Governor Dongan and other
Catholics took shelter on board of a vessel in the harbor, where
they remained for weeks, during the height of the excitement. He
probably was obliged to keep himself concealed. He fled to Rhode
Island, and soon afterward returned to Staten Island; his
servants were arrested, his personal effects--charged, in the
frenzy of the hour, to embrace a number of arms--were seized at
his mill on Staten Island; and all who pretended to hold
commissions under him were ordered to be arrested. So effectually
were the Catholics driven from the province that, in 1696, seven
years afterward, on a census of Catholics, taken by the mayor of
the city by order of Governor Fletcher, only nine names were
returned, namely, Major Anthony Brockholes, William Douglass,
John Cooley, Christiane Lawrence, Thomas Howarding, John
Cavalier, John Patte, John Fenny, and Philip Cunningham.

{781}

Whether Governor Dongan returned to England, and again came out
to the province after the excitement had abated, or remained
concealed in the province or neighborhood, seems not to be clear.
It is certain, however, that he was in New York in 1791 [sic]. It
need only be added here that the "Charter of Liberties," passed
in 1683, under a Catholic governor, was, with all other laws
passed by the late general assembly, repealed by the Protestant
assembly of New York, in 1691, and a so-called "Bill of Rights"
passed, which expressly deprived Catholics of all their political
and religious _rights_. In 1697 this "Bill of Rights" was
repealed by King William, "probably as being too liberal," says
Bishop Bayley; and, in 1700, an act was passed which recited that
"Whereas, divers Jesuits, priests, and popish missionaries have,
of late, come, and for some time have had this province, and
others of his majesty's adjacent colonies, who, by their wicked
and subtle insinuations, industriously labored to debauch,
seduce, and withdraw the Indians from their due obedience to his
most sacred majesty, and to excite and stir them up to sedition,
rebellion, and open hostility against his majesty's priest, etc.,
remaining in or coming into the province after November 1st,
1700, should be "deemed and accounted an incendiary and disturber
of the public peace and safety, and an enemy of the true
Christian religion, and shall be adjudged to suffer _perpetual
imprisonment_," that, in case of escape and capture, they
should suffer _death_, and that harborers of priests should
pay a fine of two hundred pounds, and stand three days in the
pillory. If it is alleged that the law of 1691 was the result of
high party excitement and public alarm, what excuse, it may be
asked, is to be alleged for the more illiberal and persecuting
law of 1700? It is but justice to James II., to point to the
"Charter of Liberties" of 1683, passed with his own approbation,
and at his suggestion, and then to the laws of 1691 and 1700,
passed under William and Mary, and remark that, though the
revolution gave the colonies William and Mary in the place of
James, it also gave penal and odious laws, and a deceptive "Bill
of Rights," in exchange for a "Charter of Liberties" that gave
what its title professed to confer. In Maryland, too, whose
Catholic founders proclaimed civil and religious liberty as the
basis of their commonwealth, the same scenes, on a more extended
scale, were at the same time being enacted; the persecutors in
New York were in intimate correspondence with their co-laborers
in Maryland and New England.

In 1691, when Governor Dongan saw, from the passage of the "Bill
of Rights," that Catholics were excluded from the benefits of
government, and subjected to persecution, he returned to England.

While he was governor of New York, in 1685, his brother William,
who had, in 1661, been created Baron Dongan and Viscount Claine
in the Irish peerage, was advanced to the earldom of Limerick,
with remainder, on the failure of direct issue, to Colonel Thomas
Dongan. On the breaking out of the revolution and the flight of
James II., William, Earl of Limerick, adhered to that monarch,
and followed him into France; whereupon his estates were
forfeited, and granted to the Earl of Athlone, an adherent of
William.
{782}
This grant was confirmed by an act of the Irish parliament, but
with a clause saving the right of Colonel Thomas Dongan. Colonel
Dongan, on his return to England, made every effort to recover
some portion of his brother's estates. His brother, the Earl of
Limerick, died at St. Germain in 1698, whereupon Colonel Dongan
was introduced to William III. as successor of the late Earl of
Limerick, and the new earl did homage to the king for his
earldom, and, according to the feudal custom, kissed the king's
hand on succeeding to the rank. He was allowed by the government,
about the same time, £2500, in tallies, in part payment for
advances made by him for public purposes while governor of New
York. His persevering efforts to recover the estates of his
deceased brother so far finally succeeded as to induce the
passage of an act of parliament for his relief, on the 25th of
May, 1702. He subsequently offered himself for service in the
American colonies, but it does not appear that he was ever in the
service of the crown after his return to England. He died in
London, on the 14th day of December, 1715, and was interred in
the church-yard of St. Pancras, Middlesex. The inscription on his
tombstone reads as follows:

  "The Right Honble Thomas Dongan,
        Earl of Limerick.
       Died December 14th,
      aged eighty-one years,
             1715.
      Requiescat in Pace. Amen."

In addition to the encomiums passed upon him both by Catholic and
Protestant historians, the following, from De Courcy and Shea's
_Catholic Church in the United States_, is here inserted:

  "This able governor was not long enough in office to realize
  all his plans for the good of the colony, where he had
  expended, for the public good, most of his private fortune. In
  this, as in many other points, the Catholic Governor Dongan
  forms a striking contrast with the mass of colonial rulers, who
  sought their own profit at the expense of the countries
  submitted to them. To Dongan, too, New York is indebted for the
  convocation of the first legislative assembly, the colony
  having been, till then, ruled and governed at the good pleasure
  of the governor; and this readiness to admit the people to a
  share in the government is a fact which the enemies of James
  II. should not conceal in their estimate of that Catholic
  monarch."

Mr. Moore gives us the following particulars in his note, cited
among the authorities to this article:

  "This nobleman died without issue. His estates in America were
  settled chiefly on three nephews, John, Thomas, and Walter
  Dongan. Lieutenant-Colonel Edward Vaughan Dongan, of the third
  battalion of New Jersey Volunteers, who died of wounds received
  in an attack on the British posts on Staten Island, in August,
  1777, was son of the last-mentioned gentleman. John Charlton
  Dongan, another collateral relative of the Earl of Limerick,
  represented Richmond County in the New York Assembly, from 1786
  to 1789. Representatives of this ancient family are still to be
  found in New York."

  [NOTE.--The above article is condensed from a forthcoming work
  of Mr. R. H. Clarke, to be entitled, _Lives of Eminent
  Catholics of the United States_.]

----------

{783}

              Beethoven.

             His Warning.


Years passed on, and Beethoven continued to reside at Vienna with
his two brothers, who had followed him thither, and took the
charge of his domestic establishment, so as to leave him entirely
at leisure for composition. His reputation had advanced gradually
but surely, and he now stood high, if not highest, among living
masters. The prediction was beginning to be accomplished.



It was a mild evening in the latter part of September, and a
large company was assembled at the charming villa of the Baron
Raimond von Wetzlar, situated near Schönbrunn. They had been
invited to be present at a musical contest between the celebrated
Wolff and Beethoven. The part of Wolff was espoused with great
enthusiasm by the baron; that of Beethoven by the Prince de
Lichnowsky, and, as in all such matters, partisans swarmed on
either side. The popular talk among the music-loving Viennese
was, everywhere, discussion of the merits of the rival candidates
for fame.

Beethoven was walking in one of the avenues of the illuminated
garden, accompanied by his pupil, Ferdinand Ries. The melancholy
that marked the composer's temperament seemed, more than ever, to
have the ascendency over him.

"I confess to you, Ferdinand," said he, apparently in
continuation of some previous conversation, "I regret my
engagement with Sonnleithner."

"And yet you have written the opera?"

"I have completed it, but not to my own satisfaction. And I shall
object to its being produced first at Vienna."

"Why so? The Viennese are your friends."

"For that very reason I will not appeal to their judgment; I want
an impartial one. I distrust my genius for the opera."

"How can that be possible?"

"It is my intimacy with Salieri that has inclined me that way;
nature did not suggest it; I can never feel at home there.
Ferdinand, I am self-upbraided, and should be, were the applause
of a thousand spectators sounding in my ears."

"Nay," said the student, "the artist assumes too much who judges
himself."

"But I have not judged myself."

"Who, then, has dared to insinuate a doubt of your success?"

Beethoven hesitated; his impressions, his convictions, would seem
superstition to his companion, and he was not prepared to
encounter either raillery or ridicule. Just then the host, with a
party of the guests, met them, exclaiming that they had been
everywhere sought; that the company was all assembled in the
saloon, and every thing ready for the exhibition.

"You are bent on making a gladiator of me, dear baron," cried the
composer, "in order that I may be mangled and torn to pieces, for
the popular amusement, by your favorite Wolff."

{784}

"Heaven forbid I should prejudge either combatant!" cried Von
Wetzlar. "The lists are open; the prize is not to be awarded by
me."

"But your good wishes--your hopes--"

"Oh! as to that, I must frankly own I prefer the good old school
to your new-fangled conceits and innovations. But come--the
audience waits."

Each in turn, the two rivals played a piece composed by himself,
accompanied by select performers. Then each improvised a short
piece. The delight of the spectators was called forth in
different ways. In the production of Wolff a sustained elevation,
clearness, and brilliancy recalled the glories of Mozart's
school, and moved the audience to repeated bursts of admiration.
In that of Beethoven there was a startling boldness, an impetuous
rush of emotions, a frequency of abrupt contrasts--and withal a
certain wildness and mystery--that irresistibly enthralled the
feelings, while it outraged, at the same time, their sense of
musical propriety. There was little applause, but the deep
silence, prolonged even after the notes had ceased, told how
intensely all had been interested.

The victory remained undecided. There was a clamor of eager
voices among the spectators; but no one could collect the
suffrages, nor determine which was the successful champion in the
contest. The Prince Lichnowsky, however, stood up, and boldly
claimed it for his favorite.

"Nay," interrupted Beethoven, advancing, "my dear prince, there
has been no contest." He offered his hand to his opponent. "We
may still esteem each other, Wolff; we are not rivals. Our style
is essentially different; I yield to you the palm of excellence
in the qualities that distinguish you."

"You are right, my friend," cried Wolff; "henceforth let there be
no more talk of championship between us. I will hold him for my
enemy who ventures to compare me with you--you so superior in the
path you have chosen. It is a higher path than mine--an original
one; I follow contentedly in the course marked out by others."

"But our paths lead to the same goal," replied Beethoven. "We
will speed each other with good wishes; and embrace cordially
when we meet _there_ at last."

There was an unusual solemnity in the composer's last words, and
it put an end to the discussion. All responded warmly to his
sentiment. But amidst the general murmur of approbation, one
voice was heard that seemed strangely to startle Beethoven. His
face grew pale, then flushed deeply; and the next moment he
pressed his way hastily through the crowd, and seized by the arm
a retreating figure.

"You shall see me in Vienna," whispered the stranger in his ear.

"Yet a word with you. You shall not escape me thus."

"_Auf wiedersehen!_" And shaking off the grasp, the stranger
disappeared.

No one had observed his entrance; the host knew him not, and
though most of the company remarked the composer's singular
emotion, none could inform him whither the unbidden guest had
gone. Beethoven remained abstracted during the rest of the
evening.

{785}

The opera of _Leonore_ was represented at Prague; it met
with but indifferent success. At Vienna, however, it commanded
unbounded applause. Several alterations had been made in it; the
composer had written a new overture, and the _finale_ of the
first act; he had suppressed a duo and trio of some importance,
and made other improvements and retrenchments. Not small was his
triumph at the favorable decision of the Viennese public. A new
turn seemed to be given to his mind; he revolved thoughts of
future conquests over the same portion of the realm of art; he no
longer questioned his own spirit. It was a crisis in the artist's
life, and might have resulted in his choice of a different career
from that in which he has won undying fame.

Beethoven sat alone in his study; there was a light knock at the
door. He replied with a careless "come in," without looking up
from his work. He was engaged in revising the last scenes of his
opera.

The visitor walked to the table and stood there a few minutes
unobserved. Probably the artist mistook him for one of his
brothers; but, on looking up, he started with indescribable
surprise. The unknown friend of his youth stood beside him.

"So you have kept your word," said the composer, when he had
recovered from his first astonishment; "and now, I pray you, sit
down, and tell me with whom I have the honor of having formed
acquaintance in so remarkable a manner."

"My name is of no importance, as it may or may not prove known to
you," replied the stranger. "I am your good genius, if my counsel
does you good; if not, I would prefer to take an obscure place
among your disappointed friends."

There was a tone of grave rebuke in what his visitor said that
perplexed and annoyed the artist. It struck him that there was
affectation in this assumption of mystery, and he observed
coldly,

"I shall not attempt, of course, to deprive you of your
_incognito_; but if you assume it for the sake of effect, I
would merely give you to understand that I am not prone to listen
to anonymous advice."

"Oh! that you would listen," said the stranger, sorrowfully
shaking his head, "to the pleadings of your better nature!"

"What do you mean?" demanded Beethoven, starting up.

"Ask your own heart. If that acquit you, I have nothing to say. I
leave you, then, to the glories of your new career; to the
popular applause--to your triumphs--to your remorse."

The composer was silent a few moments, and appeared agitated. At
last he said, "I know not your reasons for this mystery; but
whatever they may be, I will honor them. I entreat you to speak
frankly. You do not approve my present undertaking?"

"Frankly, I do not. Your genius lies not this way," and he raised
some of the leaves of the opera music.

"How know you that?" asked the artist, a little mortified. "You,
perhaps, despise the opera?"

"I do not. I love it; I honor it; I honor the noble creations of
those great masters who have excelled in it. But you, my friend,
are beckoned to a higher and holier path."

"How know you that?" repeated Beethoven, and this time his voice
faltered.

"Because I know you; because I know the aspirations of your
genius; because I know the misgivings that pursue you in the
midst of success; the self-reproach that you suffer to be stifled
in the clamor of popular praise. Even now, in the midst of your
triumph, you are haunted by the consciousness that you are not
fulfilling the true mission of the artist."

His piercing words were winged with truth itself. Beethoven
buried his face in his hands.

{786}

"Woe to you," cried the unknown, "if you suppress, till they are
wholly dead, your once earnest longings after the pure and the
good! Woe to you, if, charmed by the syren song of vanity, you
close your ears against the cry of a despairing world! Woe to
you, if you resign unfulfilled the trust God committed to your
hands, to sustain the weak and faltering soul, to give it
strength to bear the ills of life, strength to battle against
evil, to face the last enemy!"

"You are right--you are right!" exclaimed Beethoven, clasping his
hands.

"I once predicted your elevation, your world-wide fame,"
continued the stranger; "for I saw you sunk in despondency, and
knew that your spirit must be aroused to bear up against trial.
You now stand on the verge of a more dreadful abyss. You are in
danger of making the gratification of your own pride, instead of
the fulfilment of Heaven's will, the aim--the goal of your life's
efforts."

"Oh! never," cried the artist, with you to guide me."

"We shall meet no more. I watched over you in boyhood; I have now
come forth from retirement to give you my last warning;
henceforth I shall observe your course in silence. And I shall
not go unrewarded. I know too well the noble spirit that burns in
your breast. You will--yes, you will fulfil your mission; your
glory from this time shall rest on a basis of immortality. You
shall be hailed the benefactor of humanity; and the spiritual joy
you prepare for others shall return to you in full measure,
pressed down and running over!"

The artist's kindling features showed that he responded to the
enthusiasm of his visitor; but he answered not.

"And now, farewell. But remember, before you can accomplish this
lofty mission, you must be baptized with a baptism of fire. The
tones that are to agitate and stir up to revolution the powers of
the human soul come not forth from an unruffled breast, but from
the depths of a sorely wrung and tried spirit. You must steal the
triple flame from heaven, and it will first consume the peace of
your own being. Remember this--and droop not when the hour of
trial comes! Farewell!"

The stranger crossed his hands over Beethoven's head, as if
mentally invoking a blessing--folded him in his embrace, and
departed. The artist made no effort to follow him. Deep and
bitter were the thoughts that moved within him; and he remained
leaning his head on the table, in silent revery, or walking the
room with rapid and irregular steps, for many hours. At length
the struggle was over; pale but composed, he took up the sheets
of his opera and threw them carelessly into his desk. His next
work, _Christ in the Mount of Olives_, attested the high and
firm resolve of his mind, sustained by its self-reliance, and
independent of popular applause or disapprobation. His great
symphonies, which carried the fame of the composer to its highest
point, displayed the same triumph of religious principle.


  The Last Hours Of Beethoven.

Once more we find Beethoven, in the extreme decline of life. In
one of the most obscure and narrow streets of Vienna, on the
third floor of a gloomy-looking house, was now the abode of the
gifted artist. For many weary and wasting years he had been the
prey of a cruel malady, that defied the power of medicine for its
cure, and had reduced him to a state of utter helplessness.
{787}
His ears had long been closed to the music that owed its birth to
his genius; it was long since he had heard the sound of a human
voice. In the melancholy solitude to which he now condemned
himself, he received visits from but few of his friends, and
those at rare intervals. Society seemed a burden to him. Yet he
persisted in his labors, and continued to compose,
notwithstanding his deafness, those undying works which commanded
for him the homage of Europe.

Proofs of this feeling, and of the unforgotten affection of those
who knew his worth, reached him in his retreat from time to time.
Now it was a medal struck at Paris, and bearing his features; now
it was a new piano, the gift of some amateurs in London; at
another time, some honorary title decreed him by the authorities
of Vienna, or a diploma of membership of some distinguished
musical society. All these moved him not, for he had quite
outlived his taste for the honors of man's bestowing. What could
they--what could even the certainty that he had now immortal
fame--do to soften the anguish of his malady, from which he
looked alone to death as a relief?

"They wrong me who call me stern or misanthropic," said he to his
brother, who came in March, 1827, to pay him a visit. "God
knoweth how I love my fellow-men! Has not my life been theirs?
Have I not struggled with temptation, trial, and suffering from
my boyhood till now, for their sakes? And now if I no longer
mingle among them, is it not because my cruel infirmity unfits me
for their companionship? When my fearful doom of separation from
the rest of the human race is forced on my heart, do I not writhe
with terrible agony, and wish that my end were come? And why,
brother, have I lived, to drag out so wretched an existence? Why
have I not succumbed ere now?

"I will tell you, brother. A soft and gentle hand--it was that of
art--held me back from the abyss. I could not quit the world
before I had produced all--_had done all that I was appointed
to do_. Has not such been the teaching of our holy church? I
have learned through her precepts that patience is the handmaid
of truth; I will go with her even to the footstool of the
eternal."

The servant of the house entered and gave Beethoven a large
sealed package directed to himself. He opened it; it contained a
magnificent collection of the works of Handel, with a few lines
stating that it was a dying bequest to the composer from the
Count de N----. He it was who had been the unknown counsellor of
Beethoven's youth and manhood; and the arrival of this posthumous
present seemed to assure the artist that his own close of life
was crowned with the approval of his friend. It was as if a
_seal_ had been set on that approbation, and the friendship
of two noble spirits. It seemed like the dismissal of Beethoven
from further toil.

The old man stooped his face over the papers; tears fell upon
them, and he breathed a silent prayer. After a few moments he
arose, and said, somewhat wildly, "We have not walked to-day,
Carl. Let us go forth. This confined air suffocates me."

The wind was howling violently without; the rain beat in gusts
against the windows; it was a bitter night. The brother wrote on
a slip of paper, and handed it to Beethoven.

{788}

"A storm? Well, I have walked in many a storm, and I like it
better than the biting melancholy that preys upon me here in my
solitary room. Oh! how I loved the storm once; my spirit danced
with joy when the winds blew fiercely, and the tall trees rocked,
and the sea lashed itself into a fury. It was all music to me.
Alas! there is no music now so loud that I can hear it.

"Do you remember the last time I led the orchestra at Von ----'s?
Ah! you were not there; but I heard--yes, by leaning my breast
against the instrument. When some one asked me how I heard, I
replied, '_J'etntends avec mes entraillies._'"

Disturbed by his nervous restlessness, the aged composer went to
the window, and opened it with trembling hands. The wind blew
aside his white locks, and cooled his feverish forehead.

"I have one fear," he said, turning to his brother and slightly
shuddering, "that haunts me at times--the fear of poverty. Look
at this meanly furnished room, that single lamp, my meagre fare;
and yet all these cost money, and my little wealth is daily
consumed. Think of the misery of an old man, helpless and deaf,
without the means of subsistence!"

"Have you not your pension secure?"

"It depends upon the bounty of those who bestowed it; and the
favor of princes is capricious. Then again, it was given on
condition I remained in the territory of Austria, at the time the
king of Westphalia offered me the place of chapel-master at
Cassel. Alas! I cannot beat the restriction. I must travel,
brother--I must leave this city."

"You-leave Vienna?" exclaimed his brother in utter amazement,
looking at the feeble old man whose limbs could scarcely bear him
from one street to another. Then, recollecting himself, he wrote
down his question.

"Why? Because I am restless and unhappy. I have no peace, Carl!
Is it not the chafing of the unchained spirit that pants to be
free, and to wander through God's limitless universe? Alas! she
is built up in a wall of clay, and not a sound can penetrate her
gloomy dungeon."

Overcome by his feelings, the old man bowed his head on his
brother's shoulder, and wept bitterly. Carl saw that the delirium
that sometimes accompanied his paroxysms of illness had clouded
his faculties.

The malady increased. The sufferer's eyes were glazed; he grasped
his brother's hand with a tremulous pressure.

"Carl! Carl! I pardon you the evil you did me in childhood. Pray
for me, brother!" cried the failing voice of the artist.

His brother supported him to the sofa and called for assistance.
In an hour or two, his friend and spiritual adviser, summoned in
haste, had administered the last rites of the church, and
neighbors and friends had gathered around the dying man. He
seemed gradually sinking into insensibility.

Suddenly he revived; a bright smile illumined his whole face; his
sunken eyes sparkled.

"I shall _hear_ in heaven!" he murmured softly, and then
sang in a low but distinct voice the lines from a hymn of his
own:

  "Brüder! über'm Sternenzelt,
   Muss ein lieber _Vater_ wohnen."

In the last faint tone of
the music his gentle spirit passed away.

Thus died Beethoven, a true artist, a good and generous man, a
devout Catholic. Simple, frank, loyal to his principles, his life
was spent in working out what he conceived his duty; and though
his task was wrought in privation, in solitude, and distress,
though happiness was not his lot in this world, doth there not
remain for him an eternal reward?

{789}

The Viennese gave him a magnificent funeral. More than thirty
thousand persons attended. The first musicians of the city
executed the celebrated funeral march composed by him, and placed
in his heroic symphony; the most famous poets and artists were
pall-bearers, or carried torches; Hummel, who had come from
Weimar expressly to see him, placed a laurel crown upon his tomb.
Prague, Berlin, and all the principal cities of Germany, paid
honors to his memory, and solemnized with pomp the anniversary of
his death. Such was the distinction heaped on the dust of him
whose life had been one of suffering, and whose last years had
been solitary, because he felt that his infirmities excluded him
from human brotherhood.

----------

       The Assumption Of Our Lady.


  If sin be captive, grace must find release;
    From curse of sin the innocent is free.
  Tomb prison is for sinners that decease;
    No tomb but throne to guiltless doth agree.
  Though thralls of sin lie lingering in the grave,
  Yet faultless corse with soul reward must have.

  The dazzled eye doth dimmèd light require,
    And dying sights repose in shrouding shades;
  But eagles' eyes to brightest light aspire,
    And living looks delight in lofty glades.
  Faint-wingèd fowl by ground do faintly fly:
  Our princely eagle mounts unto the sky.

  Gem to her worth, spouse to her love ascends;
    Prince to her throne, queen to her heavenly king;
  Whose court with solemn pomp on her attends,
    And choirs of saints with greeting notes do sing.
  Earth rendereth up her undeservèd prey:
  Heaven claims the right, and bears the prize away.

			           Southwell.

----------

{790}

          The Conversion of Rome.
          [Footnote 196]

    [Footnote 196:
    1. History of European Morals, from Augustus to Charlemagne.
    By W. E. H. Lecky. London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1869. 2
    vols. 8vo.
    2. History of the Rise and Influence of the Spirit of
    Rationalism in Europe. By the same. From the London edition.
    New York: Appleton & Co., 1868. 2 vols. 8vo.]


Two irreconcilable systems of morals have disputed the empire of
the earliest times. The one is founded on the fact that God
creates man; the other on the assumption that man is himself God,
or, at least, a god unto himself. The first system finds its
principle in the fact stated in the first verse of Genesis, "In
the beginning God created heaven and earth;" the second finds its
principle in the assurance of Satan to Eve, "Ye shall be as gods,
knowing good and evil." The first system is that of the Biblical
patriarchs, the synagogue, the Christian church, and all sound
philosophy as well as of common sense--is the theological system,
which places man in entire dependence on God as principle,
medium, and end, and asserts as its basis in us, HUMILITY,
"Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of
heaven." The other system is the gentile or pagan system, or that
which prevailed with the Gentiles after their falling away from
the patriarchal religion. It assumed, in its practical
developments, two forms, the supremacy of the state and the
supremacy of the individual; but in both was asserted the
supremacy of man--or man as his own lawgiver, teacher, and
master, his own beginning, middle, and end, and therefore, either
individually or collectively, man's sufficiency for himself. Its
principle or basis, then, is PRIDE.

Mr. Lecky adopts, as we have shown in our former article, the
pagan, or, more properly, the satanic system of morals, at least
as to its principle, though in some few particulars he gives the
superiority to Christian morals, particulars in which Christians
advanced further than had advanced the best pagan school before
the conversion of Rome, but in the same direction, on the same
principle, and from the same starting-point. He nowhere accepts
the Christian or theological principle, and rejects everywhere,
with scorn, Christian asceticism, which, according to him, is
based on a false principle--that of appeasing the anger of a
malevolent God. He accepts Christianity only so far as reducible
to the pagan principle.

The only points in which Christian morals--for Christian dogmas,
in his view, have no relation to morals, and are not to be
counted--are a progress on pagan morals, are the assertion of the
brotherhood of the race and the recognition of the emotional side
of human nature. But even these two points, as he understands
them, are not peculiar to Christianity. He shows that some of the
later Stoics, at least, asserted the brotherhood of the race, or
that nothing human is foreign to any one who is a man--that all
good offices are due to all men; and whoever has studied Plato at
all, knows that Platonism attached at least as much importance,
and gave as large a scope to our emotional nature, as does
Christianity. Christian morals have, then, really nothing
peculiar, and are, in principle, no advance on paganism. The most
that can be said is that Christianity gave to the brotherhood of
the race more prominence than did paganism, and transformed the
Platonic love, which was the love of the beautiful, into the love
of humanity.
{791}
This being all, we may well ask, How was it that Christianity was
able to gain the victory over the pagan philosophers, and to
convert the city of Rome and the Roman empire?

Mr. Lecky adopts the modern doctrine of progress, and he
endeavors to prove from the historical analysis of the several
pagan schools of moral philosophy, that the pagan world was
gradually approaching the Christian ideal, and that when
Christianity appeared at Rome it had all but attained it, so that
the change was but slight, and, there being a favorable
conjuncture of external circumstances, the change was easily
effected. The philosophers of the empire had advanced from
primitive fetichism to a pure and sublime monotheism; the
mingling of men of all nations and all religions in Rome,
consequent on the extension of the empire over the whole
civilized world, had liberalized the views, weakened the narrow
exclusiveness of former times, and gone far towards the
obliteration of the distinction of nations, castes, and classes,
and thus had, in a measure, prepared the world for the reception
of a universal religion, based on the doctrine of the fraternity
of the race and love of humanity.

All this would be very well, if it were true; but it happens to
be mainly false. The fact, as well as the idea of progress, in
the moral order, is wholly foreign to the pagan world. No pagan
nation ever exhibits the least sign of progress in the moral
order, either under the relation of doctrine or that of practice.
The history of every pagan people is the history of an almost
continuous moral deterioration. The purest and best period, under
a moral point of view, in the history of the Roman republic, was
its earliest, and nothing can exceed the corruption of its morals
and manners at its close. We may make the same remark of every
non-Catholic nation in modern times. There is a far lower
standard of morals reached or aimed at in Protestant nations
to-day than was common at the epoch of the Reformation; and the
moral corruption of our own country has increased in a greater
ratio than have our wealth and numbers. We are hardly the same
people that we were even thirty years ago; and the worst of it
is, that the pagan system, whether under the ancient Greco-Roman
form or under the modern Protestant form, has no recuperative
energy, and the nation abandoned to it has no power of
self-renovation. Pagan nations may advance, and no doubt, at
times, have advanced, in the industrial order, in the mechanic
arts, and in the fine arts, but in the moral, intellectual, and
spiritual order, never.

Mr. Lecky confines his history almost entirely to the moral
doctrines of the philosophers; but even in these he shows no
moral melioration in the later from the earlier, no progress
towards Christian morals. In relation to specific duties of man
to man, and of the citizen to the state, the Christian has,
indeed, little fault to find with the _De Officiis_ of
Cicero; but we find even in him no approach to the Christian
basis of morals. The Greeks never have any conception of either
law or good, in the Christian sense. The [Greek text] was only a
rule or principle of harmony; it had its reason in the [Greek
text], or the beautiful, and could not bind the conscience. The
Latins placed the end, or the reason and motive of the moral law,
in the _honestum_, the proper, the decent, or decorous. The
highest moral act was _virtus_, manliness,  and consisted in
bravery or courage.
{792}
The rule was, to be manly; the motive, self-respect. One must not
be mean or cowardly, because it was unmanly, and would destroy
one's self-respect. We have here pride, not humility; not the
slightest approach to the Christian principle of morals, either
to the rule or the motive of virtue as understood by the
Christian church.

Yet Mr. Lecky tells us the moral doctrines of the philosophers
were much superior to the practice of the people. He admits the
people were far below the philosophers, and were very corrupt;
but we see no evidence that he has any adequate conception of how
corrupt they were. What the people were we can learn from the
satirists, from the historians, Livy, Sallust, and Tacitus,
especially from the _De Civitate Dei_ of St. Augustine, and
the writings of the early Greek and Latin fathers. Our author
acknowledges not only that the philosophers were superior to the
people, but also that they were impotent to effect their moral
elevation or any moral amelioration of their condition. Nothing
more true. How, then, if Christianity was based on the pagan
principle of morals, was in the same order with paganism, and
differed from it only in certain details, or, as the schoolmen
say, certain accidents--how explain the amelioration of morals
and manners which uniformly followed whenever and wherever it was
received?

If, as the author holds, Christianity was really only a
development of the more advanced thought of the pagan empire, why
did it not begin with the philosophers, the representatives of
that advanced thought? Yet nothing is more certain than that it
did not begin with them. The philosophers were the first to
resist it, and the last to hold out against it. It spread at
first among the people, chiefly among the slaves--that is, among
those who knew the least of philosophy, who were least under the
influence of the philosophers, and whose morals it is confessed
the philosophers did not and could not elevate. This of itself
refutes the pretence that Christianity was an offshoot of heathen
philosophy. If it had been, and its power lay in the fact that
the empire in its progress was prepared for it, its first
converts should have been from the ranks of the more advanced
classes. But the reverse was the fact. "You see your calling,
brethren," says St. Paul to the Corinthians, "that not many are
wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble; but
the foolish things of the world hath God chosen, that he may
confound the wise; and the weak things of the world hath God
chosen, that he may confound the strong; and the mean things of
the world, and the things that are contemptible, hath God chosen,
and things that are not, that he might destroy the things that
are; that no flesh should glory in his sight." [Footnote 197] So
said the great teacher of the Gentiles, as if anticipating the
objection of modern rationalists. Evidently, then, the pretended
preparation of the Roman empire for Christianity must count for
nothing, for Christianity gained its first establishments among
those whom that preparation, even if it had been made, had not
reached.

    [Footnote 197: Cor. i. 26.]

We cannot follow step by step the author in the special chapter
which he devotes to the conversion of Rome, and the triumph of
Christianity in the empire. We have already indicated the grounds
on which he explains the marvellous fact.
{793}
He denies all agency of miracles, will recognize no supernatural
aid, and aims to explain it on natural principles or by natural
causes alone. Thus far he has certainly failed; but let us try
him on his own ground. We grant that the breaking down of the
hundred nationalities and fusing so many distinct tribes and
races into one people, under one supreme political authority, did
in some sense prepare the way for the introduction of a universal
religion. But it must be remembered that the fusion was not
complete, and that the work of amalgamating and Romanizing the
several nations placed by conquest under the authority of Rome
was only commenced, when Christianity was first preached in the
capital of the empire. Each conquered nation retained as yet its
own distinctive religion, and to a great extent its own
distinctive civilization. Gaul, Spain, and the East were Roman
provinces, but not thoroughly Romanized, and it was not till
after Christianity had gained a footing in the empire that
provincials out of Italy were admitted to the rights and
privileges of Roman citizenship. The law recognized the religion
of the state, but it tolerated for every conquered nation its own
national religion. There was as yet nothing in the political,
social, or religious order of the empire to suggest a universal
religion, or that opened the way for the introduction of a
catholic as distinguished from a national religion. All the
religions recognized and tolerated were national religions.
Christianity was always catholic, for all nations, not for any
particular nation alone. If, then, at a subsequent period, the
boasted universality of the empire favored the diffusion of
Christianity, it did not favor its introduction in the beginning.
In all other respects there was, as we read history, no
evangelical preparation in Rome or the Roman empire. The
progress, if progress it may be called, of the Gentiles, had been
away from the primitive religion reasserted by Christianity, and
in a direction from, not towards, the great doctrines and
principles of the Gospel. What of primitive tradition they had
retained had become so corrupted, perverted, or travestied as to
be hardly recognizable. They had changed, even with the
philosophers, the true basis of morals, and the corrupt morals of
the people were only the practical development of the principles
adopted by even the best of the Gentile philosophers, as
rationalism is only the development of principles adopted by the
reformers, who detested it, and asserted exclusive
supernaturalism. Even the monotheism of some pagan philosophers
was not the Christian doctrine of one God, any more than simple
theism--the softened name for deism--or even theophilanthropy is
Christianity. The Christian God is not only one, but he is the
creator of the world, of all things visible and invisible, the
moral governor of the universe, and the remunerator of all who
seek him. The God of Plato, or of any of the other philosophers,
is no creative God, and the immortality of the soul that Plato
and his master Socrates defended had hardly any analogy with the
life and immortality brought to light through the Gospel. The
Stoics, whom the author places in the front rank of pagan
moralists, did not regard God as the creator of the world, and
those among them who held that the soul survives the body,
believed not in the resurrection of the flesh, nor in future
rewards and punishments. Their motive to virtue was their own
self-respect, and their study was to prove themselves independent
of the flesh and its seductions, indifferent to pleasure or pain,
serene and unalterable, through self-discipline, whatever the
vicissitudes of life.
{794}
The philosophers adopted the morality of pride, and aimed to live
and act not as men dependent on their Creator, but as independent
gods, while the people were sunk in the grossest ignorance and
moral corruption, and subject to the most base and abominable
superstitions. Such was the pagan empire when Christianity was
first preached at Rome, only much worse than we venture to depict
it.

Now, to this Roman world, rotten to the core, the Christian
preachers proclaimed a religion which arraigned its corruption,
which contradicted its cherished ideas on every point, and
substituted meekness for cruelty, and humility for pride, as the
principle of morals. They had against them all the old
superstitions and national religions of the empire, the religion
of the state, associated with all its victories, supported by the
whole power of the government, and by the habits, usages,
traditions, and the whole political, military, social, and
religious life of the Roman people. They could not move without
stepping on something held sacred, or open their mouths without
offending some god or some religious usage; for the national
religion was interwoven with the simplest and most ordinary
usages of private and social life. If a pagan sneezed, no
Christian could be civil enough to say, "Jupiter help you," for
that would recognize a false god. Yet the Christian missionaries
did succeed in converting Rome and making it the capital of the
Christian world, as it was, when they entered it, the capital of
the heathen world. You tell me this mighty change was effected,
circumstances favoring, by natural and human means! _Credat
Judaeus Appelles, non ego_.

The cause of the success, after the preparation named, which
turns out to have been no preparation at all, were, according to
the author, principally the zeal, the enthusiasm, and the
intolerance or exclusiveness of the Christians, the doctrines of
the brotherhood of the race and of a future life, and their
appeals to the emotional side of human nature. He does not think
the conversion of Rome any thing remarkable. The philosophers had
failed to regenerate society in the moral order, the old
religions had lost their hold on men's convictions, the old
superstitions were losing their terrors, and men felt and sighed
for something better than any thing they had. In fact, minds were
unsettled, and were ready for something new. This description,
not very applicable to Rome at the period in question, is not
inapplicable to the Protestant world at the present time.
Protestants are no longer satisfied with the results, either
dogmatic or moral, of the Reformation, and the thinking portion
of them wish for something better than any thing they have; yet
not, therefore, can we conclude that they can easily, or by any
purely human means, be converted to the Catholic Church; for they
have--with individual exceptions, indeed--not lost their
confidence in the underlying principle of the Reformation, or
opened their minds or hearts to the acknowledgment of the
principle, either of Catholic dogma or of Catholic morals. It is
not so much that they do not know or misconceive that principle,
but they have a deep-rooted repugnance to it, detest it, abhor
it, and cannot even hear it named with patience. So was it with
the pagan Romans. The whole pagan world was based on a principle
which the Christian preacher could not speak without
contradicting.
{795}
The Christian ideal was not only above, but antagonistic to the
pagan ideal, and, consequently, the more zealous the Christian
missionary, the more offensive he would prove himself. His
intolerance or exclusiveness might help him whose faith was
strong, yet little heeded in practice; but when faith itself was
not only wanting but indignantly rejected, it could only excite
anger or derision.

The apostle had no _point d'appui_ in the pagan traditions,
and it was only rarely that he could find any thing in heathen
authors, poets, or philosophers that he could press into his
service. The pagan, no doubt, had natural reason, but it was so
darkened by spiritual ignorance, so warped by superstition, and
so abnormally developed by false principles, that it was almost
impossible to find in it anything on which an argument for the
truth could be based. The Gospel was not in the pagan order of
thought, and the Christian apologists had to support it by
appealing to a line of tradition which the Gentiles had not, or
had only as corrupted, perverted, or travestied. The only
traditions they could appeal to were those of the Hebrews, and
they found it necessary, in some sort, to convert the pagans to
Judaism, before they could convince them of the truth of the
Gospel. This was any thing but easy to be done; for the Gentiles
despised the Jews and their traditions, and the Jews themselves
were the most bitter enemies of the Christians, had crucified the
founder of Christianity, and rejected the Christian
interpretation of their Scriptures.

The doctrine of the brotherhood of the race taught by the church
was something more than was taught by the philosophers, in fact,
another doctrine; and, though it had something consoling to the
poor, the oppressed, the enslaved, yet these are precisely the
classes with whom old traditions linger the longest, and
prejudices are the most inveterate and hardest to be overcome.
They are the classes the most opposed to innovations, in the
moral or spiritual order. The Protestant reformers proved this,
and the peasantry were the last to accept the new gospel they
preached, and rarely accepted it at all but through the influence
or compulsion of their princes and nobles. We see, also, now, in
Protestant countries, that, the peasantry having become
Protestant, are far more difficult to convert than persons by
birth or education belonging to the upper classes. Yet, it was
precisely among the lower classes, or rather the slave class,
that the Christian missionary had his greatest success; though
the emancipation and equality he preached were spiritual only,
not physical or social.

The doctrine of future life the church taught was coupled with
two other doctrines hard for pagans to receive. The mere
continuance of the spirit after the death of the body was, in
some form, no doubt, held by the whole pagan world, a few
sceptics excepted; but the resurrection of the body, or that what
had once ceased to live would live again, was a thing wholly
foreign to the pagan mind. Plato never, to my recollection, once
hints it, and could not with his general principles. He held the
union of the soul with the body to be a fall, a degradation from
its previous state, the loss of its liberty; regarded the body as
the enemy of the soul, as its dungeon, and looked upon death as
its liberation, as a restoration to its original freedom and joy
in the bosom of the divinity. The pagans had, as far as I can
discover, no belief in future rewards and punishment in the
Christian sense.
{796}
They believed in malevolent gods, who, if they failed to appease
their wrath before dying, would torture them after death in
Tartarus; but the idea that a God of love would doom the wicked
to hell, as a punishment for their moral offences or sins, was as
hard for them to believe as it is for Mr. Lecky himself. Yet
Christianity taught it, and brought the whole empire to believe
it. Christianity, while it delivered the pagans from the false
terrors of superstition, replaced them by what to the pagan mind
seemed even a still greater terror.

In what the author says of appeals to the emotional side of our
nature, he shows that he has studied paganism with more care and
less prejudice than he has Christianity. The emotions, as such,
have for the Christian no moral or religious value. The love the
Gospel requires is not an emotional love, and Christian morals
have little to do with the moral sentiment which Adam Smith
asserted, or the benevolence which Hucheson held to be the
principle of morality. There is no approach to the Christian
principle in the fine-spun sentiment of Bernardine Saint-Pierre,
Madame de Staël, or Chateaubriand. Sentimentalism, in any form,
is wholly foreign to Christian morals and to Christian piety, and
neither has probably a worse or a more dangerous enemy than the
sentimentalism so rife in modern society, and which finds its way
even into the writings of some Catholics. The sentiment of
benevolence may be a _mobile_, but it is never the
_motive_ of Christian virtue. No doubt, one of the great
causes of the success of Christianity was the inexhaustible
charity of the early Christians, their love for one another,
their respect for and tenderness to the poor, the forsaken, the
oppressed, the afflicted, the suffering. But that charity had not
its origin in our emotional nature, and though it may be attended
by sentiment, is itself by no means a sentiment; for its reason
and motive was the love of God, especially of God who had assumed
our nature, and made himself man for man's sake, and died on the
cross for man's redemption. The Christian sees God in every
fellow-man who needs his assistance, or to whose wants he can
minister. "Inasmuch as ye have done it unto the least of these my
brethren, ye have done it unto me." The Christian finds his Lord,
the Beloved of his soul, wherever he finds one for whom Christ
died, to whom he can be of service.

This charity, this love, may be mimicked by the sentiment of
benevolence, but it does not grow out of it, is not that
sentiment developed or intensified; it depends on the great
central mystery of Christianity, that of "the Word made flesh,"
and can never be found where faith in the Incarnation is wanting,
and faith is, always and everywhere, an intellectual act, not a
sentimental affection. If it were a natural sentiment or emotion,
why was it to be found among Christians alone? The heathen had
all of nature that Christians have; they even recognized the
natural brotherhood of the race, as does the author; how happens
it, then, if Christianity is only a development of heathenism,
and Christian charity is only a natural sentiment, that you find
no trace of it in the pagan world? There is no effect without a
cause, and there must have been something operating with
Christians that was not to be found in paganism, and which is not
included even in nature.

The pagans, like modern Protestants, worshipped success, and
regarded success as a mark of the approbation of the gods.
Misfortune, ill-luck, failure was a proof of the divine
displeasure. Cromwell and his Roundheads interpreted uniformly
their victories over the royalists as an indisputable proof of
the divine approval of their course.
{797}
It never occurred to them that the Almighty might be using them
to chastise the royalists for their abuse of his favors, or to
execute vengeance on a party that had offended him, and that,
when he had accomplished his purpose with them, he would break
them as a potter's vessel, and cast them away. The heathen looked
upon the poor, the needy, the enslaved, the infirm, the helpless,
and the suffering, as under the malediction of the gods, and
refused to offer them any aid or consolation. They left the poor
to struggle and starve. They did not do even so much for them as
to shut them up in prisons called poor-houses. They looked with
haughty contempt on the poor and needy, and if they sometimes
threw them a crust, it was from pride, not charity, without the
least kindly sympathies with them. As with modern non-Catholics,
poverty, with them, was regarded and treated as a misfortune or
as a crime.

Yet the Christians looked upon the poor with love and respect.
Poverty, in their eyes, was no misfortune, no crime, but really a
blessing, as bringing them nearer to God, and giving to the
Christian more abundant in this world's goods an opportunity to
do good, and lay up treasures in heaven. The Christian counts
what he gives to the poor and needy as so much treasure saved,
and placed beyond the reach of thieves and robbers, or any of the
vicissitudes of fortune. Whence this difference between the pagan
and the Christian, we might say, between the Catholic and
non-Catholic? It cannot come from the simple recognition of the
natural brotherhood of the race, for the natural ties of race and
of kindred fail to call forth a love so strong, so enduring, so
self-forgetting as Christian charity. Indeed, Christian charity
is decidedly above the forces of nature. The brotherhood that
gives rise to it is not the brotherhood in Adam, but the closer
brotherhood in Christ; not in generation, but in regeneration.
Give, then, as large a part as you will to Christian charity, in
the conversion of Rome, you still have offered no proof that the
conversion was effected by natural causes, for that charity
itself is supernatural, and not in the order of natural causes.

Mr. Lecky wholly fails to adduce any natural causes adequate to
the explanation of the conversion of Rome and the triumph of
Christianity over paganism. He cannot do it, for this one
sufficient reason, that paganism was impotent to reform itself,
and yet it had all the natural causes working for it that
Christianity had. The Christians had no more of nature than had
the pagans, while all the natural advantages, power, wealth,
institutions, human learning and science, the laws, habits,
customs, and usages of the entire nation, or aggregation of
nations, were against them. How, then, not only do by nature what
the same nature in paganism could not do, or by nature alone
triumph over nature clothed with so many advantages, and
presenting so many obstacles? Why should nature be stronger, and
so much stronger, in Christians than in Pagans, that a few
illiterate fishermen from the lake of Genesareth, belonging by
race to the despised nation of the Jews, could change not only
the belief, but the moral life of the whole Roman people?
Clearly, the Christians could not succeed without a power which
paganism had not, and therefore not without a power that nature
does not and cannot furnish.

{798}

The author denies the supernatural, and seeks to combat the
argument we use by showing that several eastern superstitions,
especially the worship of Isis, were introduced into Rome about
the same time with Christianity, and gained no little currency,
in spite of the imperial edicts against them. This is true, but
there was no radical difference between those eastern
superstitions and the state religion, and they demanded and
effected no change of morals or manners. They were all in the
order of the national religion, were based on the same principle,
only they were a little more sensual and corrupt. Their temporary
success required no other basis than Roman paganism itself
furnished. And the edicts against their mysteries and orgies were
seldom executed. It needs no supernatural principle to account
for the rapid rise and spread of Methodism in a Protestant
community, for it is itself only a form of Protestantism. But
Christianity was not, and is not, in any sense, a form or
development of paganism; in almost every particular, it is its
direct contradictory. It was based on a totally different
principle, and held entirely different maxims of life. A
worshipper of Bacchus or Isis could without difficulty conform to
the national or state religion, and comply with all its
requirements. The Christian could conform in nothing, and comply
with no pagan requirements. He could take no part in the national
festivities, the national games, amusements, or rejoicings, for
these were all dedicated to idols. There is no analogy in the
case.

Mr. Lecky denies that the conversion of Rome was a miracle, and
that it was effected on the evidence of miracles. He admits that
miracles are possible, though he confounds miracles with
prodigies, and says there is five times more proof in the case of
many miracles than would be required to prove an ordinary
historical fact; but he rejects miracles, not for the want of
proof, nor because science has disproved them, but because the
more intelligent portion of mankind have gradually dropped them,
and ceased to believe in them, as they have dropped the belief in
fairies, dwarfs, etc. The enlightened portion of mankind, it must
be understood, are those who think like Mr. Lecky, and profess a
Christianity without Christ, moral obligation without God the
creator, and hold effects are producible without causes. We
confess that we are not of their number, and probably shall never
be an enlightened man in their sense. We believe in miracles, and
that miracles had not a little to do with the introduction and
establishment of Christianity. As the author admits them to be
possible, and that many are sustained by far greater proof than
is needed to prove ordinary historical events, we hope that it
will be allowed, that, in believing them, we are not necessarily
involved in total darkness. But we have no space, at present, to
enter upon the general question of miracles--a question that can
not be properly treated without treating the whole question of
the natural and the supernatural.

The author tells us that the early Christians at Rome rarely
appealed, if at all, to miracles as proofs either of their
doctrines or their mission. Yet that they sometimes did would
seem pretty certain from the pains the pagans took to break the
force of the Christian miracles by ascribing them to magic, or by
setting up analogous or counter miracles of their own. Certain it
is, however, that they appealed to the supernatural, and adduced
not only the miracle of the resurrection of our Lord, which
entered into the very staple of their preaching, and was one of
the bases of their faith, but to that standing miracle of
prophecy, and of a supernatural providence--the Jewish, people.
{799}
The very religion they preached was supernatural, from beginning
to end, and they labored to prove the necessity of faith in
Christ, who was crucified, who rose from the dead, and is Lord of
heaven and earth. There is no particular miracle or prophecy
adduced to prove this that cannot, indeed, be cavilled at; but
the Hebrew traditions and the faith of the Jewish people could
not be set aside. Here was a whole nation whose entire life
through many thousand years had been based on a prophecy, a
promise of the Messiah. This prophecy, frequently renewed, and
borne witness to by the national organization, the religious
institutions, sacrifices, and offerings, and the entire national
and moral life through centuries, is a most stupendous miracle.
When you take this in connection with the traditions preserved in
the Hebrew Scriptures, which go back to the creation of the
world--developing one uniform system of thought, one uniform
doctrine, one uniform faith, free from all superstition; one
uniform plan of divine providence, and throwing a marvellous
light on the origin, duty, and end of man--you find a
supernatural fact which is irresistible, and sufficient of itself
to convince any unprejudiced mind that Christianity is the
fulfilment of the promises made to Adam after his expulsion from
the Garden, to the patriarchs, to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and
to the Jewish people.

We have no space here to develop this argument, but it is the
argument that had great weight with ourselves personally, and, by
the grace of God, was the chief argument that brought us to
believe in the truth of Christianity, and in the church as the
fulfilment of the synagogue. The apostles and early apologists
continually, in one form or another, appeal to this standing
miracle, this long-continued manifestation of the supernatural,
as the basis of their proof of Christianity. They adduced older
traditions than any the pagans could pretend to, and set forth a
faith that had continued from the first man, which had once been
the faith of all mankind, and from which the Gentiles had fallen
away, and been plunged, in consequence, into the darkness of
unbelief, and subjected to all the terrors of the vilest, most
corrupt, and abominable superstitions. They labored to show that
the Gentiles, in the pride of their hearts, had forsaken the God
that made them, creator of heaven and earth, and all things
therein, visible or invisible, for Satan, for demons, and for
gods made with their own hands, or fashioned by their own lusts
and evil imaginations. They pursued, indeed, the same line of
argument that Catholics pursue against Protestants, only modified
by the fact that the Protestant falling away, so clearly foretold
by St. Paul in his Epistles, is more recent, less complete, and
Protestants have not yet sunk so low as had the Gentiles of the
Roman empire.

But it was not enough to establish the truth of Christianity in
the Roman mind. Christian morals are above the strength of nature
alone; yet the pagans were not only induced to give up their own
principle of morals, and to accept as true the Christian
principle, but they gave up their old practices, and yielded a
practical obedience to the Christian law. Those same Romans
changed their manner of life, and attained to the very summits of
Christian sanctity. The philosophers gave many noble precepts,
preserved from a purer tradition than their own, but they had no
power to get them practised, and our author himself says they had
no influence on the people; yet they enjoined nothing above the
forces of nature.
{800}
The Christians came, taught the people a morality impracticable
to nature even in its integrity, and yet what they taught was
actually practised even by women, children, and slaves. How was
this? It was not possible without supernatural aid, or the
infusion of grace which elevates the soul above the level of
nature, enabling it at once to act from a supernatural principle,
and from a supernatural motive. All who have attempted the
practise of Christian perfection by the strength of nature alone,
have sadly failed. Take the charitable institutions, societies
for relieving the poor, providing for the aged and infirm,
protecting the fatherless and widows, for restoring the fallen,
and reforming the vicious or criminal, established by
non-Catholics--they are all comparative, if not absolute
failures. Though modelled after institutions of the church, and
supported at lavish expense, none of them succeed. They lack some
essential element which is efficacious in Catholic institutions,
and that element is undoubtedly supernatural grace, for that is
all Catholics have that they have not in far greater abundance.
They have humanity, natural benevolence, learning, ability, and
ample wealth--why do they not succeed? Because they lack
supernatural charity, and the blessing of God that always
accompanies it. No other reasons can be assigned.

Mr. Lecky thinks the persecutions by the state, which the early
Christians had to endure, or that the spread of Christianity in
spite of them, are not worth anything in the argument. In the
first place, he pretends that the persecutions were not very
severe, and were for the most part confined to particular
localities, and rarely became general in the empire; they were of
brief duration, and came only at distant intervals, and the
number of martyrs could not have been great. In the second place,
the persecutions rather helped the persecuted religion, as
persecution usually does. Rome, in reality, was tolerant, and
most of the pagan emperors were averse to harsh measures, and
connived at the growth of the new religion, which they regarded
as one of the innumerable superstitions hatched in the East, and
which must soon pass away.

Rome tolerated for conquered nations their national religion, or
worship, but no religion except the state religion for Romans.
The national gods recognized by the senate, and whose images were
allowed to stand by the side of the Roman gods, might be
worshipped; but no Roman citizen was allowed to desert the state
religion, and nowhere in the empire was any religion tolerated
that was not the national worship of some people subject or
tributary to Rome. Now, Christianity was no national religion,
and was hostile to the state religion, and utterly irreconcilable
with it; for it there was no toleration; it was prohibited by the
laws of the empire as well as by the edicts of the emperors. The
Christians might at first be overlooked as too insignificant to
excite hostility, or they might have been regarded, since they
were chiefly Jews, as a Jewish sect; they might also, as they
were a quiet, peaceable people, obeying the laws when not
repugnant to the law of God, performing all their moral, social,
and civil duties, and never mingling in the affairs of state,
have been connived at for a time. But they had no legal
protection, and if complained of and brought before the
tribunals, and proved to be Christians, they had no alternative
but to conform to the national religion or suffer death, often in
the most excruciating forms; for the Romans were adepts in
cruelty, and took delight in watching the writhings and
sufferings of their victims.
{801}
Even Trajan, while he prohibited the search for them, ordered, if
accused and convicted of being Christians, that they should be
put to death. Such being the law, the prefect or governor of a
province could at any time, without any imperial edict, put the
law in force against the Christians, if so disposed; and that
they did so in all the provinces of the empire, frequently and
with unsparing severity, we know from history. The Christians
were safe at no time and nowhere in the empire, and it is
probable that the number of victims of the ten general
persecutions were by far the smaller number of those who suffered
for the faith prior to the accession of Constantine. We place no
confidence in the calculations of Gibbon or our author, and we
have found no reason for believing that the Christian historians,
or the fathers, exaggerated the number of those who received the
crown of martyrdom.

It is a great mistake to suppose that paganism had lost its hold
on the Roman mind till long after the Christians had become a
numerous body in the empire. There were, no doubt, individuals
who treated all religions with indifference, but never had the
pagan superstitions a stronger hold on the mass of the people,
especially in Rome and the western provinces, than during the
first two centuries of our era. The republic had been transformed
into the empire, and the government was never stronger, or the
worship of the state more intolerant, more fervent, or more
energetically supported by the government. The work of Romanizing
the various conquered nations was effected under the emperors,
and the signs of decline and dissolution of the empire did not
appear till near the close of the third century. The Roman state
and paganism seemed to be indissolubly linked together--so
closely that the pagans attributed to the rise and progress of
Christianity the decline and downfall of both. Certain it is,
that paganism lost its hold on the people or the state only in
proportion to the progress of Christianity; and the abandonment
of the heathen gods and the desertion of the heathen temples were
due to the preaching of the Gospel, not a fact which preceded and
prepared the way for it. Converts are seldom made from the
irreligious and indifferent classes, who are the last, in any
age, to be reached or affected by truth and piety.

The fact is, that paganism fought valiantly to the last, and
Christianity had to meet and grapple with it in its full force,
and when supported by the strongest and most effective government
that ever existed, still in the prime and vigor of its life. The
struggle was harder and longer continued than is commonly
supposed, and by no means ended with Constantine. Paganism
reascended the throne--in principle, at least--under Constantius,
the son, and avowedly under Julian, the nephew of the first
Christian emperor. Every pagan statesman saw, from the first,
that there was an irrepressible antagonism between Christianity
and paganism, and that the former could not prevail without
destroying the latter, and, of course, the religion of the state,
and apparently not without destroying the state with it. The
intelligent and patriotic portion of the Roman people must have
regarded the spread of Christianity very much as the Protestant
leaders regard the spread of Catholicity in our own country. They
looked upon it as a foreign religion, and anti-Roman.
{802}
It rejected the gods of Rome, to whom the city was indebted for
her victories and the empire of the world. We may be sure, then,
that the whole force of the state, the whole force of the pagan
worship, backed by the passions and fanaticism of the people,
whether of the city or the provinces, was exerted to crush out
the new and offensive worship; and, whether the numbers of
martyrs were a few more or a few less, the victory obtained by
Christianity against such fearful odds is not explicable without
the assumption of supernatural aid--especially when that victory
carried with it a complete change of morals and manners, and the
practice in not a few who underwent it of a heroic sanctity, or
virtues which are confessedly above our natural strength.

No false or merely natural religion could have survived, far less
have vanquished, such opposition as Christianity encountered at
every point. The very fact that it thrived, in spite of the
fearful persecution to which it was subjected, is a proof of its
truth and divinity. We grant the blood of the martyrs was the
seed of the church, but persecution fails only when it meets
truth, when it meets God as the resisting force. We know the
strength of superstition and the tenacity of fanaticism; but we
deny that persecution has ever increased or multiplied the
adherents or aided the growth of a false religion. There is no
example of it in history. It is only the truth that does not
succumb; and even they who profess the truth, when they have lost
the practice of it, have yielded to the spirit of the world, and
have ceased to be faithful to God, fail to stand before
persecution, as was seen in the almost entire extinction of
Catholics in the European nations that accepted the Protestant
Reformation. The inefficacy of persecution to extinguish the
doctrine persecuted is a commonplace of liberalism; but history
proves the contrary, and hence the fact that Christianity,
instead of being extinguished by the heathen persecution, spread
under it, and even gained power by it, is no mean proof of its
truth and its supernatural support.

The author obtains his adverse conclusion by substituting for the
Christianity to which Rome was actually converted, and which
actually triumphed in the empire, a Christianity of his own
manufacture, a rationalistic Christianity, which has nothing to
do with Christ Jesus, and him crucified; a Christianity despoiled
of its mysteries, its doctrinal teachings, its distinctive moral
precepts, and reduced to a simple moral philosophy. It is with
him a theory, a school; not a fact, not a law, not an authority,
not a living organism, nor of an order essentially different from
paganism. His Christianity has its starting point in paganism,
and only marks a particular stage in the general progress of the
race. He does not see that it and paganism start from entirely
different principles, and come down through separate and hostile
lines, or that they have different ancestors. He does not
understand that Christianity, if a development at all, is not the
development of paganism, but of the patriarchal and Jewish
religion, which placed the principle of duty in man's relation to
God as his creator and final cause, not in the assumption of
man's own divinity or godship. Hence he finds no need of
supernatural aid to secure its triumph.

The author, placing Christianity in the same line with paganism,
supposes that he accounts sufficiently for the conversion of Rome
by the assumption that the Christians placed a stronger emphasis
on certain doctrines held by the pagan philosophers, and were
actuated by a greater zeal and enthusiasm than were those
philosophers themselves.
{803}
Yet he does not show the origin of the greater zeal, nor its
character; and he entirely misapprehends the enthusiasm of the
early Christians. They were, in no received sense of the word,
enthusiasts, nor were they, in his sense of the word, even
zealots. They in no sense corresponded to the character given
them in _The Last Days of Pompeii_. They were neither
enthusiasts nor fanatics; and their zeal, springing from true
charity, was never obtrusive nor annoying. We find in the earlier
and later sects enthusiasts, fanatics, and zealots, who are
excessively offensive, and yet are able to carry away the simple,
the ignorant, and the undisciplined; but we never find them among
the early orthodox Christians, any more than you do among
Catholics at the present day. The early Christians did not "creep
into houses and lead away silly women," nor assault people in the
streets or market-place, and seek to cram Christianity down their
throats, whether they would or not, but were singularly sober,
quiet, orderly, and regular in their proceedings, as Catholics
have always been, compelling not people to hear them against
their will, and instructing in the faith only those who
manifested a desire to be instructed. The author entirely
mistakes both the Christian order of thought and the character of
the early Christians who suffered from and finally triumphed over
the pagan empire.

----------

      Translated From The French.

             Paganina.


                I.

Master Aloysius Swibert was an organist in a small Austrian town;
but from afar his perfect knowledge of harmony, and freshness and
delicacy of inspiration, were known and praised; and many a
stranger artist, having heard him, wondered that he did not seek
renown and even glory in larger cities, and saw with astonishment
how his art and his simple friendships contented and ornamented a
life requiring nothing more.

He gave his time to the study of the great masters, a study full
of pure enjoyment, but laborious and difficult, and, with a
singular simplicity of character, he never approached them
without the greatest reserve and respect.

Obstinately he worked, allowing himself but little respite to
indulge the flights of his fancy, or the inspiration which, now
and then, came to him so luminously, so brightly that the brave
artist cried out his thanks in ecstasy, in the fulness of his
joy.

His musical thoughts are all in a tiny volume. No long
fantasies--half pages mostly--sometimes only lines, short and
excellent and original; blessed originality, not coarse or
confusing, but healthy and true--the daughter and messenger of
inspiration!

{804}

                II.

Thus rolled the weeks, returning ever the Sunday so ardently
desired; for to Master Swibert each Sunday was an event. He
thought of the one passed, and looked forward to the coming one;
all were equally dear. From the Saturday evening previous, all
things sang to him his feast-day songs, and the next morning,
collected and serious, in his best clothes, he sought his church
and his organ.

He had his own ideas, considered extreme by some, on the ministry
of the musician in the services of the church, on the respect due
the place and the instrument. His heart beat when he approached
the organ, and he played, following his conscience, sometimes
well, sometimes better, never seeking success--on the contrary,
dreading it.

His work accomplished, he walked with his sister, serious and
happy. The people loved to see them pass, and, from the doors of
their houses, saluted them amicably. In return, they gave each a
pleasant smile, and rejoiced that men and things should wear
their holiday robes, their Sunday colors. If the trees were green
and the weather fine, their happiness was complete. It made the
good man sad, though, if men or children worked, or even planned
their occupations. "Poor creatures!" he said, "is not even Sunday
for them?" And his heart beat as he spoke. But when he met whole
families enjoying themselves, the fathers important, the mothers
busy and happy, and the children gay and prattling, he entered
his lodging so happily, kissed his sister, and awaited his
friends.


                III.

He had but two--that is too many--and these could only remember
having passed one Sunday evening away from Master Swibert. On
their arrival, there were three just men under the same roof--one
more than is necessary in order that our Lord may be in the midst
of them.

They supped, and the organist's sister, twelve years younger than
he, a fresh and graceful girl, waited on his guests, and offered
them some nice white cakes, prepared the day before. Each one
paid her his heartfelt compliments, while, smiling and silent,
with pleasure she received them.

After supper, Master Swibert seated himself at his piano and
played for his friends his studies of the past week. The music
was mingled with conversation, and art and philosophy beguiled
the hours. Seated around a good-sized pot of beer, with
consciences at ease, with active bodies and cheerful spirits,
these companions pursued endless conversations in all that
interested their honest hearts until, as night closed round them,
their souls were elevated and they spoke of heaven. There seemed
to be a marvellous contact between their natures and all that is
spiritual.

Such was Master Swibert's interior on Sunday evenings. Could
chance have led thither some growing youth, all ardor and
enthusiasm, and had he essayed the eternal temptations of love
and glory, his answer would have been a smile. There they had no
place. The three friends were happy.


                 IV.

But in this world every thing passes, happiness especially. The
day came when Master Swibert had to part from all he loved--his
quiet habits, his home, and his country.

He was tall, and looked strong and healthy; yet his friends were
disquieted about him, for he seemed restless, like a tree which
outwardly appears vigorous, but at heart decayed and liable to
fall with the first rough wind. His physicians gave a reason for
their uneasiness, and ordered him south.

{805}

The organist and his sister set out one day, hurrying their
adieus as people who run away. When they were at the foot of the
Alps in Italy, they stopped at a sunny little town, a day's
journey from Milan, which we will call Arèse. Master Swibert was
then forty-four.

How this man, who, till now, had lived more like a priest than a
man of the world, could be led by his passions to marry an
Italian and a singer, is difficult to explain. Besides, it is
superfluous to look for a reason for any unreasonable act.
Perhaps the good old sun was the cause, laughing behind the trees
at the follies of which he makes us guilty.

But the girl was pretty, reputed good, and dedicated to her
parents every moment her vanity did not require. So the organist
married her.


                V.

They say love lives by contrasts; the god of such a union should
have been well fed. But his life was short, for, after a few
months only, he died. Perhaps of a fit of indigestion.

The Italian did not like the retired and exclusive life demanded
of her, and the German could not accept the free behavior of his
wife. He could not believe in the purity of a soul that sought
vulgar homage and common admiration.

He was wrong to judge her by the ideas of his own country. His
name there had been so honorably borne that, if it was for the
singer too heavy a burden, death only could release her. This
death took place under peculiar circumstances.

Paganini was just then being heard at Milan, and exercising that
singular fascination that made his artistic personality the most
characteristic of our time.

This age, which believes in no thing, accords him a legend, and,
in truth, his power with the instrument he used was surprising
and unequalled.

The fascination he possessed by his eccentric and well-executed
performances is well known; how, for instance, he only appeared
in a demi-obscurity, in some romantic scene; or, in some fit of
inspiration, broke rudely the three strings of his instrument,
and performed on the remaining one his most astonishing
variations.

Whether it was skill, or a want of genius, no matter; the effect
produced was marvellous. On the wife of Master Swibert the result
was astonishing. Her child was born before its time, and in one
of the side-scenes of the theatre of La Scala.

Its life seemed so feebly assured that it was baptized
immediately with the name of Rose Marie; but Paganini, flattered
by the adventure, insisting upon being godfather on the occasion,
the little one was only known by the name of Paganina.

Thus was born the singular artist whose history we relate. We
know the exterior facts, the accidents, we may say, of her life.
Popular imagination has made of them an interesting legend; but
these facts were produced by interior emotions little understood,
and would be perfectly unintelligible could we not trace in her
the two tendencies, the two natures, which she inherited from her
parents.

Master Swibert arrived in time to say adieu to his wife, who did
not survive her confinement. Then, as a miser with his treasure,
he carried off his daughter. The child was feeble, but the
organist felt within himself such an intensity of paternal love
that he could not doubt she would live; "for," said he, "the
vital forces of a creature are not wholly in itself, but in the
love of its parents."

{806}

The sister of Master Swibert had married and left him. Therefore
alone with his daughter, he entered an unoccupied house, where
their new lives should develop themselves.


                  VI.

Happy the children born of Christian parents! They alone
understand the integrity of affection that addresses itself to
the soul, the delicacy of love which envelops the infant, from
the bosom of its mother, conducting it through every danger, and,
even in spite of maternal instinct, to the port of safety.

The organist could put in practice no personal theories of
education. He thought a father and mother (he was both) have but
one thing to do--to love and love on, to watch on their knees
near the cradle of their child, to observe attentively the
movements of the soul in its dawning light, to direct it on high,
always on high, guard it from all that is impure, (triviality,
even, he considered so;) and so, in fine, enforce the impressions
of a saintly and ideal character, before even the child has
consciousness of its perceptions.

Give your imagination to the interior of a family where such
sentiments prevail; one sees marvellous things, that no painter
can paint in colors true enough to render public. O pure and holy
family joys! If we hesitate to describe you, it is from respect.
We know with what discretion we should touch on holy things, and
we hardly dare to make ourselves understood, to those who are
fathers, by sketching the scenes of these first years of
childhood between Master Swibert and his daughter.


                 VII.

Night has come; the child is going to sleep. Her father, pursuing
his studies, is seated at the piano near the little being who has
all his heart, and is now his inspiration; the waves of harmony
go out into the night, white apparitions encircle the cradle,
graze the earth, and fly away. The child sleeps.

Attentive and listening, her angel looks at her, opening slightly
its wings to better protect her, and throwing over her closed
eye-lids the bluish and transparent veil. The little face smiles
sweetly.

In the morning she awakes, her soul filled with the joys of the
night. She hears the birds sing, and the bright morning sun with
heavenly rays gilds the cover of her little bed. She watches it
play on her white curtains and turns toward her father, her eyes
filled with tears, a weight on her heart. "Why do you weep, my
daughter?" "Because, my father, I love you dearly, and I am too
happy."

Yes, well may we discuss the joys of childhood. To sing them,
poets lose their breath; to paint them, exhaust the colors of
their palettes; and heap image upon image as their heated fancies
may suggest, yet what have they done? Nothing. Yet the subject is
worth their study. And how is it that there are so many who have
known these joys in all their purity, who in their manhood gaze
on into the future, and so seldom look to that past which made
them so happy? Would they not, at times, give worlds to be again
that little child at its mother's knee?


                VIII.

Paganina was nearly seven years old, when she found a companion;
the organist's sister died, leaving her only child to the care of
her brother.

{807}

The little boy, named André, seemed to be of a gentle and even
weak character. He was the same age as his cousin, but never was
presented a more perfect contrast.

Paganina had not yet acquired that marvellous beauty that
afterward became so celebrated, but something there was about her
very strange and very attractive.

She was reticent and retiring, nonchalant in gesture and careless
in behavior. Her face was always sad, an indescribable, almost
ferocious _ennui_ seeming completely to overpower her. But
if some recital, some sudden expression touched her imagination,
or music entranced her, her deep black eyes threw out a violet
flame, and even sparkled. But that was all. The calm of an
affected, scornful carelessness returned immediately.

Restlessness is the common host of the domestic hearth.

Master Swibert trembled to see the worldly and theatrical genius
of the mother develop in the child; he knew well that, in a
nature strong and deep as hers, such tastes would make terrible
ravages. And the development of each successive year was not
calculated to dispel his fears.

Everything in the child alarmed him, from her habitual
concentration to her fits of passionate tenderness--the outburst
of the moment, volcano-like, a jet of brilliant flame which
sparkles and goes out.


                  IX.

Master Swibert could boast in his dying hours of never having
deserted the child for an hour even. After having devoted the
early hours of the day to her and her cousin's education, he
superintended and guided their recreations--an important part, in
good hands, of the training of a child.

He had the habit of taking every day a long walk. The route they
loved best he called the German road. It was that by which the
organist had come to Italy. The sight of it revived his memories,
and flattered the melancholy love he gave his country.

On the way, the children listened to the stories of the good
musician, who so willingly related them. They spoke of Germany;
for on this chapter Master Swibert never tired. He led his little
auditors into the world of ballads and legends, and we can
readily imagine the pretty curiosity and happy astonishment
which, at their age, he awakened. Their favorite legend was that
of the great emperor Barbarossa, who slept so many centuries in
an obscure grotto, leaning on a table of stone into which his
beard had grown. These stories were better than our nurses tell;
for the organist related them, not to impose on the credulity of
his youthful auditory, but to extract the poetry they contained;
and this he did wonderfully. Poetry never did harm to any one.

But the children loved, even better than the legends, the
recitals suitable for them from the German poets. The story of
Mignon delighted them. What could be told them sufficed; and they
loved the little girl who had no other language than song, who
took the face of an angel and aspired to heaven, where she went
without scarcely having lived on earth.

Their imagination was inflamed. They longed to see the country of
their dreams. Sometimes, at the turn of the road, they began to
run, in the unavowed hope of seeing, at last, what was behind the
mountain; but, the circuit passed, and only a long road,
apparently without end, presenting itself, the poor little things
cried with disappointment.
{808}
Their father, ready to weep with them, took them in his arms to
control them, and told them for the hundredth time one of his
pretty ballads.


                   X.

The route into Germany is through a beautiful country. After
traversing a plain for some distance, one enters into a deep
gorge in the mountain and then begins to ascend.

This gorge gives passage to a torrent, dry in summer, but,
becoming furious during the rains of autumn, uproots trees,
carries away bridges, and, undermining the stones at their base,
lowers, each year, the level of the neighboring elevations. The
route accommodates itself poorly to this terrible neighbor, and
follows it as far off as possible. Around on the left shore, it
turns quickly at a certain height, and crosses the torrent over a
very high bridge. There, continuing to ascend, it makes a circuit
over a plain of moderate extent, while a narrow and badly
constructed road, bordering the sides of the ravine, leaves it to
descend to the magnificent residence which, from time immemorial,
belongs to the family of the Ligonieri. It is called the Château
Sarrasin.

A view unequalled presents itself from this elevation. Below it,
on the first ladder of the heights, is seen the black mass of the
chateau, so near that one can almost penetrate into the interior
of the edifice; and beyond, the plain, displaying under the
silvery net-work of its water-courses the richness of its
vegetation; and finally, on the left, the wooded slopes of the
mountain, crowned with glaciers, and developing into a gigantic
hemicycle. When the dazzled eye is at rest, or gazing afar, it
ever returns to the Chateau Sarrasin; and worthy is it of the
closest regard.

Its name indicates its antiquated pretensions; but it has no
uniformity of style; each age has given it a stone, and from the
labor of centuries has resulted a whole of a character grand and
majestic.

Proudly encamped on a perpendicular rock, accessible only on one
side, it commands the plain and defies the mountain with its
black and menacing tower, that seems to have been placed there to
protect the other less hardy constructions.

From the road, the traveller raises his eyes to this eagle's
nest; he contemplates with pleasure the terraces which shelve
below, suspending over the precipice their flowering groves and
massive oaks, and, naturally, he demands its history. Yet this
history was not always to be praised. The chronicle credits those
who inhabited it in past ages with a series of adventures more
curious than moral, and enough to fill a book of legends.

The Ligonieri have followed the progress of civilization. In our
day, they respect the laws, and even make themselves respected.
They serve the state in the highest ranks of the administration,
the army, and diplomacy. Yet it would seem that, after all, the
devil has not lost much; for they tell wild stories of the
castle's being fatal to conjugal love, of its reigning queens
ever suffering in silence the affronts of some rival under its
cursed roof. Popular recitals represent them isolated, lifting to
heaven their innocent hands, and mingling their prayers with the
noise of orgies and the songs of feasts. The favorites of the
Chateau Sarrasin belonged mostly to the theatre, and among them
was she who reigned a certain evening when the scene took place I
am going to relate.

{809}

                  XI.

This evening, then, the organist and his two children had arrived
on the elevation that commands the residence of the Ligonieri,
and were looking about them. There was a _fête_ at the
Château Sarrasin.

The grand _salon_ of the ground floor was illuminated, and
crowded with a brilliant assembly of guests. Long waves of light
came from the windows and doors, and showed the crowd pressing
around every opening, and in the shadows revealed groups seated
attentively at cards.

All heads were turned toward one point; all looks were in the
same direction, and attached themselves to a woman standing in
the centre of the light, and surrounded by a chorus and a
numerous orchestra.

This woman was clothed in green, and wore a crown of ivy, the
ornament of the old bacchantes. A green diamond threw its
lustrous rays from her impure forehead. She sang--not the songs
that carry tired souls into the regions of the ideal, and make
them forget for a moment the sadness of earth; but guilty joys
and culpable pleasures were her theme. The metallic voice sang in
response to her chorus; and, becoming more and more excited, the
quick, passionate notes mounted into a demoniacal laugh. How sad,
how true it is, that the human soul, once beyond the bounds of
purity, rejoices in and receives new excitement from the delirium
of blasphemy.


                  XII.

Attracted by the light, Paganina advanced toward the precipice.
The passionate music had turned her brain. Her growing agitation
became extreme, and she betrayed it in gestures and ardent words.
When Master Swibert called her, she refused to obey.

Understanding at last, her father rose, pale as a corpse.

"Unfortunate child!" he cried, "thy bad angel is approaching
thee. Now comes the hour when I regret thy birth. God grant that
I may not be punished for having shown thee the spectacle of evil
thou comprehendest so quickly."

The child advances, her father follows, and she begins to run.
Wildly through the midst of the rocks she risks her life at every
step. Her father, breathless, pursues her, frightened, and
covered with a cold perspiration. His eyes, grown large already
with fear, see his daughter precipitated into an endless abyss;
and discover, also, in the future another abyss still more
shadowed and more horrible, where, perhaps, will be lost the
deeply-loved soul of his child.

The guests of the Château Sarrasin heard two cries mingle with
the joyousness of their _féte_. The organist seized his
child just at the moment when, from the edge of the precipice,
she would have plunged into eternity.

He had saved her life, but not regained her soul. That evening,
the child separated herself from him in a spirit of revolt which
almost broke his heart to witness.


                 XIII.

Master Swibert slept but little, and badly. When he awoke, he
wondered how he had been able to omit to Paganina his usual
good-night. His eyes fell instinctively on the door where, every
morning, she came, half-clothed, to salute him. The sun's rays
gilded the sill, and the good father's heart beat, thinking how
happy he would be if at that moment she would appear. He said,
"She is coming;" but she came not.

{810}

The organist walked up and down his room, interrupting, from time
to time, his monotonous promenade, to listen, in hopes of hearing
a word, a creaking, a fluttering of a robe. He heard nothing but
the uncertain step of André, wandering sad and lonely in the
parts of the house least occupied.

The hours passed. The organist still waited, his suffering
becoming anguish. Sometimes he felt he must call out, "My child!
my child!" Already he opened his arms to receive her; but his
sense of duty prevailed, and he waited for her.

The night again returned, and Paganina had shown no signs of
life. A bitter sadness, drop by drop, was accumulating in the
heart of her unfortunate father. The most mournful thoughts took
possession of him. He dreamed of his approaching death, and saw
his child alone, abandoned to interior and exterior enemies, and
in his weakness he reproached himself for having brought her into
this world.

Already more than half the night had gone. Overwhelmed with
sorrow, exhausted, he threw himself into an arm-chair, wondering
if he could bear to suffer more, when Paganina entered
noiselessly, on tiptoe, lest she should awaken her father, whom
she believed asleep. She approached him gently, knelt by his
side, and, taking one of his hands, covered it with silent tears.

What a change for our poor organist! An immense joy overflowed
his heart, and spread over his whole being in delicious emotion.
He forgot all past suffering and future inquietude. He lost all
consciousness of the present but the knowledge that his daughter
was there, pressed to his heart, and palpitating midst her sobs.

He leaned over, and two tears, the first shed by this austere
man, fell on the young bowed head--her baptism of peace and
pardon. Grief, repentance, the love of the child, obscured for a
time, now manifested themselves violently. She hung convulsively
on the neck of her father, and begged his pardon. They exchanged
kisses, stifled cries, and little words of tenderness, that are
the first elements of that pure and passionate, delicate and
violent language of the domestic hearth, so little capable of
description.


                  XIV.

The stars sparkled peacefully in a cloudless sky. The breath of
the night, with its penetrating odors, came noiselessly, and
mingled the white hair of the father with the black curls of the
child. It refreshed their burning foreheads.

Peace has descended into their souls. Now and then a sob from
Paganina is the only witness of the past storm.

Master Swibert, with his head inclined, speaks in a low voice. He
says:

"My daughter, my tenderness for you knows no bounds. Trust to me.
Arrived at the summit of life, I, whose head is whitening toward
eternity, will tell you that, in this world, the only happiness
given man is in the affections of his family. You cannot tell,
before being a mother, what paternal affection is, and still less
will you understand mine. I was ignorant of it myself until
yesterday."

The child standing, her little feet united, pressed her head
against the heart of her father.

The organist continued: "The angel of a woman never leaves the
domestic hearth. If she lives in the world, her angel has
forsaken her. A woman's crown is formed in shadow and silence;
the gaze and admiration of a crowd will wither it. Your soul I
love, my daughter; and our mutual love must never end. Do you
understand me? Never! provided our souls rise together toward the
abode of infinite love."

{811}

The child listens attentively; divining, by a sort of intuition,
the sense of these teachings, engraving themselves, in letters of
fire, on her heart; and which she will understand, each day, more
and more.

Little by little, lulled by the whispering of her father;
refreshed, as if bathed in such admirable tenderness, she fell
asleep. Her father held her in his arms, and, raising his eyes,
he prayed.

Day has come. The aurora awakes in its humid splendor, and throws
its first rays over the mountain violets. The bells of the town
dance into the air their clear and joyous notes.

"My father," said Paganina in a low voice, and without opening
her eyes, "what do those bells say? Their ringing sound makes me
tremble with joy."

"My daughter, they celebrate, as they may, the day of the
Ascension, when Christ ascended into heaven."

"To heaven! my father;" and she added, in so weak a voice that he
could scarcely hear her, "It seems that I am there now--that I
repose in your arms."

The organist looked at his daughter, whose closed eyes seemed to
enjoy interior contemplation; while his pale face expressed his
delight. He raised her; held her up, as if to offer her to God;
then laid her quietly on her little bed, and let her sleep.


                  XV.

From that day, the organist possessed perfect control over his
daughter. If she seemed disposed to escape from his influence, he
recalled the night of the Ascension, and that sufficed. Paganina
was still a little girl; but soon she would cease to be one. Her
future beauty was crystallizing. The features could be seen; but
they had not yet blended into their after harmony. There was
something surprising about her.

Morally, the incomprehensible little creature was all dissonance
and violent contrasts, promising to be equally powerful for good
or evil, as she should be led by superior or inferior influences.

The distinctive character of her nature, habitually concentrated
and sometimes impetuous to excess, was her passion for every
thing beautiful. Music exercised an extraordinary influence over
her. It was, properly speaking, her language; and she understood
in it what others could not. Already she spoke in it wonderfully.

Her father taught her his instrument; and she gave herself with
love to the study. However, it was easy to see that the demon of
song would make her his; so Master Swibert hesitated to give her
a master, restrained by his personal ideas on the subject. He had
his theory, which appeared singular, no doubt, and he revealed it
to his daughter, saying, "Too perfect an instrument is a snare
for a musician; for when he has at his service an organ of this
kind, he forgets too often to raise it to the ideal, and gives it
to matter. Where are those who can disengage themselves from
matter to arrive at an idea? Where are those who know that the
beauty of the body is the shadow of the beauty of the soul? To
pursue exclusively the first is to lose both.

"Look at the immortal composers of my country, whose genius will
radiate unto the last of posterity. The shrill notes of the piano
are the most common expression of their glorious thoughts. The
musicians of this nation find voices neither pure nor powerful
enough to express their pitiful imaginations. When I see such
anxiety for the sign, I esteem poorly the thing signified, and I
think that its beauty is, above all, material.

{812}

"I love the human voice. What an admirable instrument! But I
tremble to see how it is used to express the passions of earth
and the enchantments of pleasure. It is dangerous to possess it.
I warn you of your danger, my daughter."

I have already said that this theory was singular. The word
appears weak, perhaps; but it came from Germany.

However, it had no influence on the destiny of Paganina; for,
having finished his reasoning, her father gave her a master.
Happily, logic alone does not govern the world.

The little one then learned to sing. Her success in this study
was rapid, and passed all foresight. Sometimes Master Swibert was
confounded when he heard her, and trembled before this power
which had come from himself.


                  XVI.

The moment came when André was to be submitted to the proof of a
public education. His uncle considered such a course necessary to
make him a man. It was decided that he should receive at the
conservatory of Naples the classic traditions of Italian art. The
organist and his daughter wished to accompany him to his
destination.

They travelled by short stages. Master Swibert proposing,
according to his habit, an elevated result, communicated to his
children the riches of his erudition. They stopped wherever they
could hope to gather some fruit, curious to visit every place of
which they knew the history, and he desirous to give them a
living knowledge which would be for ever impressed upon them.

His studies and affections induced him to neglect the mere
vestiges of antiquity to seek with greater love the souvenirs of
Christianity and the relics of the saints. We know if they abound
on this illustrious earth.

Every day, then, the travellers turned a new leaf of the book
which they had lisped from their childhood. The history of the
martyrs particularly seized upon the imagination of Paganina. She
never tired of listening to it on the very places they had
sanctified by such sublime acts as the world rarely knows.

We may scoff at or disdain the wonders of interior sanctity, but
indifference is arrested by the heroism of martyrdom.

The martyrs wear the double crown of divine and human glory.
After their God, they are the vanquishers of death. Inspired
courage burns on their faces; and when are added to their ranks
the grace and beauty of woman and child, why refuse to their
memory the homage of love and admiration, if even not to be
Christian is considered worthy of worldly honor.

Paganina had the intelligence of greatness; she loved courage and
true nobility. The recitals of her father drew tears from her
eyes; and in traversing the arenas made memorable by some bloody
triumph, she felt within her every inspiration to celebrate them.
Here she was true to her Italian nature; but she spoke with an
elevation of accent and depth of emotion which are the privileges
of northern nations.

One evening she was at the Colosseum. She felt an enthusiasm
within her, an inspiration unaccountable, and pictured in
life-colors the crowd of excited people, watching and crying out
to the poor Christian martyrs struggling and dying, in the
brightness of a supernatural light. She entirely forgot herself.

{813}

Something like a hymn breathed from her oppressed heart;
eloquence overflowed from her lips. The passers-by were attracted
toward her, and her father listened overcome and astonished.
While she appeared transfigured, standing in the light of the
setting sun, which seemed to throw around her the bloody purple
of which she chanted, a ray of the glory of her ancestors rested
on the forehead of this grandchild of the martyrs.

That evening, her father, in taking her home again, said to her,
"Go on, my little one; many have passed for eloquent who had not
your inspiration; many have sought for poetry, and great they
were; but they have not found the fruit your tiny hands have
gathered. Mignon sang: you sing and speak; and if you use your
power for good, Mignon may not compare with you."

Excuse the blindness of a father, if you please.


                 XVII.

When the time came for the children to part, André was overcome
in a manner which seemed incompatible with his nature, so
ordinarily tranquil. The father and daughter returned alone, and
lived afterward with no other company than themselves. They felt
no need to seek their diversion among their neighbors. The simple
ties of friendship or convenience to them were unnecessary, and
the organist preserved with the outside world only the
acquaintance that strict politeness demanded.

Paganina's affection increased daily. A profound sentiment
without display, and only recognizable by certain mute signs that
might have escaped an indifferent eye. Her father, however, could
not be deceived.

So these two beings were never separated. They worked together;
the organist conducted his daughter into the highest regions of
music, and was astonished, in teaching her, to discover horizons
hitherto unknown. Paganina made wonderful progress.

Those who find in art their happiness in this world, and seek the
depths of those mysterious tongues of which so many speak and
know nothing--those alone can form an idea of the happy moments
passed in their solitude.

At times these two souls rose together, mounted even to the pure
heights where, to those who attain to them, is given a
supernatural felicity.

To these joys Paganina aspired with an immoderate ardor; but in
attaining them she experienced a reaction of extreme sadness.
This disquieted her father; so, in the language of parable which
he liked to use, and which sometimes proved more original than
gracious, he said, "My daughter, my daughter, drink with
precaution; at the bottom of the purest streams are hidden the
most dangerous reptiles. Be prudent, or you will swallow the
leech. There is only one fountain to quench your thirst, and
where, with your impetuous humor, you may drink with safety: it
is that which gushes toward eternal life."

            To Be Continued.

-------

{814}

  [Transcriber's note: This discussion is impressive, considering
  that quantum theory and the internal structure of the atom
  appears many decades in the future.]

      Translated From The Etudes Religieuses.

         Recent Scientific Discoveries.

           By Fr. Carbonelle.


The hypothesis of an ethereal medium everywhere diffused, is
still, in spite of some vague objections urged against it,
universally received, and the most recent theories and researches
have not suggested its abandonment or modification in any
important respect. On the contrary, they point to its more exact
establishment, and to its application to large classes of
phenomena in which, until lately, it was hardly supposed to be
involved. There is no longer any branch of natural philosophy
which can dispense with it; and in the theory of heat as a mode
of motion, which will soon be the basis of a new system of
physics more full and clear than the previous one, the motion
must probably be explained by the principle of ethereal
undulations or vibrations.

These vibrations show themselves by three different effects,
namely, heat, chemical action, and color. The first two were for
a long time neglected, but the third offered quite a large field,
in which many very beautiful discoveries were made. It was known,
for instance, that the oscillations were made with prodigious
rapidity. Thus, the red of the spectrum is produced by vibrations
repeated four hundred and eighty-three trillions of times in a
second; while for the violet, more than seven hundred and eight
trillions are required. Between these limits all the visible rays
are contained, and, taken successively, they produce all the
shades of the spectrum, and, by their combination, all possible
colors. But as there are vibrations in the air too rapid or too
slow to give the sense of sound to the ear, so there are, in the
ether, slower than the red, or quicker than the violet, and hence
invisible. The first have been detected by their calorific, the
second by their chemical effects. The spectrum has thus been
considerably extended at both ends, and we cannot be sure that
its true limits have even yet been found.

These facts have been known for some time, and are found in all
treatises on physics. We only speak of them in order to explain
better the theories proposed by modern science to explain the
three effects of ethereal radiation.

The hypothesis of three essentially different kinds of rays has
now been abandoned. The solar beam, for example, which causes six
hundred and thirty trillion vibrations a second, has the three
properties of producing in the eye the sensation of blue, of
heating Melloni's thermo-electric pile, and of decomposing the
chloride of silver used in photography; but it does not appear
that three different rays vibrating with this velocity are sent
to us, each the cause of a separate effect. Notwithstanding the
most careful experiments, no one of these properties has ever
been diminished in a ray without diminishing the rest in the same
proportion. Of course, these properties are differently
proportioned in the different rays of the spectrum; but in two
rays from the same part, and hence having the same velocity of
vibration, these properties always consist in the same relative
intensity.
{815}
At the red end of the spectrum, the heating power predominates;
at the other extremity, the chemical; in the middle, the
luminous. The reason of this seems to be merely the difference of
vibratory velocities; and we shall see that this will suffice to
account for it.

Let us first explain how we conceive the production of the
phenomena of chemical action and of heat. For clearness, we must
advert to a theory familiar to all, according to which ponderable
matter is composed of excessively small volumes, called atoms,
which, though perhaps theoretically divisible, are never divided
by any physical or chemical action. In the constitution of
bodies, these atoms are supposed to be grouped in some manner,
each group forming what is called a molecule. These, unlike the
atoms, are decomposed in chemical changes, though not in physical
ones, by which we understand such as evaporation, melting,
crystallization, heating, magnetizing, electrifying, etc., unless
these happen to affect the chemical constitution as well as the
physical condition of the substance. All these do not alter the
arrangement of the atoms in the molecule, but only the position
or distance of the molecules with regard to each other. A
collection of molecules may be called a particle; physical action
then alters the constitution of the particle as chemical does
that of the molecule. It may be remarked that our senses give us
no direct evidence of the existence of molecules, much less of
that of atoms, and they are supposed to be so extremely small
that it will probably never be possible to detect them in this
way.

In the application of this chemical theory to that of light, a
new hypothesis is made, namely, that the ethereal fluid, whether
itself continuous or composed of separate elements, penetrates
all the interstices between the atoms of a molecule, as well as
those between the molecules. The motions of this fluid, and of
the matter which it penetrates, are communicated to each other,
according to laws not yet ascertained, but of which we already
have some glimpses. Thus, in treating of the effects of the
ethereal vibrations on ponderable bodies, great importance is
probably due to what is called _isochronism_, or equality of
times; that is, the agreement of the rapidity of vibration of the
ether with that of which the matter is susceptible; for in all
known communications of vibratory movements, this isochronism
plays a very notable part. If, for example, we place upon the
same stand two clocks, having pendulums of the same length, and
consequently swinging in the same time, and start one of them,
the slight impulses communicated by this to the other will
finally set the latter also in motion. If, on the other hand, the
pendulums are not isochronous, no such effect will be produced.
In the same way, a stretched cord will vibrate if one of the
sounds of which it is capable is produced near by; but it will
not be affected by other notes, even though much louder--showing
that isochronism is more important than intensity. Another
illustration of the same thing struck me forcibly some ten years
ago. I had ascended with some photographic apparatus to the top
of an old square tower, very high and massive, to take some
views. The tower belonged to a church, the bells of which were
rung several times while I was there. The great bell, though of a
very considerable size, shook the building very slightly; it
hardly caused any tremor in the image of the landscape.
{816}
But a second and much smaller bell could not be rung without
giving to the tower, after two or three minutes, a strong swaying
movement like that of a tree shaken by the wind. This was owing
to the isochronism between the oscillations of the tower and of
the small bell, which more than compensated for the difference of
mass.

We have here an explanation of the physical and chemical
phenomena produced by the ethereal rays. A few vibrations of this
medium, probably, would produce no perceptible effect on a mass
of matter; but these movements are repeated hundreds of trillions
of times in a second, and however feeble their influence at
first, isochronism may finally give it great power. Let us
consider, first, the molecules, which have some connection
between them, as yet unknown, but probably only allowing a
certain set of vibratory velocities, (as a cord will only vibrate
so as to produce a definite series of musical notes.) If, then,
these are isochronous with those of the surrounding ether, the
movement of the latter will be communicated to the molecules; or,
according to the new theory of heat, the body will be warmed.
These movements may even become so violent as to permanently
modify the manner of union of the molecules--that is, to change
the state of the body from solid to liquid or gaseous; and, by
this change of state, the molecules may become insensible to the
vibrations which previously affected them; for the set which they
can now perform may have been entirely altered. The phenomena of
heat are then well accounted for by this theory. To explain
similarly the chemical ones, we have only to suppose ethereal
vibrations, such that the movement affects the atoms separately,
instead of the whole molecule, so that, after they have been
sufficiently prolonged, the connection between the atoms will be
destroyed. According to this, the chemical action of light should
always be one of decomposition; it is so undoubtedly in most
cases, and in the rest, where a combination is produced--as, for
instance, in the formation of chlorhydric acid by the action of
the violet rays on a mixture of chlorine and hydrogen--we shall
adduce hereafter some facts which explain them, and show that
even here the real action of the rays is a decomposing one. It
may be remarked that the introduction of these ethereal
vibrations, whose dimensions and velocities are well known, into
the region, still so mysterious, of atoms and of molecules,
promises to lead to results long unhoped for. If, for example,
the theory above stated is correct, it would appear that the
union of the atoms is such that their necessary time of
oscillation is shorter than that of the molecules; since the red
rays, which have the greatest heating power, vibrate more slowly
than the violet, which are the most active chemically, as stated
some distance back.

The luminous action of the rays is no doubt the most important
for us, but also the most difficult to study; we have, however,
something to say about it, for real progress has lately been made
in this department. In the first place, since we are speaking of
sensations, it is necessary to notice that this subject has two
very different parts, one of which belongs to natural science,
and the other to psychology. We shall here speak only of the
first, that is, of three classes of phenomena which are produced
at the exterior extremities of the nervous fibres, on the line of
the fibres, and in the brain respectively.
{817}
It has been said, in a previous paper, that each of these
requires a certain time, and the experimental results as to these
times were there given. But this is all, or almost all, the
knowledge, unfortunately, which we yet have as to what takes
place in the brain. The conjecture has been made that the
different kinds of sensations are due to different modifications
of the cerebral extremities of the various nerves; or that at the
interior extremity of the optic nerve, a different action occurs
from that at the nerve of hearing, which seems probable, since
there are good reasons for believing that the action of the main
body of the nerve itself is precisely the same for all the
sensations. In more than one way, our nervous system would then
resemble the telegraph. All the wires are traversed by similar
currents, but the registering apparatus is different in each. In
one, the dispatch is read off upon a dial; in another, it is
printed on a moving band; in a third, a facsimile is given of it,
etc. The sending is also accomplished by different means; but in
all cases the same agent, the electric current, is employed.

Since we are treating of the sensation of sight only in
connection with the external vibrations, we need here only
discuss the first of the three classes of phenomena mentioned
above, those which correspond to the transmission of the
dispatch. In explaining this, we shall follow the celebrated
professor of Heidelberg, M. Helmholtz.

The use of the spectroscope, and the analysis of light as now
made in physics, chemistry, and astronomy, might induce the idea
that color is an intrinsic property of the rays, depending
entirely upon the length of the undulation in each, and
inseparably connected with it; but this is not the case. Color is
an organic phenomenon, only produced in the living animal; and,
in one sense, is very independent of the length of the wave,
since it can even exist without the presence of any luminous ray.
Its laws are admirably exhibited in a figure called Newton's
circle. This circle has been modified by recent experiments, and
has received three enlargements, which make it a sort of triangle
with rounded corners; but it is very well to preserve its name,
for, as yet, the claims of Newton in optics have not been
contested in any "_Commercium epistolicum_." Let us briefly
describe this figure. The red, green, and blue of the spectrum
occupy the three corners respectively. Passing round the
circumference, we go from red to green through yellow, from green
to blue through greenish blue, and from blue to red through
violet and purple. If we draw a straight line from any point of
the circumference to the centre, we find the same color on all
points of the line, but more and more diluted, so that the centre
itself is perfectly white. This figure contains all possible
shades of color, and has the following remarkable property,
established by experiment. If we wish to know what color will be
produced by the mixture of any others, we have only to mark upon
this figure the points where the several colors are found, and
place weights there proportional to the intensities in which the
different colors are to be used in the combination; at the centre
of gravity of these weights, that is, at the point on which the
circle (supposed itself to be without weight) would balance when
thus loaded, we shall find the resulting shade. This point does
not need to be found by experiment, being more easily calculated
mathematically.

{818}

Now it is evident from this that color is a mere matter of
sensation; for it is obvious that the same centre of gravity can
be obtained by an infinity of arrangements of the original
colors, notwithstanding the diversity of their wave-lengths; and
it will also be found that these various mixed rays, though
having precisely the same color--that of the centre of
gravity--will differ entirely in their other properties. They act
variously upon the thermometer and on the sensitive photographic
plate, and give different tinges to colored objects which they
illumine. But upon the retina the action of all is the same. How
is this result to be explained? We will answer without stating
the proofs, which the limits of this article would forbid.

From what has been said, it will be seen that all colors can be
produced by the mixture of the three fundamental or primary ones,
red, green, and blue, which were placed at the three rounded
corners of Newton's circle. It will also be supposed that, as in
the theory of Thomas Young, nervous fibres of three kinds are
found at every point of the retina. When these are excited in any
way, whether by the vibrations of the ether, by lateral pressure
on the ball of the eye, by a feeble electric current, or by any
other means, they transmit the excitement to the brain; but the
red fibres, (so to speak,) if they should act alone, would only
produce, however they were irritated, the uniform sensation of a
red such as we hardly ever actually see, more _saturated_
than the ordinary red, and which would be found in our figure at
the extreme summit of the rounded corner. The two other kinds of
fibres would, of course, act similarly, producing colors more
pure than are usually seen; since, in our usual sensations, the
three are always mixed, each predominating in its turn; and this
is the case even in the spectrum itself. The effect of the pure
colors in the latter may, however, be heightened as follows: Let
us fix our eyes, for instance, for a few moments on the
blue-green. This is the complementary of the red. The fatigue
will produce a momentary insensibility in the fibres
corresponding to the blue and green, and, turning the eyes to the
red part of the spectrum, the slight admixture of these colors
there present will fail to excite sensibly the corresponding
nerves, so that the red will be seen for a few seconds in great
purity. But to return. The stimulus of the first set of fibres,
though found more or less in all parts of the spectrum, will
predominate at the red end, where the vibrations are slowest;
that of the second set in the middle, where the green is found;
that of the third, at the blue extremity. Why these inequalities?
Why, also, do the dark rays, preceding the red and following the
violet, fail to act on the retina? No certain reason can be
assigned, but there are two very plausible ones: first, the media
which the rays have to traverse in the eye before reaching the
nerves have, like all other transparent bodies, the power of
absorbing the vibrations, not all uniformly, but some in
preference to others. This elective absorption would destroy or
diminish the effect of the rays on the nervous fibres. The second
reason, as will readily be surmised, is the want of isochronism
between the vibrations of the rays and those of the nervous
fibres.

In confirmation of this theory, a remarkable anatomical fact,
noticed among many birds and reptiles, may be cited. These
actually have in the retina three kinds of fibres: the first
terminated by a small, oily red drop, the second by a yellow one,
while the third have no perceptible appendage.
{819}
Evidently, the red rays will arrive most purely at the first, the
central rays of the spectrum at the second, while the blue and
violet ones will act freely only on the third. It must be granted
that no such thing has been observed in man and the other
mammalia; but something similar may be found in the singular
pathological phenomenon to which the chemist Dalton has given his
name. Daltonism is most frequently an inability to perceive red.
For eyes thus affected, the chromatic triangle or circle just
mentioned is considerably simplified; but sad mistakes are the
consequence. "All the differences of color," says Helmholtz,
"appear to them as mixtures of blue and green, which last they
call yellow." This disorder would be, according to the above
theory, a paralysis of the first, or red fibres. The simplicity
of this explanation is certainly in favor of the theory which
gives it. But we had determined not to bring up arguments. Let
us, then, pass on; remarking, however, one respect in which the
eye, otherwise so superior to the rest of the senses, is inferior
to the ear. Sounds, though combined to any extent in harmonies or
discords, can readily be separated by an experienced ear. The
eye, on the other hand, only sees the result of mixed colors; it
needs instruments to rival the ear; and it is only by means of
the prism that it can separate and classify the various
vibrations which reach it.

But, provided with this prism, or _spectroscope_, it has
lately done wonders. It has discovered and measured a whole world
of new phenomena, which, according to the theory just developed,
must be attributed to reciprocal exchanges of movement between
the ether and the ponderable molecules. The light given by these
has disclosed to us many secrets of chemistry, and especially of
astronomy.

Before specifying the most recent of these discoveries, we will
profit by what has already been said to explain very briefly the
fundamental principles of spectral analysis. Transparent bodies,
whether solid, liquid, or gaseous, exercise upon the rays an
absorption which is called elective, because some undulations are
allowed to pass, while others are stopped, according to their
velocities; and one of the effects of this absorption is the
color of such bodies. This is to be explained by the principle of
isochronism. Those vibrations which, for want of it, cannot be
imparted to the surrounding matter, pass freely; the others are
absorbed. But it is remarkable that gases and vapors only absorb
a small number of them, while solids and liquids retain a great
many. Thus, supposing that we have obtained, in any way, a
continuous spectrum--that is, one with no breaks--containing all
the known rays, not only the visible ones between the red and
violet, but also the rest outside of these limits, a liquid or
solid body intercepting this light will entirely destroy, or
considerably weaken, large portions of this spectrum; whereas a
gas or vapor generally will only efface a few small ones, whose
absence is detected in the luminous part of the spectrum by the
dark, transverse lines which have been so long known in that of
the sun. This is certainly quite extraordinary, since it would
suggest the inference that in gaseous bodies, the molecules,
though less condensed, or further from each other, than in solids
or liquids, have a much smaller range of possible vibrations.
Besides this, the researches of Mr. Frankland on flames have
lately shown that, even in gases, this range increases as the
density augments. These results must undoubtedly be considered as
strange; but what, after all, do we know of the connection of the
elements of matter?
{820}
Without dwelling further on this point, we will mention the most
important fact learned by these experiments: that this elective
absorption is a complete test of the chemical composition of
gases. In given conditions of temperature and pressure, each gas
is perfectly distinguished from all others by the special
absorption which it exercises upon the luminous rays. The
principle by which chemical analysis is performed
spectroscopically is thus evident. To find if any particular gas
is to be found on the path of the ray, it is only necessary to
develop the latter into a spectrum, and to see, by the position
of the particular dark lines produced in it, if the absorption
due to this gas has been effected.

But this is not all. Bodies sufficiently heated become luminous.
According to the theory, this means that the molecules of matter,
in their turn, communicate their vibrations to the ether; and
here again we should find the influence of isochronism. The
ether, it is true, is susceptible of vibrations of any velocity
within certain very wide limits; but the molecules can give it
none which are not isochronous with their own. Let us see what
will result. Evidently, that the light which is emitted will,
when developed into a spectrum, be concentrated in brilliant
lines at those points where the velocities of undulation are the
same as those of which the gas is capable; and, further, these
lines should also evidently be in the same places, as the dark
lines which this gas produces, as explained above, in a
continuous spectrum, by absorption. This actually takes place in
most cases, but some exceptions must be expected; because
variations of temperature and pressure change the mutual
connections of the gaseous molecules, and hence should also
change the velocities of their oscillations. Thus, it is often
found that the same gases change their systems of brilliant lines
as their temperature or pressure changes; and Mr. Frankland has
even obtained gases giving continuous spectra, sometimes
attaining this result by pressure alone. The influence of heat
also explains why solid or liquid bodies, when incandescent, give
continuous spectra; while, at a low temperature, their
interposition produces an elective absorption. For it is known
that transparent solids or liquids become opaque when heated
sufficiently to shine; the reason apparently being that, like the
ether, they are capable of vibrations of any degree of rapidity
within the usual limits, and hence allow no ethereal ones--or, in
other words, no light--to pass through them, but absorb them all.
Most flames or incandescent vapors, on the contrary, do not
entirely lose their transparency. This property is of inestimable
value in our investigations of nature.

Gases, by the combination of their elective absorption with their
equally elective emission, produce results which at first sight
might appear singular, but which can now readily be explained.
Suppose that a flame is situated on the path of some rays which,
without this interposition, would give a brilliant continuous
spectrum. This flame only absorbs the ray having vibrations
isochronous with its own; on the other hand, it emits rays
similar to those which it absorbs. The resulting spectrum will
vary according to the relative intensity of the emitted and
absorbed rays. If these two intensities are equal, the spectrum
will remain continuous; but if the absorption predominates, there
will be dark lines in it; if the emission, brilliant ones.
{821}
Similar phenomena of reversal have been often met with in the
recent examinations of different parts of the sun.

The principles just explained have been known for several years,
and were sufficient for astronomy as long as it restricted its
investigations to the chemical analysis of the atmospheres of the
heavenly bodies. But it was soon perceived that much greater use
could be made of the spectroscope. Information is now beginning
to be acquired by means of it which had previously appeared to be
unattainable, regarding, for instance, the rapidity of the motion
of stars the distance of which is still unknown; the great
movements which are continually taking place in the great masses
of gas in the solar photosphere, and the pressure of these masses
at different depths; and it is even hoped that a direct
determination of their temperature may be made. Let us speak
first of the observations of stellar velocities. Their
possibility may easily be shown by means of an acoustic
phenomenon which the reader must frequently have noticed. Let us
suppose two trains of cars to be moving rapidly in opposite
directions, and that one of them whistles as it passes the other.
If we are seated in the latter, we shall perceive that the pitch
of the whistle suddenly falls as it passes us. The reason is
manifest. A certain time is necessary for the sound to reach us;
and while the train is approaching, this time is sensibly shorter
for each succeeding vibration, so that the interval between the
vibrations is apparently diminished, and the note is higher than
it would be were the trains at rest. On the other hand, as the
whistle recedes after passing, its pitch is lowered for a similar
reason. Of course, no such effect is produced by that of our own
train, which always remains at the same distance from us. By the
amount of flattening of the sound, it is quite possible to
calculate the velocity of the train, as compared with that of
sound. [Footnote 198]

    [Footnote 198: Suppose the sum of the velocities of the
    trains to be one-ninth of that of sound, and that the whistle
    is, at a given moment, 1140 feet (which is about the distance
    travelled by sound in a second) from our ear. The vibrations
    emitted at this instant will reach us in one second; and all
    those emitted in the nine seconds required for the train to
    arrive will be condensed into the remaining eight. Their
    frequency will then be nine-eighths of what it would be
    without the motion. It will be diminished in nearly the same
    ratio after the passage; since the vibration emitted nine
    seconds afterward will require an additional second to reach
    us; thus, the frequency will now be nine-tenths of what it
    would be without the motion, or four-fifths of what it was
    before meeting; corresponding to a flattening of two whole
    musical tones. This would require a relative velocity of 127
    feet a second, or 87 miles an hour; which gives the rule,
    that, for every half-tone of flattening, the sum of the
    velocities, or the velocity of the moving train, if we are at
    rest, is 22 miles an hour.]

It is very easy to apply what has just been said of the waves of
sound to those of light. The motion of the sonorous body
displaces its sounds on the acoustic scale; in the same way, the
motion of the luminous body will displace its light on the optic,
placing any particular line, dark or brilliant, in the spectrum
nearer to the violet or rapid end, if the body is approaching;
and nearer to the red, if it is receding. And we are not obliged
to wait till the change has taken place in the character of the
motion, as in the case of the train, since we can always obtain
lines similar to those thus displaced, and having the same
velocity of vibration, from some terrestrial substance,
relatively at rest, and put the two side by side in the same
field; and by this means we obtain at once the difference between
the apparent number of vibrations in a second of the ray from the
moving body, and the real number, and thus the velocity of the
moving object. This observation has the advantage of being
independent of the distance of the objects observed, being as
accurate for the most distant stars as for the nearest.
{822}
We may notice, in passing, also a singular consequence. If the
motion were rapid enough, it would change the colors of objects;
and, since outside the visible spectrum there are dark rays, it
would even be possible for a luminous body to become invisible,
by the mere effect of movement away from or to us. But the
prodigious velocity of light places such a result among mere
metaphysical possibilities. Indeed, it was thought, for a time,
that the effect of motion on the spectral lines would never be
perceptible. The first trials only gave negative results, either
because the bodies observed were moving too slowly, or because
the instruments used were not sensitive enough. This is no longer
the case, as we shall soon see.

To conclude this explanation of principles, it only remains to
say a few words on the spectroscopic observations of temperature
and pressure. But here we shall indeed be obliged to be brief;
since Messrs. Frankland and Lockyer, who have undertaken
investigations on these important points, have not yet finished
their labors; and what they have as yet communicated to the Royal
Society of London, and the Academy of Sciences of Paris, is not
sufficiently detailed. In 1864, Messrs. Plücker and Hittorf
discovered that variations in temperature of some of the chemical
elements, such as hydrogen, nitrogen, sulphur, and selenium,
caused sudden changes in their spectra. At a certain degree of
heat, their former lines instantly disappeared and were succeeded
by new ones. This is evidently somewhat analogous to what takes
place in a sonorous pipe when it is blown more forcibly. At
first, the sound only becomes louder, then its pitch is suddenly
raised. But here we know the relation of the new note to the old
one; but the connection between the successive spectra has not
yet been ascertained. As regards pressure, Messrs. Frankland and
Lockyer inform us that one of the lines of hydrogen increases in
breadth with increased compression of the gas. We have also
already said that under very high pressures the gases have not
only shown broader bright lines, but even continuous spectra. (It
will be remembered that the usual spectrum given by a luminous
gas consists of isolated bright lines.) Father Secchi, whose
attention has lately been turned to composite rather than to
simple substances, has observed, among other things, that the
spectrum of benzine vapor is gradually modified with a gradual
increase of density.

Let us pass to the recent applications which astronomers have
made of these various principles. The eclipse of the 18th of
August, 1868, and the beautiful discovery of M. Janssen, have
naturally turned their attention to the sun, and some most
interesting discoveries have been made. To study its various
portions, an image of it is first produced in the focus of a
large telescope, which image is afterward enlarged by a lens
similar to those used for the objectives of microscopes; and its
different parts are successively placed upon the slit of the
spectroscope. (The slit is the small aperture of that shape
through which the light enters before falling upon the analyzing
prism.) This slit thus receives light from only a part of the
sun's disc; for the light diffused in our atmosphere and falling
upon it, although coming indeed from all parts of the sun, is too
feeble to interfere with the observations. Suppose, then, that
our eye is at the spectroscope, and that the slit is receiving
rays from the centre of the sun.
{823}
The movement of the heavens will bring all the points of the
solar radius successively upon it, from the centre to the edge;
and if the slit is placed perpendicular to this radius, it will
come out, of course, tangent to the edge. Under these conditions,
and if the atmosphere is steady, the phenomena will be as
follows.

As long as we are upon the disc, we shall see nothing but the
usual solar spectrum with its colors and its numerous dark lines.
The region from which this light comes is called the photosphere;
and its spectrum would be continuous were not its light absorbed
by the interposed vapors of a great many substances. These vapors
produce the dark lines; but where are they? It was for a long
time supposed that they formed an immense atmosphere round the
sun, only visible during total eclipses under the form of a
brilliant aureola. This hypothesis seems now to have been
abandoned, for reasons which will soon be given. It is generally
thought that these absorbing vapors form the atmosphere in which
the luminous clouds float, or, at least, that they are in
immediate contact with the photosphere.

Secondly, when we have nearly arrived at the edge, the spectrum
is covered with a number of bright lines. According to Messrs.
Frankland and Lockyer, these probably indicate a very thin
gaseous covering of the photosphere, the elective emission of
which has no effect for want of sufficient thickness, except upon
the borders of the sun, where it is seen very obliquely. Upon the
rest of the surface it only acts by its elective absorption, and
perhaps may be the only cause of the dark lines. This conjecture
certainly agrees with the principles just developed.

Thirdly, at the moment of passing off the disc, the lines all
disappear, and the spectrum becomes continuous. Father Secchi,
who informs us of this fact, naturally ascribes it to a
particular layer enveloping the photosphere. He adds that this
layer is very thin, so that tremulousness in the air suffices to
prevent its observation, on account of the mixture of lights. It
is not found on the whole circumference of the disc; but we shall
give an explanation of this. He supposes that it is the seat of
the elective absorption which produces the dark lines; but how
can this be reconciled with the continuity of the spectrum which
it emits?

This spectrum soon disappears, and some brilliant lines take its
place, particularly a red, a yellow, a green, and a violet one.
At this moment the slit is illumined by the famous rose-colored
layer, now called the _chromosphere_, upon which rest the
protuberances, formerly so mysterious, seen in total eclipses. We
cannot see it in the ordinary way, on account of the atmospheric
light; but it comes out in the spectroscope, its light being
concentrated in a few bright lines, while that of our atmosphere
is spread out in a long spectrum, and consequently much weakened.
It has been found that the mean thickness of this gaseous
envelope of the sun is more than 5000 kilometres, (3107 miles,)
or about four tenths of the earth's diameter, and that its
contour is very variable; it is often agitated like the waves of
a stormy sea, while in some places it sometimes has a very
uniform level. It is now regarded as forming the outer limit or
coating of the sun. The only reason which formerly supported the
belief in a gaseous atmosphere outside of it, the elective
absorption of which gave the dark lines of the solar spectrum,
was the phenomenon of the aureola, already mentioned. But the
thin layer discovered by F. Secchi will probably account for
this; and there are, on the other hand, very strong reasons for
rejecting the idea of such a vast exterior envelope.
{824}
One is the appearance, mentioned above, of the numerous bright
lines which Messrs. Frankland and Lockyer attribute to a thin,
gaseous coating of the photosphere. The light of these ought
seemingly to be absorbed by a thick atmosphere, and the lines
reversed to dark ones. Besides, these same observers consider
that the change of breadth of the lines shows that the pressure
is insignificant at the summit of the chromosphere, and that even
at the base it is less than that of our own air. Lastly, no
traces have been found of the bright-line spectrum which this
envelope ought itself to give in the vicinity of the disc.

To return to the chromosphere: of what gases is it formed? It
certainly is principally composed of hydrogen, perhaps in many
parts entirely so. When a series of electric sparks is passed
through a tube containing pure hydrogen at a very low pressure,
the tube is illumined with a light of the same color as that of
the protuberances. If this light is examined with the
spectroscope, it shows a fine spectrum with a number of brilliant
and very fine lines, among which four are conspicuous, broader
and brighter than the others. The first is red, the second green,
the third and fourth are violet; but this fourth is much the
faintest, and even the third is not so bright as the other two.
The first is called C, the second F, because their positions
exactly correspond to those of the two dark lines thus designated
by Fraunhofer in the solar spectrum. The third is very near the
dark line G of the sun, which is produced by the vapor of iron.
Now, the two first are always found among the lines of the
chromosphere; the third also is often visible; and M. Rayet has
recently seen the fourth. Hydrogen, then, exists in this layer;
for though its other lines are not seen, this may easily be
ascribed to their faintness. But there is one line of the
chromosphere which is still unexplained, the yellow one between C
and F. It would at first seem to be the well-known double line of
sodium, called D, which is so frequently met with in
spectroscopic experiments; but it is certain that it is somewhat
more refrangible than this; and it is not yet known to what
substance it is due; it may, perhaps, also belong to hydrogen,
under a different pressure or temperature from any under which it
has been observed here.

It has been said that the outline of the chromosphere is
generally very irregular. Immense columns rise from it, the
celebrated protuberances, the height of which is sometimes as
much as eleven diameters of the earth, (or 85,000 miles.) It
must, therefore, be subject to great agitation, to which the
spectroscope bears witness. Mr. Lockyer has observed several
times that foreign substances were projected into it; for
example, magnesium into one protuberance as far as the sixth part
of its height; barium and sodium, and probably other bodies also,
were seen, but at smaller elevations. We now understand the
breaks in the thin layer detected by F. Secchi; it is probably
torn by the upward movement of various substances toward the
protuberances. It is, in fact, wanting near the bright spots on
the sun, called faculae, and it is now known that these faculae
are always covered by protuberances.

Near these bright spots are also usually found the dark spots
which have been observed for more than two centuries. Some
discoveries have just been made regarding these which are perhaps
the most interesting of any yet made in the sun.
{825}
Every one knows that they are composed of two distinct parts--the
nucleus, which appears black in a telescope, but which is really
quite bright, since it gives a spectrum of its own; and the
penumbra, which surrounds this nucleus. The latter consists of
portions of the photosphere, drawn out in the form of threads
toward the centre of the nucleus; these threads sometimes unite
with each other and form bridges, as it were, over the dark
space. All the spectral observations confirm the idea previously
entertained, that these spots are really cavities in the
photosphere; also they indicate that these cavities are filled
with absorbing vapors, whose high degree of pressure is manifest
by the broadening of their lines. Mr. Lockyer has seen in them
sodium, barium, and magnesium; F. Secchi, calcium, iron, and
sodium. Above these spots the hydrogen of the chromosphere
appears in quantities sufficient for its elective emission to
destroy the black lines produced by its absorption upon other
parts of the disc, and even sometimes to change them into bright
ones. But there are many other peculiarities in the spectra of
the spots; and F. Secchi, in examining them, has hit upon an idea
which seems to us very suggestive. It was already known by
observations of their frequency and size, that the sun is a
slightly variable star, with a period of ten and one third years.
We now find a new resemblance between it and the other variable
stars. It may be remembered that the Roman astronomer has lately
divided the stars into four classes, according to the general
character of their spectra. He has just compared the different
portions of the sun with these four groups, and finds that if its
surface was all like the nuclei of the spots, it would have to be
put in the class whose type is Betelgeux, all of which are more
or less variable; that the penumbras are like Arcturus, and the
general surface of the photosphere like Pollux. He has also
concluded, from the presence of many of the dark lines in the
nuclei, that the vapor of water exists in these regions of the
sun; and the appearance of others not yet named has caused him to
suspect the presence of many other compound bodies. Up to this
time, hardly any thing but the simple substances has been looked
for, as the heat of the sun would seem to be so great as to
separate all the composite ones; but this temperature probably is
not so high in the spots. It became, therefore, of interest to
examine the faint red stars which form his fourth group; and in
doing so, F. Secchi has obtained the surprising result that the
vapor of a compound substance, namely, benzine, gives, when
incandescent, a spectrum having bright lines exactly
corresponding to the dark ones of one of the stars of this group.
This star, then, appears to have an atmosphere of benzine.

Finally, the spectroscope has demonstrated the movement of at
least one star. Mr. Huggins has found that the hydrogen lines in
the spectrum of Sirius do not exactly coincide with those of this
gas when at rest, but are displaced toward the violet; this
observation was confirmed at Rome. It would follow from this that
Sirius is rapidly approaching us. This is the only observation of
this description which seems yet to be well established. But may
it not be possible to make others, and even elsewhere than among
the stars? The chromosphere is, as we know, the scene of very
rapid movements; and may not these be visible by the displacement
of the spectral lines?
{826}
The following remark of Mr. Lockyer, in one of his communications
to the Royal Society, would induce us to  hope for this: "In the
protuberance of which we are speaking, the line F was strangely
displaced. It seemed that some disturbing cause altered the
refrangibility of this line of hydrogen _under certain
conditions and pressures_." But is it really to pressure that
this displacement is due, when we know that rapid movement
produces this effect, which has never been known to follow from
pressure? But let us hasten to acknowledge that, in a subsequent
communication of the same author, we find a sentence much more to
the point, and which only needs to be a little more developed to
answer our question. Mr. Lockyer is here speaking of movements in
the vapors which fill the cavities of the spots. "The changes of
refrangibility," says he, "of the rays in question show that the
absorbing matter is rising and falling relatively to the luminous
matter, and that these movements can be determined with great
precision." Let us hope that this will be verified by
observation, and that exact measures will show the fertility of
such a promising theoretical principle. [Footnote 199]

    [Footnote 199: The rapidity of some of these movements has
    been said to be about one hundred miles a second.]

The length of this bulletin is beginning to alarm us; but since
it should include all the last scientific developments concerning
the subject of ethereal vibrations, a word must be added on some
curious experiments of Mr. Tyndall. The chemical action of these
vibrations had hardly been examined hitherto, except in the
nutrition of plants, in the formation of chlorhydric acid, and in
the transformation of various substances, principally used in
photography. The successor of Faraday has recently studied their
effects upon vapors, and has applied the curious results of his
investigations to some as yet unexplained facts of meteorology
and astronomy. Passing a cylindrical  beam of light down a long
glass tube full of the vapor which he wished to examine, he found
that the vapor soon ceased to be completely transparent. An
incipient cloud, as he calls it, soon appeared, so thin that it
could only be seen by the light of the beam producing it, but
became invisible in the full light of day. Some vapors
undoubtedly will not produce it; but the experiment succeeds
perfectly with many different ones, especially with nitrite of
amyle, bisulphide of carbon, benzine, etc. The following
explanation of this phenomenon seems quite probable. The
vibrations of the ethereal medium, or at least some of them, are
communicated to the _atoms_ of which the composite
_molecules_ of the vapor are formed. Owing to isochronism,
the movement becomes strong enough to break up the molecule, the
atoms of which are formed into new combinations, which are better
able to resist the action of light. If the new substance cannot
remain under the given pressure and temperature in the gaseous
state, it will be precipitated in liquid particles, which are at
first extremely small, but gradually increase in size, so as to
intercept the light and become visible. If the vapor employed
satisfies these conditions, the experiment ought to succeed. The
chemical analysis of the products has, we believe, in some cases
confirmed this explanation; we will now confirm it by some facts
of another kind.

In Mr. Tyndall's experiments, the vapor examined was never
unmixed; when it was put into the tube, some other gas was also
introduced, usually atmospheric air; but other gases were also
employed. With hydrogen, a remarkable effect was produced. On
account of its small density, it failed to sustain the liquid
particles, and they slowly settled in the bottom of the tube.
{827}
By a suitable diminution of the pressure of these mixtures of gas
and vapor, the chemical action of the rays could be retarded at
pleasure. The "incipient cloud" could then be seen to form
gradually; and whatever was the character of the vapor used, the
cloud had always at first a magnificent blue color. Continuing
the experiment, the brilliancy of the cloud increased, but its
blue tinge diminished, until it became as white as those usually
formed. The natural explanation of this change is found in the
gradual growth of the liquid particles.

The cloud was not usually formed all along the course of the
rays. After having traversed a certain thickness of vapor, the
rays, though seeming as bright as ever, lost their chemical
power. This result might easily be predicted by the theory. Only
a few of these rays had the proper length of wave to act by
isochronism upon the atoms of the vapor. These would be absorbed
shortly after entering; and the others, though vastly more
numerous and escaping absorption, would produce no chemical
effect. It was even probable that, by passing the light at the
outset through a small thickness of the liquid, the vapor of
which was contained in the tube, all its active rays could be
taken out; and experiment confirmed this conclusion. It is to be
regretted that the light was not examined with the prism before
being employed; the wave-length of the active rays would then
have been known. It is no doubt very probable that they are
toward the violet extremity, either among the visible rays or
beyond. But the colored glasses, which the English physicist
interposed, only partially resolve the question. The prism would
undoubtedly have shown that the wave-length of the active rays
varies with the substance exposed to them.

Some vapors taken alone are almost insensible, while their
mixture is immediately affected by the passage of the rays. Such
is the case of that of nitrite of butyle with chlorhydric acid.
This is very easily explained theoretically. The disturbance
communicated to the atoms by the ethereal vibrations, though very
decided, may be insufficient to break up the molecules. But if
another cause, though itself insufficient alone, comes to its
assistance, the atoms may be separated. Such another cause is
that which chemists have long known as _affinity_, the
manifestations of which are very numerous; but which has not yet
been submitted to a precise analysis. In the case just mentioned,
the affinity of the elements of the nitrite of butyle for those
of the chlorhydric acid conspires with the vibrations to destroy
the molecules of the two substances and form a new one, which is
precipitated. The phenomenon is like that observed in the growth
of plants. Light alone is not sufficient to decompose the
carbonic acid of the air; neither are the leaves when in the
dark. But when the sun's rays fall upon them, the carbonic acid
is decomposed, its oxygen uniting with the atmosphere and its
carbon with the plant. It is now easy to justify what was said in
the beginning as to the formation of chlorhydric acid by the
action of the rays on a mixture of chlorine and hydrogen. It is
only necessary that the molecules of these gases, or, at least,
of one of them, should be composed of several atoms. Affinity
alone could only break the union of these very slowly; but the
light would shake them apart, and enable the affinity to act
immediately.

{828}

So far Mr. Tyndall's experiments agree perfectly with the theory;
they confirm it, but they do not extend it. He has, however, made
others, which seem to disclose new points in the theory of
exchange of movements between the ether and ponderable matter. It
might no longer be the atoms or the molecules which would have to
be considered in respect to the ethereal vibrations, but even the
particles, if sufficiently small. In fact, these particles
reflect the rays not absorbed, according to entirely new laws. In
the first place, although belonging to colorless liquids, they
reflect the blue rays much better than the others. This is true
of all the vapors tried, without exception. This elective
reflection only holds when their dimensions are small, since it
disappears as the size of the particles increases. This is quite
a new fact, and, it must be acknowledged, as yet quite
unexplained. Secondly, they polarize light according to laws
which must also be called new, being entirely different from
those given by theory and experiment for polarization by
reflection. In one respect these laws are not new; for they have
been long observed in atmospheric polarization; but this has
always been one of the knotty points of the undulatory theory.
Evidently, Mr. Tyndall's experiments do not clear it up entirely;
but they have made an important advance in that direction, by
showing to what physical circumstance this polarization is
probably due. It would appear, that is, that in the higher
regions of our atmosphere there are vapors which, instead of
condensing in particles large enough to form ordinary clouds, are
precipitated like those used by Mr. Tyndall, and fill the air
with extremely small particles and with incipient clouds. This
hypothesis is certainly very probable. It accounts at once for
the blueness of the sky, and for its polarization of light.

Here is, then, a problem for theorists, in a better condition
than previously. We hope to return to it shortly, in a subsequent
bulletin. In conclusion, let us point out a new application of
these experiments to the physical theory of comets. Mr. Tyndall
considers the cometary matter to be a vapor on which the sun's
rays act physically and chemically. These two actions would be
somewhat contrary to each other; for the first would tend to
evaporate the liquid particles and expand the vapor, while the
second would precipitate this vapor in the form of incipient
cloud. As the comet approaches solar action, forming an immense
volume, of which the visible part will be only a small fraction,
the head being the most condensed portion. If, now, we suppose
the head to absorb the heating rays more abundantly than the
remaining ones, in the cool shadow behind it the chemical action
may prevail, and form an incipient cloud, which will be the tail
of the comet. Elsewhere, the calorific action will predominate,
and the vapor will remain invisible. Such is substantially the
new theory of comets. It certainly satisfies the general
conditions of the problem, and especially it explains very
naturally the enormously rapid movements observed in the tails of
these bodies. But will what is still undetermined in it enable it
to be accommodated to the numerous facts already observed, and
hereafter to be so? Here, also, it may be regretted that the
spectroscope was not employed by the English physicist. The
spectra of the incipient clouds might have been compared with
those of comets' tails; and would have given an excellent test of
the theory. Perhaps, however, he has reserved this part of his
researches for a future publication.

----------

{829}

         St. Oren's Priory.
     Or, Extracts From The
     Note-book Of An American In A
     French Monastery.

      "Pour chercher mieux."
  --Device of Queen Christina of Sweden.


              PART I.

  "I hear a voice you cannot hear,
     Forbidding me to stay:
   I see a hand you cannot see,
     Which beckons me away."


Such were the words on my lips, my dear friend, when I bade you
farewell and promised that I would, from time to time, give you a
picture of my convent life, that you might in spirit follow me
closely into the sealed garden of the Beloved, though forced by
circumstances to remain far from me in body.

Fatigued with my long journey, you can imagine I was very glad
when I reached this city. I hastened to find the _Rue du
Prieuré_, a narrow, gloomy street, paved with cobble-stones,
cheerless and uninviting. But about half-way down, I saw a statue
of Mary Most Pure, in a niche over a large doorway, with her
all-embracing arms extended in welcome. That was a _sursum
corda_ which reassured me. The place where Mary is honored is
always a home for her children. The sight of her image brings
peace and repose to the soul, and I turned aside to rest under
her shadow. It was the grand portal of St. Oren's Priory, an
arched passage through the very building, wide enough to admit a
carriage. I stopped before the ponderous door that was to open
for me a new life. This was the door I had so often heard
compared with another portal which bears the inscription:

  "All ye who enter here, leave hope behind."

But above my head was the Madonna which meant love and peace.
_Peace_; yes, that was what I sought, like the Tuscan poet
at the Italian monastery:

  "And as he asks what there the stranger seeks,
   My voice along the cloister whispers, Peace!"

The door opened just wide enough to admit me, and, passing
through the arch, I found myself in a small paved court, enclosed
by the monastery on all sides, where the sun only comes for a
short time at midday--a grateful refuge from its heat. In it is a
fine large linden-tree, under whose wide-spreading branches I
found a group of nuns--it being the hour of daily reunion. I felt
bewildered by the sight of so many strange faces, but my first
impression was one of general kindness and cordiality. I could
not have asked for a kinder welcome, and surely hope and peace
were on every face. One of the mothers, seeing my fatigue, took
me to the chapel for a moment, and then, through long corridors,
to a small cell; thus giving me a general glance at my foreign
home. I found thick stone walls, long passages, paved floors, a
dim old chapel, and narrow cells. You will think this fearful; on
the contrary, it is charming because monastic. One of the narrow
cells is mine; furnished with a table, chair, bed, and
_prie-dieu_. On the latter stands a crucifix, and on the
wall hangs a print of Notre Dame de Bon Secours. There is one
window in it,

  "Looking toward the golden Eastern air."

{830}

It opens in the middle, longitudinally, like all the windows
here; each part swinging back like a folding-door. Looking
through it upon the convent garden, the first thing I saw was a
lay-sister, bearing on her head an antique-looking jar, which she
had just filled from a huge well. There are two of these immense
wells in the garden, dug by the monks of old! Yes, _monks_,
for our monastery was once a Benedictine abbey, and dates from
the tenth century. There's hoary antiquity for you, which has
such a charm for us people of the new world. These first days,
while resting from my fatigue, I have been looking over the
annals of this old establishment, and must give you an outline of
them.

Do you remember reading, in the _Chronicles_ of Sir John
Froissart, of the Armagnacs, so long at enmity with the house of
Foix? The first Count of Armagnac, was the founder of St. Oren's
Priory. He was known by the name of Bernard _le Louche_. He
made this city the capital of his _comté;_ and one of his
first acts, after his establishment here, was to build this
monastery. The old parchment in the archives of the priory, quite
in accordance with the spirit of the times, runs thus:

  "Bernardus Luscus, mindful of his sins, unable to fulfil a vow
  he had made to visit the Holy Places at Jerusalem, and desirous
  of liquidating his debts to Divine Justice, resolved, by the
  counsel of his wife, the Domina Emerina, and the advice of the
  magnates, his lieges, to found a monastery _in honorem
  Sanctorum Joannis Baptistae et Evangelistae et Beati
  Orentii_, that therein prayer might be daily offered for his
  sins and for those of his posterity."

The site selected for the erection of this monastery was on the
banks of a branch of the Garonne, at the foot of an old city
known in the time of the Caesars as Climberris, and built _en
amphithéatre_, with superb terraces, upon the side of an
elevation. It was fitting that the abbey, which Count Bernard had
founded for the spiritual weal of himself and his posterity, and
endowed with "lands and livings many a rood," should find shelter
beneath his fostering eye at the very foot of his crescent-shaped
city, which was itself surmounted by the embattled walls of his
own stronghold. Thus enclosed by hills on the north and west, and
the peaceful, sluggish Algersius on the east, threading its way
toward the Garonne--its current soft-gliding and calm as the life
of the cloister--what spot more suitable could Count Bernard have
found on which to build a house of prayer? The warm sun of France
to which it thus lay exposed was tempered by the keen,
invigorating winds that came from the snowy Pyrenees, which
glitter away to the south.

In this very place, before the advent of the Messiah, in
mythological times, a temple had stood in honor of Diana, the old
ideal of a people's reverence for purity, and one of nature's
foreshadowings of the Christian exaltation of chastity. The
Auscitains being early converted to Christianity, their zealous
apostles overthrew the high places of the Gentiles, and thereon
set up the victorious ensign of the cross--_Vexilla regis
prodeunt!_

On the ruins of Diana's temple was erected an altar to the true
God, and a baptistery, named, as all baptisteries are, after the
precursor of Christ, where came the warlike Ausci to be
regenerated at the holy hands of the zealous St. Taurin, and the
fearless, idol-demolishing St. Oren, who in turn fixed their
abode hard by. Other saints too have lived on the same spot, and
their bodies were enshrined hereon after their spirits had passed
away.
{831}
St. Taurin, St. Oren, St. Léothade, St. Austinde, names ever
venerable to the heart of an Auscitain, living in the shadow of
your shrines, sheltered by your votaries who merit for me your
protection, I should be ungrateful to you, untrue to my own
heart, did I not often murmur your potent names and praise you to
those afar off!

St. Taurin was the fourth successor of St. Paterne, whom St.
Sernin, the great apostle not only of Toulouse but of all this
part of France, consecrated first bishop of Eauze, then the
metropolis of Novempopulania, as Gascony was called. Forced by
barbarians, who came in search of spoils, to quit Eauze, St.
Taurin took refuge in Climberris, bringing with him, among other
relics, the bodies of his four sainted predecessors in the
episcopacy: St. Paterne, St. Servand, St. Optat, St. Pompidien.
At that time, there were two distinct cities here--Climberris, a
Gaulish city, on the side and crest of the hill, and Augusta
Auscorum, on the eastern bank of the Algersius, which last
received its name from the Emperor Augustus, who passed through
it on his return from Spain, and gave it the rights of a Roman
city. St. Saturnin had first preached the gospel here, and built
a church under the invocation of St. Peter in the city of
Augusta; and at the foot of Climberris, where our priory now
stands, was a church of St. John. St. Taurin chose the latter as
his metropolitan church--a rank it retained for a long
period--and there enshrined the holy bodies he had brought with
him.

The zeal of St. Taurin was not confined to his own flock. Hearing
of a great Druidical celebration in the woods of Berdale, he
repaired thither. The unholy rites had commenced, and a profound
silence reigned, when all at once a loud voice was heard. It was
that of St. Taurin, denouncing their idolatry and calling upon
the multitude to turn to the true God. The crowd was at first too
much astonished at his boldness to move, but after some
hesitation, incited by the Druids, overwhelmed the apostle with a
shower of stones. Finding he still breathed, they cut off his
head. His feast is solemnized with the utmost pomp in this
diocese, on the fifth of September, which is believed to be the
day of his martyrdom.

St. Oren belonged to a Spanish family of high rank, his father
being the Duke of Urgel and Governor of Catalonia. He early
renounced his right of heritage, but, after the death of his
brother, succeeded to the family estates. He sold all his
property, distributed the money among the poor, and retired to a
hermitage amidst the mountains of Bigorre, where he led an
angelic life, giving himself up to severe austerities and the
contemplation of divine things. The renown of his virtues and his
reputation for learning caused his nomination to this see, of
which he reluctantly took possession in the year 400. He
displayed extraordinary energy and zeal in rooting out the
vestiges of idolatry still lingering in his diocese, and in
reviving true piety among the lukewarm of his flock.

St. Oren was a learned man and a poet. The great Fortunatus,
Bishop of Poitiers, who lived in the sixth century, mentions his
poems, of which some fragments have come down to us. His
_Nomenclature_, in particular, has always been known and
quoted. It is more extensive than any other ancient list of the
symbols of the God-Man. Sylvius, in the fifth century, gives
forty-five of these symbolical names in seven verses. Clement of
Alexandria, in his hymn to our Saviour, gives ten. St. Cyril
mentions twelve, in a sermon.
{832}
The list of St. Phébade of Agen, in the fourth century, comprises
twenty-one. The _Nomenclature_ of Constantinople mentions
twelve; that of Rome, twenty-two; but that of St. Oren, composed
in his solitude of Bigorre, gives, in five distichs, fifty-two of
these emblematical names of our Saviour. I quote it entire:

  De Epithetis Salvatoris Nostri.

    Janua,
    Virgo,
    Leo,
    Sapientia,
    Verbum,
    Rex,
    Baculus,
    Princeps,
    Dux,
    Petra,
    Pastor,
    Homo,
    Retia,
    Sol,
    Sponsus,
    Semen,
    Mons,
    Stella,
    Magister,
    Margarita,
    Dies,
    Agnus,
    Ovis,
    Vitulus,
    Thesaurus,
    Fons,
    Vita,
    Manus,
    Caput,
    Ignis,
    Aratrum,
    Flos,
    Lapis angularis,
    Dextra,
    Columba,
    Puer,
    Vitis,
    Adam,
    Digitus,
    Speculum,
    Via,
    Botryo,
    Panis,
    Hostia,
    Lex,
    Ratio,
    Virga,
    Piscis,
    Aquila,
    Justus,
    Progenies regis,
    regisque Sacerdos;
    Nomina Magna Dei,
    major at ipse Deus.

"These are the great names of God, but he himself is still far
greater!" says the last line.

St. Oren never lost his love for solitude, and this attraction,
added to the burden of his episcopal duties, induced him at last
to resume his hermit's staff and set out for the grotto, which
had been the witness of his former austerities and was the
never-ceasing object of his regret. His flock, in consternation,
pursued him and brought him back to his post, where his piety,
his talents, and the miracles he wrought, gave him preeminence
among all the bishops of Aquitaine. When Theodoric I., King of
the Visigoths, was besieged at Toulouse, by Lictorius, lieutenant
of the celebrated Aétius, the former sent St. Oren, with several
other bishops, to arrange terms of peace with the Roman
commander. Lictorius received them with haughty contempt, and,
sure of victory, rejected all their propositions. Then Theodoric
humbled himself before the Lord of Hosts. He covered himself with
sackcloth, prostrated himself in prayer, and then went forth to
battle and to victory.

Shortly after this embassy, St. Oren felt his end approaching,
and armed himself with the holy sacraments for the last earthly
combat. His soul passed away, with a sweet odor, on the first of
May, and his body was enshrined in the church of St. John, which
subsequently took his name. He has always been greatly venerated
in this country, and is invoked in all diseases of the mind.
Count John I. of Armagnac gave a magnificent silver bust as a
reliquary for the skull of St. Oren. His feast is still
religiously celebrated, and is a great holiday among the common
people, who assemble after vespers to dance their _rondeaux_
in the open air.

The church of St. John, where reposed a long line of holy
apostles and prelates, was, with the two cities, destroyed by the
Saracens, in the eighth century. But in the year of grace 956, as
I have said, Bernard le Louche, inspired by God, built on the
same spot a magnificent church with three naves, to which he
joined a Benedictine abbey. They were built of the stones of the
city walls, which, two centuries before, had been levelled to the
dust by the Moors. A hundred years later, this abbey was reduced
to a priory by St. Hugo, and affiliated to his abbey at Cluny.
The names of a long succession of abbots and priors are recorded
in the chronicles of St. Oren's Priory, most of whom belonged to
the noblest families of the country. During the French Revolution
of 1793, the abbatial church and a part of the monastery were,
alas! destroyed; but there is a quadrangular tower--a part of the
original abbey--still standing, and a fine Gothic chapel, which
dates from the fourteenth century, besides a more modern, and
still large, edifice, with long dim corridors leading away to
austere cells, or to spacious sunny _salons_. These were
taken possession of by a venerable community of Ursuline nuns,
who had been dispersed during the Reign of Terror, but who, as
soon as permitted, hastened like doves to find a new ark.

{833}

A steep spiral staircase, of hewn stone, lighted only by long
narrow chinks left purposely in the thick walls, leads to the top
of the old tower, which commands a delightful view of the valley
of the Algersius. At the foot, toward the south, lies the convent
garden, with its wells, its almond-trees, acacias, vines, and
rose-bushes--loved haunts of the nightingales, which I heard
there for the first time in my life. On the east passes the
_route impériale_, beneath the very convent walls, and
beyond, parallel with it, flows the river which gives its name to
the _département_. Centuries ago, when the country was more
thickly wooded, it is said to have been a navigable river, and
merited to be sung by Fortunatus, who was a poet as well as
bishop. The eastern bank is shaded by a long grove of noble
trees--a public promenade--where, at due hours, may be seen all
the fashion, valor, and sanctity of the city. Through the trees
may be caught a glimpse of an old Franciscan monastery, now an
asylum for the insane, where once stood a temple of Bacchus,
whose memory is still perpetuated in this land of vineyards.
There, in the fourteenth century, was buried Reine, niece of Pope
Clement V., and wife of John I., the thirteenth Comte d'Armagnac.
Near by is the airy tower of St. Pierre, first built by St.
Saturnin, in the third century, and rebuilt several times
since--the last time, after its destruction by the Huguenots in
the civil and religious disturbances of the sixteenth century.
The music of its _carillon_ floats through the valley at an
early hour every morning, summoning the devout to mass.

Cradling the valley toward the west is the quaint old city. Its
houses of cream-colored stone with red tiled roofs rise one
behind the other on terraces, and, crowning all, are the towers
of one of the finest cathedrals of France.

Due east from the tower, in the background, rises a high hill,
called in the time of the Romans Mount Nerveva, but which now
glories in the more Christian appellation of Mount St. Cric.
There our glorious St. Oren battered down a temple of Apollo, but
its summit is still lit up by that god at each return of hallowed
morn.

Away to the south stretch the Pyrenees, hiding Catholic and
chivalric Spain, and gleaming in the sun like the very walls of
the celestial city. Even Maldetta, with its name of ill omen,
looks pure and holy.

This old tower is for me a loved haunt on a bright sunny day. I
often betake myself to its top to enjoy all the reveries inspired
by the scene before me. Its venerable, almost crumbling walls,
its curious recesses and carvings, speak loudly of the monks of
old. There I seem nearer to heaven; I breathe a purer, a more
refined atmosphere, which exalts the heart and quickens its
vibrations.

There is a large sunny apartment in the tower in which I
witnessed a most affecting event--the death of a nun. So
impressed was I by this flight of an angelic soul to the
everlasting embraces of the Spouse of virgins, that I cannot
refrain from giving you a sketch of its closing scenes.

{834}

When I first arrived at the priory, poor Sister Saint Sophie
wandered around like a ghost, already far gone with pulmonary
consumption. She entered the cloister while only seventeen years
of age, wishing to offer the flower of her life to him who loves
the fragrance of an innocent heart. Now, at the age of
twenty-eight, she was called to exchange the holy chants of the
choir for the divine _Trisagium_ of the redeemed above. Her
health had long been delicate; but the innocence of her soul, the
natural calmness of her disposition, her strong religious faith,
and her detachment from earth, made her look forward to death
without the slightest apprehension. She spoke of the event as she
would of going to the chapel where dwells the Beloved.

About a week before her death, she went to the infirmary, by her
own request--to die. The infirmary is a commodious apartment in
the second story of the tower, a room which most of the nuns
shrink from approaching, for there they have seen so many of
their sisters die. I went every day to see poor Sister Sophie.
The room was adorned with religious engravings, a crucifix, a
statue of the Madonna, and a holy-water font. On the mantel were
some books of devotion, among which I noticed the New Testament
in French. I always found this dying sister calm, excepting one
evening, when her cheeks glowed with a burning fever. It was only
a few days before her death, and was caused by her last struggle
with earth. When that was past, she was ready to die. Her sister,
longing to see her once more, had obtained permission of the
ecclesiastical superiors to enter the monastery. But Sister
Sophie, wishing to avail herself of this last opportunity of
self-sacrifice, opposed her entrance; and it was this struggle
between natural affection and a sense of duty which produced so
violent a fever. This act of self-denial affected me deeply.

One Saturday, at about half-past eight in the morning, I was
hastily summoned by the Mère St. J---- to go to the infirmary,
for Sister Sophie was dying. I hurried down. Poor Sophie lay,
ghastly white, with her crucifix in her hands. Her rosary and
girdle lay, on the bed, at the foot of which was placed an
engraving of the Sacred Heart of our Lord Jesus Christ, in the
opening of which reposed a dove--emblem of the soul that trusts
in the Saviour. She was perfectly calm. There was not a sign of
apprehension. Her brother-in-law, who was her physician, stood by
her bedside, and said she could not survive the day. Her
confessor, the Abbé de B----, a venerable priest of more than
four score years, asked if she had any thing on her conscience.
She shook her head. Her soul was clad in its pure bridal robe,
ready for the marriage supper of the Lamb. All went to the
chapel, and, with lighted tapers, two and two, followed the holy
viaticum to the infirmary. It was borne by the _curé_ in a
silver ciborium, and placed on an altar erected in the middle of
the room. It was a most solemn scene--the nuns kneeling all
around with wax tapers in their hands, their heads bowed down in
adoration, and their black robes and veils flowing around them,
all responding to the priest, who, in white surplice and stole,
brought comfort to the dying. He demanded of the dying nun a
profession of her faith; if she died in charity with all mankind;
and if she were sorry, and begged pardon of God, for all her
sins--to which she faintly but distinctly responded. He then gave
her the divine viaticum, and prepared to administer to her the
sacrament of extreme unction.
{835}
As he anointed each organ, he said, before repeating the formula
of the church, "O God! forgive me the sins I have committed by
_such an organ_," (of sight, hearing, etc.) After this
sacrament he accorded her the plenary indulgence of Bona Mors. I
was very much affected by these holy rites, and the more so as I
then witnessed them for the first time.

I went to see the departing sister several times in the course of
the day. The death-struggle was long, but there was no appearance
of suffering.

At eight o'clock in the evening, while we were reading the
meditation for the following morning, a nun came in haste.
"Quick! quick! pray for Sister Sophie. She is dying!" In a moment
the infirmary was crowded with nuns. Sister Sophie was in her
agony. The crucifix was still in her hand. A blessed candle of
pure white wax was burning beside her, and the sub-prioress was
reading solemn prayers for the departing soul, to which the nuns
sobbingly responded. At the head of her bed stood a sister, who
sprinkled her from time to time with holy water. Near her stood
another prompting pious aspirations: "Jesus! Mary! Joseph! may I
breathe out my soul with you in peace!"

At half-past eight she had given up her soul as calmly as if
going to sleep. The _Sub-venite_ was said, and then we all
went to the chapel to pray for the departed.

The next morning, (Sunday,) on my way to the chapel, I stopped at
the infirmary. Sister Sophie was lying on a bier, clad in her
religious habit, with the sacred veil upon her head, and in her
clasped hands a crucifix, and the vows which bound her to the
Spouse of virgins. Her countenance was expressive of happiness
and repose. A wax candle burned on each side of her head. A
holy-water font stood near, and some nuns knelt around, praying
for their departed sister. That day, masses were offered for her
in every church and chapel in the city, and at a later hour the
nuns said the office of the dead in choir. At four o'clock, I
went again to the infirmary, to see her placed in her coffin. I
have witnessed among those who are vowed to a life of holy
poverty many examples of detachment from every thing the world
deems essential, but I have never seen any thing which so went to
my heart as when I saw Sister Sophie's coffin. It was simply a
long deal box, unpainted and without lining. The body was placed
therein, still in the religious costume. The black veil covered
the face, and on her head was a wreath of white flowers. How
bitterly did the nuns weep as they placed their sister in her
narrow cell--even more austere than that in which she had lived!
I too wept profusely to see one buried thus humbly, but perhaps
suitably. The lid being nailed down, the coffin was covered with
a pall, on which was a great white cross, and on it the novices
spread garlands of fresh white flowers mingled with green leaves.

The nuns are buried in the cemetery of St. Oren's parish, and
nothing is more affecting than when, at the portal of the
convent, the coffin is entrusted to the hands of strangers; the
nuns not being able to go beyond the limits of the cloister. It
is then conveyed to the exterior church. Several priests received
Sister Sophie at the door, and sprinkled the coffin with holy
water, chanting meanwhile the _De Profundis_ and _Requiem
aeternam_. How awfully solemn are these chants of the dead!
Every tone went to my very heart. The coffin was then borne to
the centre of the church, where it was surrounded by lights, and
the priests chanted the office for the dead, at the close of
which they went in procession to the cemetery.
{836}
First were three acolytes, the middle one bearing an immense
silver cross, which gleamed aloft in the departing sunlight; and
the other two bore the censer and the _bénitier;_ then came
the priests, two and two, chanting the _Miserere_. The
coffin followed, borne on a bier by six peasant women dressed in
white, with curious white caps and kerchiefs. Their sepulchral
appearance made me shudder. Then went four young ladies bearing a
pall, on which was the great white cross and the significant
death's-head. Many other ladies followed in procession. Arriving
at the cemetery, the grave was blessed, while we all knelt about
it. Water that had been sanctified with prayer was sprinkled on
the fresh earth; clouds of incense rose from the smoking censer,
and _Ego sum resurrectio et vita_ burst in solemn
intonations from the lips of the priests. Then the coffin was
lowered into the grave; the young ladies threw in garlands of
flowers which were soon covered. Poor Sophie was at rest, and her
soul was enjoying the reward of her sacrifices. I bedewed her
grave with my tears. Never was I so peculiarly affected by any
death as by this, every circumstance of which is fastened most
vividly in my memory. The _De Profundis_ and the
_Miserere_ still ring in my ear, and poor Sister Sophie, as
she lay in her agony, surrounded by the spouses of Christ,
praying amid their sobs, for her admittance into Paradise, will
never be forgotten. "_Requiescat in pace!_"

But of all parts of the priory, I love best the antique chapel of
the Immaculate Conception. It is entered through the cloister by
a low, dim vestibule, supported by "ponderous columns, short and
low." A few steps, and the arches spring lightly up, forming a
perfect gem of a Gothic chapel, with its altar faithful to the
east--

  "Mindful of Him who, in the Orient born,
     There lived, and on the cross his life resigned,
   And who, from out the regions of the morn,
     Issuing in pomp, shall come to judge mankind."

Three ogival windows in the chancel throw on the pavement the
warm gules of an escutcheon emblazoned on the glass. They diffuse
not too strong a light--only enough for a glow around the
tabernacle, leaving the rest of the chapel in a shade that
disposes the heart to contemplation and prayer. In the morning,
at mass, the rising sun streams through, mingling with the light
of the tapers, like that of nature and grace in the hearts of the
worshippers. Over the altar, in a niche, is a statue of Mary Most
Pure, with the divine Babe in her arms--as I love to see all her
statues, that the remembrance of the Blessed Virgin may never be
disconnected from that of the Incarnation. "The Madonna and
Child--a subject so consecrated by antiquity," says Mrs. Jameson,
"so hallowed by its profound significance, so endeared by its
associations with the softest and deepest of our human
sympathies, that the mind has never wearied of its repetition,
nor the eye become satiated with its beauty. Those who refuse to
give it the honor due to a religious representation yet regard it
with a tender, half-unwilling homage, and when the glorified type
of what is purest, loftiest, holiest, in womanhood stands before
us, arrayed in all the majesty that accomplished art, inspired by
faith and love, could lend her, and bearing her divine Son,
rather enthroned than sustained, on her maternal bosom,'we look,
and the heart is in heaven!' and it is difficult, very difficult,
to refrain from an 'Ora pro nobis!'"

{837}

In this chapel Mary has been honored for ages. The chronicles of
the priory tell us that in the days of the monks of St. Benedict
crowds of the faithful filled, as now, this chapel on the eighth
of December, its patronal _féte_. The deep-toned voices that
then chanted the praises of Mary have died away, but the notes
have been caught up and continued in softer, sweeter tones by the
lips of the spouses of Christ.

I can never enter this chapel without a thrill. I love to linger
beneath its vault of stone, the arches of which spring from
corbells quaintly sculptured, and form, at their intersection,
medallions of Jesus and Mary, who look benignly down on the
suppliant beneath. Prostrate on the pavement which holy knees
have worn, and breathing an air perfumed by the prayers of
centuries, my mind goes back to former times, and I think of the
cowled monks who once bowed in prayer before the same altar, and
murmured the same prayers I so love to repeat:

  "Their book they read and their beads they told,
   To human softness dead and cold,
       And all life's vanity."

I must tell you something of St. Mary's Cathedral, which is the
glory of this place. You should see it from our garden, crowning
this city built upon a hill, with its towers and pinnacles. It is
perfectly majestic. There, on the same spot, before the
Incarnation, stood a temple of Venus. Christianity, which always
loved to sanctify these high places, made the lascivious Venus
yield to the Mother of pure love. Toward the end of the third
century, St. Taurin brought a venerated statue of our Lady from
Eauze, and erected a chapel here in her honor. It was not till
about the year 800 that a cathedral was erected in the same
place. It has been four times demolished, and as often rebuilt.
In 1793, it was preserved with great difficulty. During that time
it served as a prison for many of the _noblesse_, and was
stripped of many of its most precious ornaments. The holy image
of Mary was superseded by the Goddess of Reason, and horses were
stabled in its chapels. But one does not love to linger over such
profanation.

This cathedral is particularly remarkable for the carvings of the
choir and for the fine stained-glass windows of the Renaissance.
Wishing to examine it minutely, I obtained permission to visit it
at those hours when it is closed--that is, from noon till three
o'clock. Accompanied by a servant, I was there precisely at
twelve. The Angelus bell pealed forth just as I entered the
church, and

  "Sprinkled with holy sounds the air, as the priest with his hyssop
   Sprinkles the congregation and scatters blessings upon them."

The _Suisse_, who was an old soldier under Napoleon I., and
was in the Russian campaign, locked us in, free to wander at will
and unremarked in this vast cathedral, with the excellent
_Monographie_ by the learned Abbé Canéto in hand. At the
very portal we passed over the tomb of an old archbishop, who
wished through humility to be buried under the pavement of the
principal entrance to the church, that he might be trodden under
foot by all men. Perhaps there was something of natural instinct
in this choice. I know not whether I should prefer some quiet and
shady nook for my grave, or a great thoroughfare like this, with
the almost constant ring of human feet above my head. This
prelate has lain there about two centuries, "awaiting," as the
inscription says, "the resurrection of the dead."

We entered the church beneath the tribune of the organ, a fine
instrument--the master-piece of Joyeuse, a famous organ-maker of
the time of Louis XIV. On its front panels are beautifully
carved, _en relief_, St. Cecilia and the Royal Harper.

{838}

The whole building is over three hundred feet long. Four rows of
pillars divide it into three naves and collateral chapels, which
are twenty-one in number, extending quite around it, each with
paintings, and statues, and altars of marble, and its oaken
confessional,

  "Where the graveyard in the human heart
    Gives up its dead at the voice of the priest."

The baptismal font, in the first chapel to the left, is of a
single block of fine black Belgian marble. One lingers
reverentially before it, to think of all the souls that have
there been regenerated, and of the holy joy of the guardian
angels around it.

The windows are glorious in their effect. Thereon are represented
all the principal characters of the Bible, beginning with Adam
and Eve; interspersed are the sibyls _(Teste David cum
sibylla)_ and saints of the middle ages. The bright sun,
streaming through these "storied windows richly dight," revealing
in brightest hues "many a prophet, many a saint," casts a rich
light of purple and crimson and gold over altar and saint and
shrine; not the _dim_ religious light of the poets, but
bright and glorious as the rainbow that spans the Eternal Throne!
I could sit in their light for ever. What a beautiful missal,
gorgeously illuminated, they form for the common people, and a
book ever open, full of the beauty of holiness! I envy those who
have worshipped in such a church from infancy, whose minds and
tastes have been formed, in part, by its influences, whose
earliest religious associations are connected with so much that
is beautiful as well as elevating. There must be a certain tone
to their piety, as well as to their minds, wanting to those who
have only frequented the humbler chapels of the new world. I can
never enter the plainest Catholic church without emotion. The
very sight of a humble altar surmounted by the rudest cross, goes
to my heart; how much more a magnificent church like this, where
every thing appeals to the heart, the soul, the imagination!

Over the doors leading to the transepts are the rose-windows.

  "Flamboyant with a thousand gorgeous colors,
   The perfect flower of Gothic loveliness!"

Beyond the transepts is the choir--a church within a church; for
it is enclosed by a high wall with a screen and rood-loft in
front. Here the canons chant the divine office seven times a day.
The stalls in which they sit are fit for princes--each one a
marvellous piece of workmanship, like the handiwork of a fairy
rather than of man.

The panels with their large figures in relief, the Gothic niches
with their statuettes, the desks all covered with carved animals
and plants almost in the perfection of nature, the canopy with
its hangings, beautiful as lace, are all perfectly wrought in
black oak, and surpass all conception. I have heard it said the
wood was kept under water twenty years, and the carver was fifty
years in completing his work; and you would believe it could you
see the effect. I have seen finer churches, in some respects, but
no carvings to surpass these. One is never weary of examining
every inch of this exquisite choir, so full of perfection is
every part. Sacred and profane history, mythological and
legendary lore, the fauna and flora, are all mingled in these
stalls. There are one hundred and thirteen of them--sixty-seven
superior, and forty-six inferior; and three hundred and six
statuettes in wonderful little Gothic niches. Each superior stall
has its large panel, on which in demi-relief is the image of some
saint or sibyl.
{839}
One of them represents St. Martha of Bethany, with an
_aspersoir_ in her hand and the _Tarasque_ at her feet,
alluding to the old legend so popular in Provence, of her
subduing a monster which ravaged the banks of the Rhone by
sprinkling him with holy water. The city of Tarascon commemorates
the tradition. A magnificent church built there, under the
invocation of St. Martha, was endowed by Louis XI.

At three o'clock the canons came for vespers, after which we went
to the tower to see the view and examine the bells, the largest
of which is covered with medallions of the apostles and the
Blessed Virgin, and with mottoes. It bears the name of Mary.

  "These bells have been anointed
   And baptized with holy water."

Perhaps you do not know that in the ceremony of consecrating a
bell, the bishop prays that, as the voice of Christ appeased the
troubled waters, God would endow the sound of the bell with power
to avert the malign influence of the great enemy; that it may
possess the power of David's harp, which dispelled the dark cloud
from the soul of Saul; and that at its sound hosts of angels may
surround the assembled multitudes, preserve their souls from
temptation and defend their bodies from all danger. The smaller
bells are rung daily for the Angelus and ordinary occasions. The
tones of the great Bourdon are reserved for the grand festivals
of Christmas, Easter, etc. I was curious to see them, for they
are like friends from whom we have had many kind tokens, but have
never met. They are always ringing above the priory; and their
tones say so many things to our hearts--solemn and funereal, or
tender, or joyful. "There is something beautiful in the
church-bell," says Douglas Jerrold--"beautiful and hopeful. They
talk to the high and low, rich and poor, in the same voice. There
is a sound in them that should scare away envy and pride and
meanness of all sorts from the heart of man; that should make him
look on the world with kind, forgiving eyes; that should make the
earth itself seem, to him at least, a holy place. Yes, there is a
whole sermon in the very sound of the church-bells, if we only
have the ears to understand it." As Longfellow says:

  "For the bells themselves are the best of preachers; Their
  brazen lips are learned teachers. From their pulpits of stone
  in the upper air, Sounding aloft, without crack or flaw,
  Shriller than trumpets under the law, Now a sermon and now a
  prayer. The clamorous hammer is the tongue; This way, that way,
  beaten and swung, That from mouth of brass, as from mouth of
  gold, May be taught the Testaments, New and Old: And above it
  the great cross-beam of wood Representeth the holy rood, Upon
  which, like the bell, our hopes are hung. And the wheel
  wherewith it is swayed and rung Is the mind of man, that round
  and round Sways, and maketh the tongue to sound! And the rope,
  with its twisted cordage three, Denoteth the scriptural Trinity
  Of morals, and symbols, and history; And the upward and
  downward motions show That we touch upon matters high and low:
  And the constant change and transmutation Of action and of
  contemplation, Downward, the Scripture brought from on high;
  Upward, exalted again to the sky; Downward, the literal
  interpretation, Upward, the vision and mystery!"

In the undercroft of the cathedral reposes, among other saints,
the body of St. Léothade. He was of royal blood, being a near
relative of Eudes, Duke of Aquitaine, who was of the race of
Clotaire II. He was also related to Charles Martel, and to the
well-known sylvan saint, Hubert, who was contemporary with St.
Léothade, and a native of this part of France. St. Léothade
embraced the monastic state early in life, and, after being abbot
at Moissac, was called to govern this diocese, which he did for
twenty-seven years. In the wars between Charles Martel and Eudes
he retired into Burgundy, his native place, where he died at the
beginning of the eighth century. His body was reclaimed by the
Auscitains.
{840}
His tomb is all sculptured with the symbols of our Saviour--the
fish, wine, etc.

St. Léothade is invoked in various diseases, particularly for
epilepsy.

Through the kindness of the _mère prieure_ I had the
privilege of assisting at the office of Holy Week at St. Mary's
Cathedral. I witnessed all those affecting rites from the
_jubé_, or rood-loft, which is reached by a dark, winding
stairway in one of the huge pillars. My position was one of
seclusion, and yet overlooked both the choir and the nave. To
fully appreciate the ceremonies of the church, one must witness
them in one of these old churches of the middle ages, to which
they seem adapted. The long procession of white-robed clergy,
through the forest of columns, with palm branches in their hands;
"Hosanna to the son of David!" resounding through the arches; the
tapers, rich vestments, the heavenly light streaming through the
stained-glass windows, not dimly, but like a very rainbow of hope
encircling us all--impress the heart with sentiments of profound
devotion.

I was particularly struck by the vivid picture of the Passion
given in the gospel of Palm-Sunday, as sung by the choir. One
priest chanted the historical parts in a recitative way; a
second, the words of our Lord; and a third, the words of the
disciples and others. The insolent cries of the multitude, the
confident tones of St. Peter, the loud bold tones of Judas, were
well reproduced; while the sacred words of Christ were repeated
in the clearest, calmest, most subdued and plaintive of accents,
that sank into my soul and moved me to tears. That voice seemed
to sweep over the sea of surging hearts that filled the church,
like the very voice of Jesus calming the tempest on the lake! It
rung in my heart for days. It rings there yet, a sermon more
powerful than any man could preach. When the priest comes to the
words, "_and gave up the ghost_," the sight of the vast
multitude prostrating to the ground is most impressive.

The gospel of the Passion, succeeding the triumphant procession
with the palm branches, becomes doubly impressive by the
contrast. "Oh! what a contrast," cries St. Bernard, "between
'_Tolle, tolle, crucifige eum_,' and '_Benedictus qui
venit in nomine Domini, Hosanna in Excelsis!_' What a contrast
between '_King of Israel_,' and '_We have no king but
Caesar!_' Between the green branches and the cross! Between
the flowers and the thorns! Between taking off their garments to
cast before him, and stripping him of his own and casting lots
for them!"

The nave was one forest of waving green branches, and the common
people seemed to enter into and enjoy the ceremonies very
heartily. These grand services give such a vivid idea of the
great events of the life of Christ that they must be very
beneficial to the people, who come in throngs to witness them;
and there are no pews here, with their invidious distinctions, to
shut them out. The peasant and the nobleman are brought on a
level in that place where alone is to be found true
democracy--the Church.

The archbishop presided at these ceremonies, a venerable,
austere-looking prelate, who moved about with gravity, always
attended by his servant, a pale, cadaverous-looking man in black,
with a white cravat, reminding me so forcibly of one of our New
England ministers that I never could resist a smile when my eye
fell on him, as he obediently followed the dignified prelate.

{841}

St. Mary's Cathedral was once one of the richest in France, being
endowed by the kings of Arragon, Navarre, and of France, and by
the Counts of Fezensac and of Armagnac. In those days the
archbishop was a magnate in the land. The Counts of Armagnac paid
homage to him, and when he came to take possession of his see,
the Baron de Montaut, with bared head and one limb bare, awaited
him on foot at the gates of the city, took his mule by the
bridle, and so conducted him to the cathedral. He was then, as he
styles himself now, primate of Novempopulania and of the two
Navarres.

One of the old archbishops, of the race of the Counts d'Aure,
accompanied Richard the Lion-hearted to Palestine in 1190, and
died there the next year.

On Holy Thursday all business was suspended. The streets were
crowded with people going to visit the different churches where
the Blessed Sacrament was exposed. I visited fourteen churches
and chapels. At every turn in the streets were boys erecting
little altars and chapels by the way-side, and importuning the
passer-by for a _sou_ to aid in fitting them up. Of course,
I saw the greater part of the city, which is picturesque, as seen
from the valley, but rather ugly when one has mounted the weary
flights of steps, and gained its heart. The streets are mostly
narrow and treeless, but there are two promenades with fine old
trees, and the public buildings are a credit to the place. There
is a _grand_ and _petit séminiaire_ here, a lyceum,
normal school, two boarding-schools, besides several day and free
schools; so there is no lack for means of instruction.

The famous Nostradamus, renowned for his _Centuries
prophétiques_, was once a professor in this place. And St.
Francis Regis was regent of the Jesuits' college which was here
before the suppression of that order in the last century.

On Good-Friday I went to the chapel of the Carmelites, for the
Three Hours' Agony. Daylight was wholly excluded. The altar was
fitted up like a Calvary, with a large crucifix on the summit.
Tall wax candles burned around it as round a bier. The rest of
the chapel was in darkness. The black grating that separates the
chancel from the choir of the nuns was so closely curtained that
they were wholly invisible. The agony was a paraphrase of the
last words of our Saviour upon the cross, making it like seven
discourses, or rather meditations. At the end of each part all
knelt, while the preacher made an extempore prayer, and then rose
a sweet solemn wail of music. One by one the lights around the
Calvary were extinguished--a deeper gloom shrouding the chapel
and settling on our hearts. At last, only one light was left,
emblematic of Him who came to give light to the world. That, too,
went out at three o'clock, leaving us in utter darkness. Then the
preacher cried: _Jesus is dying!--Jesus is dead!_ All fell
on their knees. The most profound silence reigned. When
sufficiently recovered from the awe and solemnity which pervaded
every heart, all prostrated themselves, and softly left the
church. The effect was indescribable. Nothing could so powerfully
incite the heart to repentance for sin, and unite it to the
sufferings and death of Christ, as this three hours' meditation
on his agony upon the cross.

  "Holy Mother, pierce me through;
   In my heart each wound renew
   Of my Saviour crucified!"

{842}

After the weight of sorrow that had been accumulating on the
heart during the great week of the Passion, you cannot imagine
the effect when, on Holy Saturday, the joyful Alleluias rang out
with all the bells of the city, which had been hushed for days,
announcing the Resurrection. A great rock seemed rolled away from
the heart, and hope and joy rose triumphant over sorrow, and
anguish, and fear.

On Easter-Sunday I saw something at St. Mary's quite new to me.
After mass, a basket of bread was blessed, broken in pieces, and
passed around the church. All took a piece, made the sign of the
cross, and said a short prayer before eating it. This _pain
bénti_ is in commemoration of the _Agapae_ of the
primitive Christians, I suppose. It is a common custom here.
While still at our devotions, a man came around with a dish,
saying in a queer, sing-song tone, _Pour les ámes du
Purgatoire_, (For the souls in purgatory,) and offered the
dish as if doing you a favor to receive your mite, which,
perhaps, was right enough.



Last Sunday evening I went to St. Oren's parish church, to assist
at the month of Mary. On each side of the pulpit is a large
statue. One is of Moses, the Hebrew lawgiver, with two horns. He
is often represented so by the old masters, because the same word
which expresses the brightness of his face when he descended from
the mount, may also be rendered horns. They give him a comical
look, any thing but saint-like. Such a statue would seem more
suitable, to my unaccustomed eyes, for some rural spot. Then it
would look like some link between man and the lower animals, and
so have some claims to our sympathy.

I went into the sacristy to see the ivory horn said to have been
used by St. Oren, in the fifth century, to call the people to the
holy mysteries. It was still used, last century, during Holy
Week. It is curiously carved in the Byzantine style, with leaves,
birds, beasts, etc., upon it. It is popularly believed to have
the power of restoring hearing to the deaf. In the sacristy was
an old statue of St. Jago in a pilgrim's garb. In former times
there was a hospice in this city for the reception of pilgrims to
his shrine at Compostella.



In making some excavations in our grounds, where once were the
cloisters of the monks, the workmen have found many old graves,
and also some curiosities. The other day a marble slab was found,
on which is a Latin inscription in quaint old characters, stating
that it was erected by Amaneus II., an archbishop of this diocese
in the thirteenth century. Beneath the inscription was carved a
cross, on one side of which was a crosier, and on the other a
leopard lion, the cognizance of the house of Armagnac. It bore
the date of 1288. The said Amaneus was of the celebrated house of
Armagnac, the head of which founded this priory. I should not be
a true daughter of the house did I not, with pious memory, love
to recall our benefactors, for, replacing the old monks, we take
upon ourselves their sweet debt of gratitude. I will give you,
then, an outline of this once proud family, that you may share
all our glorious memories.

The counts of Armagnac descended from the Merovingian race of
kings. They were connected by marriage with the proudest families
of Europe, and at one time they gave their name to a faction of
France against the Burgundians. Their proud name and royal blood
were fit to merge again into a race of kings.
{843}
The first Count d'Armagnac was Bernard le Louche, who, through
Charibert, sovereign of Toulouse and Aquitaine, descended from
Clotaire II. Count Bernard was distinguished for his piety and
his benefactions to the church. The third count of Armagnac
divested himself of his worldly goods, and became a monk of the
order of St. Benedict.

The famous contest of the Armagnacs with the house of Foix began
in the time of Bernard VI., the twelfth count. The pope in vain
endeavored to reconcile them. Philippe of Navarre finally decided
their differences, and peace was declared in 1329. The war was
renewed some years after, in the time of Count John, who was
taken prisoner, and had to pay a ransom of one thousand livres.

Count Bernard VII. is the most famous of the Armagnacs. He was
the fifteenth count. His daughter Bonne married Charles, Duke of
Orleans, then only nineteen years of age, and the son of the Duc
d'Orléans who was killed by Jean-sans-peur, Duke of Burgundy.
Count Bernard became, by the youth of his son-in-law, the head of
the Orleans faction against the Burgundians. He was made
constable of France in 1415. To the dignity of supreme commander
of the army was added in a short time that of prime minister.
Descended from the old French monarchs, he had great sway in the
south of France, and was one of the greatest warriors of his age.
He displayed remarkable talents in remedying the frightful evils
which broke out throughout the kingdom. His efforts would
doubtless have been successful, had he not had to struggle
against the Burgundian party. By his experience and firmness he
established discipline among his troops, and kept them constantly
ready for action. Active, intrepid, gifted with a bold and
elevated character, he became a fearful rival for Jean-sans-peur.

The numerous partisans of the latter, having succeeded in
deceiving the vigilance of the constable, introduced the
Burgundian troops into Paris in the middle of the night. The
massacre of the principal royalists was the consequence, and the
Count of Armagnac himself was slaughtered in the most frightful
manner, on the 12th of June, 1418, in the fiftieth year of his
age. He was concealed in the house of a mason. The Burgundians
threatening the partisans of the Armagnacs with death and
confiscation, the mason treacherously denounced his guest, who
was immediately imprisoned in the _conciergerie_, amid the
imprecations of a multitude of his enemies. Forcing themselves
into the prison, they slew the count. In their fury they cut off
a piece of his skin, two inches wide, from the right shoulder to
the left side, in ridicule of the scarf which was the
distinguishing badge of the Armagnacs. He was buried at St.
Martin des Champs.

His successor, Count John IV., greatly aided Charles VII. against
the English, but finally offended him by desiring to marry the
daughter of the King of England, and by styling himself, "_by
the grace of God_, Count of Armagnac," though his ancestors
had used the expression for six centuries.

The haughty pretensions of the counts of Armagnac were the cause
of their final ruin. King Louis XI., ever jealous of the claims
of the nobility, decreed the downfall of their house. Count John
V. was besieged at Lectoure, and obliged to capitulate. The
soldiers entered the palace, ascended to the count's chamber, and
slew him on the first Saturday in Lent, 1473. At the third blow
he died, invoking the Virgin. All the people of Lectoure were
massacred, and for two months wolves were the only inhabitants of
the place.
{844}
The lands of Count John were united to the crown of France. His
brother Charles, who had been kept prisoner for fifteen years,
was finally restored to liberty, and to the possession of the
Comté d'Armagnac in 1483. He married Jane of Foix, who had no
children; but he left a natural son, the Baron de Caussade, whose
only son, George d'Armagnac, embraced the ecclesiastical state,
and became a cardinal. He was the last of the male line of the
Armagnacs.

The Comté d'Armagnac was afterward given by Louis XII. as the
dowry of his niece, Margaret of Valois, when she married Charles
d'Alençon, the grandson of Marie d'Armagnac, daughter of Count
John IV. Charles dying without children, Margaret married Henri
d'Albret, King of Navarre, who descended from a daughter of Count
Bernard VII. of Armagnac. Henri Quatre, King of France, was their
grandson, and from his time the Comté d'Armagnac has been
permanently united to the crown.

Louis XIV., after consummating his marriage at St. Jean de Luz,
returned to Paris through this city, where he assisted at the
divine office in St. Mary's Cathedral, and, in quality of Count
of Armagnac, took his place in his exquisitely carved stall as
_chanoine honoraire_.

The stronghold of the Armagnacs was long since laid low. Their
very name and blood are lost in those of another race, and their
lands given to another; but still in the green valley of the
Algersius rise the gray walls of a remnant of St. Oren's abbey to
propitiate the mercy of God in behalf of Count Bernard and his
lady Emerina, and still for them and their posterity goes up from
the nuns in choir the daily "_Oremus pro benefactoribus
nostris!_"



Last evening I went to the cathedral to hear Hermann improvise
upon the organ, or, I should say, Frère Augustin, for he is a
barefooted Carmelite monk. He was the favorite pupil of Liszt,
under whose instructions he became a celebrated musical artist
and composer. He was miraculously converted at Paris some years
since, by some particular emanation from the blessed sacrament,
the full particulars of which he has never given. "_Secretun
meum mihi_," he says, when speaking of it. He had gone to
church, at the request of a Christian friend, to play on the
organ. His conversion was succeeded by the desire of becoming a
monk, that he might daily receive our Lord in the blessed
sacrament, to which, from the first, he felt the most tender
devotion. He now belongs to a monastery in Agen. You should have
heard him last night, as I did, amid a crowd of all ranks. I do
not enjoy music scientifically, but it gives expression to a
thousand emotions and desires which are floating in the soul, and
which the tongue knows not how to express. That of Hermann
partakes of the enthusiasm and tenderness of his nature.

I stationed myself at the baptismal font, that I might see the
frère as he came down from the tribune. He was dressed in the
costume of his order, which is of the natural color of the wool.
His cowl was thrown back. His head was shaven closely with the
exception of a circlet of hair, as we see in pictures. He is an
Israelite and his features are of the Jewish type, but not too
strongly marked. His face was pale. In fact, he is out of health
and on his way to a place of rest. His manner was refined but
unpretending, and he seemed quite unconscious of the curiosity
and interest displayed by the crowd.
{845}
He is a poet as well as musician, and some of his
_cantiques_ in honor of the blessed sacrament are very
beautiful, particularly the one entitled _Quam dilecta
Tabernacula Tua!_ I quote two verses from it:

  "Ils ne sont plus les jours de larmes:
     J'ai retrouvé la paix du coeur
   Depuis que j'ai goûté les charmes
     Des tabernacles du Seigneur!

  "Trop long-temps, brebis fugitive,
     Je m'eloignai du Bon Pasteur.
   Aujourd'hui, colombe plaintive,
     Il l'appelle--il m'ouvre Son Coeur!"

A friend sent me this morning a pamphlet containing the
dedication of a collection of his hymns, which is a flame of
love. I give you an extract, which is only the echo of my own
heart:

  "O adorable Jesus! as for me, whom thou hast led into solitude
  to speak to my heart--for me whose days and nights glide
  deliciously away in heavenly communications with thy adorable
  presence; between the remembrance of the communion of to-day
  and the hope of the communion of to-morrow, I embrace with
  transport the walls of my cherished cell, where nothing
  distracts my only thought from thee; where I breathe only love
  for thy divine sacrament. ... If the church did not teach me
  that to contemplate thee in heaven is a still greater joy, I
  should never believe there could be more happiness than I
  experience in loving thee in the holy eucharist, and in
  receiving thee in my heart, so poor by nature but so rich
  through thy grace!"

      To Be Concluded Next Month.

----------

          The New Englander On
      The Moral Aspects Of Romanism.


In _The Catholic World_ of April last, we vindicated the
fair fame of the Catholic Church from some foul aspersions of a
Protestant minister, the Rev. M. Hobart Seymour, contained in a
book of his entitled, _Nights among the Romanists_.

The matter was a very simple one. This reverend gentleman, in the
opening chapter of his book, gave us the "moral results of the
Romish System," as he elegantly, in accordance with the
exigencies of modern controversy, styles the Catholic Church.
This "moral result" was, that Catholics are, everywhere, beyond
comparison, more unchaste than Protestants--say from three or
four to twelve times as much so. We do not exaggerate in the
least. Every reader who reads this book will draw this
conclusion. As _The New Englander_ says, "The effect of this
exhibit on the mind of the reader is overwhelming. To the
Protestant reader it serves to close the case, at the outset,
against the pretensions of the Roman Catholic Church to be the
institution ordained of Christ to destroy the works of the
devil."

This conclusion was reached by a comparison of the statistics of
many Roman Catholic countries of Europe with Protestant England,
in regard to homicide.

Then by comparing the amount of illegitimacy in certain Catholic
_cities_ with that in certain other Protestant _cities_
in Europe. Passing by the first branch of the subject for reasons
which we assigned, and which prevent us from taking up the matter
now, we considered the second very fully and completely. We
examined, with the utmost care and fidelity, the statistics of
illegitimacy of all the leading countries of Europe, including
the whole population of both city and country, and found Mr.
Seymour's conclusions, in this respect, were utterly and
completely false.
{846}
The complete exhibit showed that, taking the number of
illegitimate births as a standard of comparison, Catholic
countries are not in any degree more unchaste than Protestant,
but, on the contrary, the difference is in their favor quite
decidedly, though not with that overwhelming preponderance
claimed by Mr. Seymour in favor of Protestantism.

He states that he has taken his figures from official documents,
(and we have not disputed this,) but these same documents give
the account for the countries as well as for the cities, and Mr.
Seymour cannot be allowed to plead ignorance in reference to
them. He cannot, therefore, be excused from wilful and deliberate
deception, when he suppresses these statistics so necessary to
form a judgment in the case, and only gives such portions of them
as shall seem to sustain a false conclusion. This is the true
_suppressio veri_ and _suggestio falsi_, which is
certainly one of the meanest and most cowardly forms of lying
known.

We felt a natural indignation at being made the victims of such
treatment, and denounced the Rev. Mr. Seymour as a calumniator,
and called on the Rev. L. W. Bacon, who had warmly recommended
him and his book, to withdraw his recommendation, and cease to
abet the circulation of a vile calumny, even though the Catholic
Church were the object of it.

Mr. Bacon, in reply to our article, comes out in _The New
Englander_, endorsing not only the statements, but the unjust
and wicked conclusions of Mr. Seymour, and claims to have refuted
the statements of _The Catholic World_. We will now proceed
to show in what fashion he has done this.

The conclusions of Mr. Seymour in regard to the "moral results of
the Romish system," rest mainly in a comparison of the city of
London with the capitals of four Catholic countries, showing that
while the rate of illegitimacy is only 4 per cent in the former,
it varies from 33 to 51 per cent in the latter. This is
reinforced by tables of ten Prussian cities (of which, by the by,
the best two are Catholic cities) with ten Austrian; another of
five English cities with the same number of Italian, with
similar, though by no means such striking results. Then, lest
countries should seem to get the go-by, various Protestant
countries are compared with provinces of the Austrian empire,
which, it is needless to say, make a bad show in the comparison.

As we have said before, we did not impugn in _The Catholic
World_ the accuracy of these figures, but we pointed out that
we could not trust them as indicating the morality of London,
Liverpool, and the English cities, because the rate of
illegitimacy in them was lower than in the whole of England; and
it is a most violent and incredible supposition, that cities
acknowledged to be the hotbeds of vice should be purer than the
countries in which they are situated. We suggested that other
forms of impurity had probably replaced illegitimacy, and that,
after all, London, Liverpool, etc., were not much, if any, better
than the continental cities. We quoted some figures in reference
to the amount of what is called the "social evil" in London,
etc., from _The Church and the World_, a ritualistic
journal. This, and this alone, Mr. Bacon attacks, of all that is
contained in our article. Our other reasons in regard to the
morality of London, etc., are left entirely unnoticed. We gave
also some, as we conceived, very grave and strong reasons why the
figures of illegitimacy should not be regarded as conclusive in
regard to the continental cities.
{847}
We pointed out the existence of very large establishments in them
for the reception of foundlings, receiving all infants deposited
in them; and suggested that, for this reason alone, the
illegitimacy of whole districts of country would all show itself
in the city. This is obvious enough; for example, if a large
hospital of this kind existed in New York City, no one doubts it
would receive infants from New Jersey, Connecticut, and all the
adjacent country, and the rate of illegitimacy would represent
all this part of the country, rather than the city alone. Mr.
Bacon has not vouchsafed to give one word of reply to all this,
or to discuss the matter at all. Now, as it concerns the good
name of a large class of his fellow-men, and is evidence in
rebuttal of a very grave accusation against them, this really
seems more like the conduct of a partisan determined on victory
at any rate, rather than of a Christian gentleman seeking to
vindicate a fellow-Christian from an imputation against his
character.

But whatever might be said about the comparative morality of
certain cities, we vindicated the Catholic Church from the charge
of having produced a moral result incomparably worse than
Protestantism, and completely destroyed the overwhelming effect
calculated to be produced on the Protestant mind by Mr. Seymour's
conclusions, by giving one complete table of the percentage of
illegitimacy in all the chief countries of Europe, both
Protestant and Catholic, as follows:

   _Catholic Countries._
   1825-37, Kingdom of Sardinia,    2.1
   1859,    Spain,                  5.6
   1853,    Tuscany,                6.
   1858,    Catholic Prussia,       6.1
   1859,    Belgium,                7.4
   1856,    Sicily,                 7.4
   1858,    France,                 7.8
   1851,    Austria,                9.

   _Protestant Countries._
   1859,    England and Wales,      6.5
   1855,    Norway,                 9.3
   1858,    Protestant Prussia,     9.3
   1855,    Sweden,                 9.5
   1855,    Hanover,                9.9
   1866,    Scotland,              10.1
   1855,    Denmark,               11.5
   1838-47, Iceland,               14.
   1858,    Saxony,                16.
   1857,    Wurtemberg,            16.1

Every item of which was taken by ourselves, after a patient and
minute examination, from the _Journals of the Statistical
Society of London_, in the Astor Library, taking the latest
accounts of each country in every case.

Here the whole question lies in a nut-shell. As Mr. Bacon says,
"the criterion is in the number of illegitimate births." This
table gives a complete view of this criterion, and therefore it
requires to be refuted before it can be said that any refutation
has been made of _The Catholic World_. How does Mr. Bacon
meet it?

He does not meet it at all. He says that the figures of _The
Catholic World_ are "outrageously false," and "that he shall
presently prove it." We have looked in vain for the proof that
any figure of this table is either "outrageously false" or false
at all. We do not see that he has said one word to bring any of
them under even the least shadow of suspicion. We will give the
substance of his arguments against the truth of our statements:

1. Mr. Seymour's book appeared, and no answer was made to it for
many years, and therefore it must be presumed to be truth, as to
its facts and conclusions.

{848}

To this we reply, that it makes no difference what presumptions
may exist when they are upset by positive proof. Whether Mr.
Seymour has been answered or not, does not change the rate of
illegitimacy in any country of Europe in the least. Catholics may
not deem it more worth while to reply to Seymour than to the
McGavins and the Brownlees. The obviously sinuous and unfair
selection of Mr. Seymour's statistics is a sufficient reason for
allowing them to slide along with a thousand other calumnies so
obviously false as not to be worth the trouble of refuting.
However that may be, we have given the refutation, and that ends
all the presumptions.

2. Mr. Bacon tries to produce an impression on the minds of his
readers that we shall add up and arrange the figures to suit our
convenience, and are not to be trusted because we profess
confidence, in the outset, of the result of the investigation, on
account of our belief that the Catholic Church is the church of
Christ.

We will give an extract, that our readers may judge:

  "But _The Catholic World_ for April last crushes these
  formidable allegations with one single stroke of _a
  priori_ argument: 'We know that she (the Roman Church) is
  Christ's church, and that just in proportion as she exerts her
  influence, virtue and morality must prevail; and that it is
  impossible to prove, unless through fraud and
  misrepresentation, that the practical working of her system
  produces a morality inferior to that of any other.' This, of
  course, is 'the end of controversy.' To go into details of
  argument would be superfluous, not to say ridiculous, after a
  demonstration so sweeping. But scorning criticism and ridicule,
  straightway down into details and figures marches _The
  Catholic World_. Having at the start announced it as _de
  fide_ that the figures must be so found and so added up as
  to show a satisfactory balance in favor of his side, or else
  the foundations of the faith were destroyed and the hope of
  salvation cut off, he proceeds to the statistical business with
  that eminently fair, candid, and philosophical spirit which
  might be expected to result from such convictions."

The Christian, then, according to the reasoning of the Rev. Mr.
Bacon, who, firmly believing in the divinity of the religion of
Christ, expresses confidence in the result of any investigation
as to the moral result of Christianity, is to be deemed a rascal
who will not hesitate to employ any unworthy arts in selecting
and adding up his figures so as to make the result come out in
accordance with a foregone conclusion. We dismiss insinuations
like this with the contempt they deserve. If we have done any
thing of this kind let it be proved; if not, do not insinuate it
to our prejudice.

3. Mr. Bacon says: "The gist of the article in _The Catholic
World_ is taken from one in _The Church and the World_,
an ultra-ritualist journal, London, 1867."

This is entirely untrue. The "criterion" of the "moral results of
the Romish system" was illegitimacy, and the "gist of the
article" is in the comparison embraced in the tabular statement
of the Roman Catholic and Protestant countries of all Europe, of
which nothing whatever has been taken from _The Church and the
World_. We cited the statistics of Ireland from this journal,
warning our readers of the fact that we could not verify it out
of the statistical journals, and therefore we did not include it
in our table, as can be seen by referring to the article itself.

Besides this, nothing is taken on the authority of _The Church
and the World_, except some statistics in relation to a side
issue, the amount of prostitution in London, and other English
cities. Mr. J. D. Chambers, M.A., Recorder of Salisbury, the
author of the article in _The Church and the World_, states
that there are 28,100 bad women in London, known to the
Metropolitan Police, while it should be, that number, in all
England, known to the Metropolitan Police.
{849}
He also gives a table of the number of houses in other English
cities _where abandoned women resort_, and this number does
not correspond at all with the number of _brothels_ reported
by the police. It seems to us that Mr. Chambers may have been
misled by the term "Metropolitan Police," in setting down the
number of abandoned women to London rather than to England,
without attributing to him any wilful falsification. And if these
women are so well known to the Metropolitan Police, it may be
inferred that, wherever they belong, they must carry on their
nefarious occupation in London a good part of the time, and thus
Mr. Chambers be substantially correct in his statement, after
all. Mr. Bacon roundly asserts that Mr. Chambers has given the
number of _brothels_ in the leading English cities. This is
incorrect, and, when the object is to fasten a brand of infamy on
another's character, an inexcusable proceeding. Mr. Chambers has
not given the number of _brothels_, but the number of
_houses_ to which bad women resort. There are many such
resorts in New York City, which would not be reported as
_brothels_ in the police returns.

We wish the public to understand this fully. Mr. Bacon accuses
Mr. Chambers of a gross exaggeration in the number of
_brothels_ in the English cities. He gives the table as
follows:

  Brothels in   According to CATHO. WORLD      in Fact
  Birmingham            966                       183
  Manchester           1111                       410
  Liverpool            1573                       906
  Leeds                 313                        63
  Sheffield             433                        84

and hence deduces that Mr. Chambers is a wilful liar, to be
branded as such.

Now, Mr. Chambers never stated the above number of
_brothels_ in those cities, but that number of _houses
where prostitutes resort_, a very different thing.

We find in _Thom's Almanac_ of 1869 the following table, for
England and Wales, of _houses of bad character:_

  Receivers of stolen goods,           2230
  Resorts of thieves and prostitutes,  5689
  Brothels and houses of ill-fame,     6614
  Tramps' lodging-houses,              5614

The last three figures may well be added up to give us the number
of _houses where prostitutes resort;_ the tramps'
lodging-houses, according to Mr. Kaye's description of them, (in
his _Social State of England_,) being little better than
brothels. The public may now form an intelligent judgment which
is the most guilty of misrepresentation, Mr. Bacon or Mr.
Chambers, and which most deserves to be branded as a calumniator
of his neighbor.

He thus finishes up the unlucky Mr. Chambers:

  "The witness is impeached and kicked out of court with a very
  ugly letter burned too deep in his forehead to be rubbed out.
  We are glad to acknowledge that _The Catholic World_ is
  not the guilty author of these impostures, and to express our
  unfeigned and most willing belief that that every way
  respectable magazine would be incapable of contriving such
  tricks."

Alas Mr. Bacon! we fear that in your inconsiderate haste to brand
another, the ugly letter will be burned so deep in your own
forehead that you will find it very hard to efface it.

4. Having finished up Mr. Chambers in this style, he considers
that his refutation of _The Catholic World_ is complete. He
says:

  "The figures with which _The Catholic World_ attempts to
  vindicate the superior morality of Romish over Protestant
  countries, are taken from a discredited and refuted writer in
  _The Church and the World_... We have given facts enough
  now to discredit without any particular refutation whatever
  else of assertion may be contained in the article on the
  'comparative morality of Catholic and Protestant countries' in
  _The Catholic World _ for April, 1869. We do not need to
  rebut the testimony of this article point by point."

{850}

These facts given relate exclusively to Mr. Chambers and the
statistics of prostitution, as we have shown above, and do not
affect those relating to the "criterion" of illegitimacy.

The substance--as Mr. Bacon calls it, the gist--of the article of
_The Catholic World_ remains as yet intact; it has not even
been examined by the critic. Who gave Mr. Bacon the right to say,
as he does, that the substance of our article was taken from
_The Church and the World?_ There is an unblushing
effrontery about this statement which is astonishing. There is
nothing in the article to warrant it. Whenever we quoted _The
Church and the World_, the reference is made at the foot of
the page, and we distinctly state, there, that our figures on
illegitimacy are taken from the _Journals of the Statistical
Society of London_. Our readers can judge of this proceeding
for themselves.

But Mr. Bacon criticises us in severe terms for using these
_Journals_, and says:

  "If we had been in search of truth, how much easier and better
  to go to the census returns, and get facts that can be trusted.
  But when the object is, as with _The Catholic World_, to
  find figures which shall tally with a conclusion already
  determined by theological considerations, doubtless it is well
  to keep clear of authoritative documents, and take only such
  figures as have been manipulated in a succession of magazine
  articles, constructed to serve a purpose."

What better authority can we have in this country, on statistics,
than the _Statistical Journals of London?_ It is all an idle
pretence to speak of getting the governmental returns in any
great public library. We hunted for them in the Astor Library,
and could not find one of them. The Society of London is composed
of Protestants. Mr. Lumley, the author of the principal article
on statistics, is probably one too. He has taken his information,
he tells us, in regard to Great Britain, from the Registrar's
Reports; the others, from reports made to parliament, and from
the _Annuaire de l'Economie et de la Statistique_, of Paris.
We have not a shadow of reason to doubt either the accuracy or
fairness of the returns, or that they have been taken from the
best governmental census returns. It would have been more
creditable if Mr. Bacon had favored us with a table taken from
these same returns, which he says are so easy to be obtained, to
show the "outrageous falsity" of our statements, rather than to
attempt to refute us by the method of pure insinuation.

We challenge Mr. Bacon or any one else to produce a table of
illegitimacy embracing all or nearly all the Protestant and
Catholic countries of Europe, from the latest governmental
returns, which shall differ essentially from ours, or from which
any one may not draw precisely the conclusions we have drawn in
respect to the moral results of Protestantism and Catholicity.

This is all we need say on the main issue in question.

We will now explain what was stated about the rate of
illegitimacy in Ireland. Had we been inclined to proceed in the
unscrupulous manner which Mr. Bacon insinuates in regard to us,
we could have given this rate of three per cent from _The
Church and the World_ without remark, as it is simply given
there among the other figures; but as we could not verify it in
the _Statistical Journals_, we said so, in order to warn the
public, and we stated that probably Mr. Chambers had access to
the Registrar's Report, which we had not.
{851}
For this, Mr. Bacon pitches into us in this style:

  "What will be the amazement of the reader to be informed that
  there are no 'Registrar's Reports' for Ireland; that the Romish
  priests and the Romish party have constantly succeeded in
  preventing, for reasons satisfactory to themselves, any act of
  parliament for securing such returns from Ireland; and that the
  supposed 'Registrar's Report' of three per cent of illegitimate
  births is a mere fiction!"

Hold on, Mr. Bacon! do not go ahead quite so fast. There are
Registrar's Reports for Ireland, plenty of them, to be seen in
the _Statistical Journals_ in the Astor Library. In Thom's
_Official Almanac and Directory_, Dublin, 1869, we read,
"The act for the registration of births and deaths in Ireland
came into operation on the 1st of January, 1864." Then follows
registrar's returns of these for 1864, 1865, 1866, and 1867.

The first return of illegitimate births has just been published.
Our supposition was, that these returns were in existence, though
not perhaps complete enough to warrant publication, and that they
were known in England to Mr. Chambers and others, and this seems
to be the truth. The rate for Ireland is 3.8 per cent, not so
different from the figure of _The Church and the World_. We
take the following from
the _Catholic Opinion_, London, June 19:

  "Statistics Of Illegitimate Births.

  "_The Scotsman_, one of the leading organs of Presbyterian
  Scotland, gives the following:

  "'We come next to a very painful and important point, and shall
  get away from it as soon as possible. The proportion of
  illegitimate births to the total number of births, is, in
  Ireland, 3.8 per cent. In England, the proportion is 6.4; in
  Scotland, 9.9. In other words, England is nearly twice, and
  Scotland nearly thrice worse than Ireland. Something worse has
  to be added, from which no consolation can be derived. The
  proportion of illegitimacy is very unequally distributed over
  Ireland, and the inequalities are such as are rather humbling
  to us as Protestants, and still more as Presbyterians and as
  Scotchmen. Takings Ireland according to registration divisions,
  the proportion of illegitimate births varies from 6.2 to 1.9.
  The division showing this lowest figure is the western, being
  substantially the province of Connaught, where about
  nineteen-twentieths of the population are Celtic and Roman
  Catholic. The division showing the highest proportion of
  illegitimacy is the north-eastern, which comprises or almost
  consists of the province of Ulster, where the population is
  almost equally divided between Protestant and Roman Catholic,
  and where the great majority of the Protestants are of Scotch
  blood and of the Presbyterian Church. The sum of the whole
  matter 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 a fact, whatever
  may be the proper deduction. There is a text, whatever may be
  the sermon; we only suggest that the sermon should have a good
  deal about charity, self-examination, and humility."'

So that, after all, now that the truth is at last out, the
"Romish priests and the Romish party" have no reason to be
ashamed of it. Probably their reason is best known to themselves;
for it would puzzle any one else to devise any earthly reasons
why they should oppose the publication of the Registrar's Report,
so honorable to the Catholic people of Ireland.

Mr. Bacon is "happy to announce" that, as a result of the attack
of _The Catholic World_, a new edition of Seymour's book,
with its opening chapter, is soon to appear. So, all the old
calumnies and falsehoods are to be circulated with redoubled
activity, and the commandment, "Thou shalt not bear false witness
against thy neighbor," conveniently be thrust aside. The
statistics of London are to be reproduced, while those of England
are kept in the dark.
{852}
Paris is to be compared with London, to produce, as Mr. Bacon
says, "an overwhelming effect on the mind of the Protestant
reader," while not a word is to be breathed of England and
France. Five Italian cities are still to be compared with five
English, to show that the Italian Catholics are four times as
depraved as the English Protestants, while the rate of
illegitimacy in all Italy is considerably less than that of
England.

And the tell-tale official reports of the census of Scotland, of
Catholic and Protestant Prussia, are to be passed over in
complete silence. The countries of Norway, Sweden, Denmark, are
to be offset by provinces of the Austrian empire in which, as we
showed in _The Catholic World_, a grinding law of the
government hinders us from getting any real knowledge of the
statistics of illegitimacy, and while the whole empire shows a
rate smaller than any of those different countries. But we are
tired of this disgusting enumeration of the fraud and trickery of
the Rev. M. Hobart Seymour. The republication of his book cannot
hurt us, and only tends to increase the growing distrust on the
part of the public of the thousand and one calumnies so
unscrupulously circulated concerning Catholics.

We have only to add that _The New Englander_ very
appropriately finishes its article against us by bringing out a
very infamous falsehood of Mr. Seymour's about the morality of
the city of Rome, which we shall not fail to pay our respects to
in the next number of _The Catholic World_.

----------

                  Sick.

  My brother, o my brother! how my heart,
  Uncertain, sad, doth yearn for thee to-day!
  And my deep soul her earnest prayer doth say,
  That God not yet will loose the fearful dart;
  Not yet, sweet mercy, call on thee to part,
  Prepared so scantily for the long, long way;
  Nor till his lamp lights with her blessed ray
  The narrow line along the shadowy chart.
  Dear Lord, a stranger, far away he lies,
  Where fevered pestilence about him leers;
  His breath the yellow death! And yet my cries
  Are not for that loved body whose weak sighs
  First warmed _her_ breast--'tis nine and twenty years--
  The soul, poor soul 'tis needs these prayers and tears.

-------

{853}


       Translated From The Spanish.

   How Matanzas came to be called Matanzas.
   [Footnote 200]

     Or, Uncle Curro And His Club.

   [Footnote 200: Matanzas signifies murders or slaughters.]


_Fernan Caballero._ Here I am, Aunt Sebastiana, with a fixed
intention to make you tell me a story.

_Aunt Sebastiana_. Say that to my Juan, señor; he can tell
no end of stories, and when he don't remember them, he makes them
to suit himself.

_Fernan_. Here comes Uncle Romance, who, if he wants a cigar
and desires to give me pleasure, will tell me the story you have
promised me in his name.

_Uncle Romance_. You must know then, señor, that there was
once a man who lived gayly, without thinking of to-morrow; and,
since to spend, to owe, and not to pay, is the way to the
poorhouse, our man soon found himself without _hacienda_,
and with but thirty days to the month for possessions, and
nothing to eat but his finger-nails. He grew so spiritless that
his wife used to beat him, and his children insult him, and say
impertinent things to him when he came home bringing no
provisions for the house.

He got so desperate at last that he borrowed a rope of his
gossip, and went away to a field to hang himself. He had fastened
the rope to an olive-tree; but just as he was going to put it
around his neck, a little fairy-man appeared to him, dressed like
a friar. "What are you doing, man?" said the friar. "Hanging
myself, as your worship sees." "So, then, Christian, you are
going to do like Judas. Go away from there. It wouldn't be well
for you. Take this purse, which is never empty, and mend your
fortune."

Our man took the purse, and drew out a dollar, then another, then
another, and saw that it was like a woman's mouth, that pours out
to all eternity words, and words, and still words, and its words
are never exhausted. Seeing this, he untied the rope, wound it
up, and started for home. There was an inn on the road; he
entered it and began to ask for whatever they had to eat and
drink, paying when it was brought; for the innkeeper, seeing him
so greedy, would not trust him for all he wanted. He ate so much
and drank so much that he fell under the table, and lay there
more sound asleep than the dead in Holyfield.

The innkeeper, who had perceived that the purse was none the
lighter, told his wife to make one just like it, and while Uncle
Curro slept, went and stole the enchanted purse out of his pocket
and put the other in its place.

When Uncle Curro woke up, he took the road again, and reached his
house more jolly than a sunshiny day.

"Hurrah!" he shouted to his wife and children, "here's money and
to spare; our troubles are over."

He put his hand into the purse and drew it out empty; put it in
again; but what was there to take out? When his wife saw that,
she flew at him and beat him into a new shape.

{854}

More desperate than ever, he snatched the rope and went back to
hang himself. He went to the same place, and tied the rope to a
branch of the olive. "What are you going to do, Christian?" said
the little fairy-man, appearing in the form of a cavalier, in the
crotch of the tree. "Hang myself like a string of garlics from a
kitchen ceiling," answered Uncle Curro quite composedly. "So you
have lost patience, again?" "And if I have nothing to eat,
señor?" "' It is your own fault, your fault; but--go away. Take
this table-cloth, and while you keep it you will never find
yourself without something to eat." Then the little fairy-man
gave him a table-cloth, and disappeared among the branches.

Uncle Curro unfolded the cloth upon the ground. The minute it was
spread out, it covered itself with dishes, some of them good and
the rest better than the king's cook could have made them, if he
had tried his best.

After Uncle Curro had stuffed himself till he could hold no more,
he gathered up the cloth and set out for his house. When he got
as far as the inn, he felt sleepy and lay down to take a nap. The
innkeeper knew him, and guessed that he had something valuable;
so, as cool as you please, he pulled the cloth away from him, and
put another in its place.

Uncle Curro reached home, and shouted to his wife and children,
"Come, come to dinner; I'll take it upon me to see that you get
your fill this time." Thereupon he undid the cloth, but only to
behold it covered with stains of all sorts and sizes.

At him she went. Mother and children all fell upon the poor man
at once, and an object of charity they left him.

Uncle Curro seized the rope once more and went off to hang
himself. He was determined to do it this time, and the fairy-man
was determined he shouldn't. He gave Uncle Curro a little club,
and told him that with it he would be able to possess his soul in
comfort; for that he had nothing to do but say, "Bestir yourself,
little club!" to make all the world run away and leave him in
peace, with a wide berth.

Uncle Curro set out for home with the club, as happy as an
alcalde with his stick. As soon as he saw the young ones coming
toward him demanding bread with insults and impertinences, he
said to the club, "Bestir yourself, little club!" and before the
words were fairly out of his mouth, it began to deal about it in
a way that speedily routed the children. Their mother ran out to
help them, but, "_At her!_" cries Curro, "_at her with all
your might!_" and with one rap the club killed her.

They gave notice to the magistrate, and presently the alcalde
made his appearance with his officers. "Bestir yourself, little
club!" ordered Curro, and the club came down on them as if it had
been paid at the rate of a dollar a thump. It killed the alcalde,
and the others ran away with such might that not one of them had
a sole left to his foot. Then they sent a messenger to let the
king know what was going on, and the king sent a regiment of
grenadiers to take Uncle Curro of the little club.

But, "Bestir yourself, club!" bawled Uncle Curro, as soon as they
came in sight, and threw the club in the midst of the files. The
club begun its dance upon the ribs of the grenadiers, with a
sound like a fulling-mill. It crippled this one's leg, and that
one's arm; knocked out one of the captain's eyes, and, in short,
the grenadiers threw away their muskets and knapsacks, and took
to their heels, in the full belief that the devil was running
loose.

{855}

Free from care, Uncle Curro lay down to sleep, with his club
hidden in his bosom, for fear that somebody might steal it.

When he awoke, he found himself tied hand and foot, and on the
way to prison. They sentenced him to ignominious death. The next
morning they took him out of the dungeon, and, when they had
caused him to ascend the scaffold, untied his hands. Out he drew
his little club, and as he said, "Bestir yourself!" threw it at
the executioner, who speedily yielded up the ghost under its
blows. "Free that man," commanded the king, "or he'll finish with
every one of our subjects. Tell him that he shall have an estate
in America if he will leave the country."

Uncle Curro consented, and the king made him lord of lands in the
island of Cuba, where he built himself a city, and killed so many
people in it with his club that its name was called, and has
remained, Matanzas.

----------


      Correction Of A Mistake.

The writer of the article on "Spiritualism and Materialism," in
the Magazine for August, page 627, says, "The Holy See says the
_immateriality_, not _spirituality_, of the soul is to
be proved by reason." This is a mistake. The language of the Holy
See is, "Ratiocionatio Dei existentiam, animae
_spiritualitatem_, hominis libertatem cum certitudine
probare potest--Reasoning can prove with certainty the existence
of God, the spirituality of the soul, and the liberty of man."
The writer wishes us to say that he is wholly unable to account
for his blunder; for in writing, he had the words of the Holy See
before his eyes, and certainly thought he read
_immaterialitatem_; but in re-reading the words since a
friend called his attention to the mistake, he finds that the
word is plainly printed _spiritualitatem_. Of course the
misstatement was wholly unintentional, and whatever in the
article rests on it must be withdrawn, and the writer fully and
explicitly retracts it.

Yet the writer requests us to say that he thinks the doctrine
maintained in the article is not affected by this mistake,
blunder, or misstatement. The writer does not question the
_spirituality_ of the soul, but maintains that the soul's
spirituality, save in the sense of its immateriality, is not
provable by reason without revelation. He thinks
_immateriality_, in the sense he explains it, covers all
that is really meant by _spiritualiy_ in the decision of the
Holy See. We certainly do not, by reason alone, know what either
spirit or matter is in its essence. We can prove by reason the
substantiality, activity, unity, simplicity, indissolubility, and
immateriality of the soul, or that it is not matter. Does the
Holy See decide that we can do more, or go further? Does the
spirituality of the soul, as provable by reason, mean any thing
more? If not--and the writer, till better informed, must think it
does not--he has erred only in using one word when he should have
used another, and mistaking the word actually used by the Holy
See. So much the writer of the article wishes us to say for him,
which we do cheerfully; for we are well assured of his devotion
to the Holy See and his loyalty to the Holy Father.

----------

{856}

              New Publications.


  Cantarium Romanum, Pars Prima, Ordinarium Missae.
  Studio et sumptibus Monachorum Ord. S. Benedicti.
  Conv. St. Meinradi, Ind. 1869.
  Cincinnati and New York: Benziger Bros.

This publication purposes to give, in modern notation, the
melodies of Gregorian Masses; that is, those portions which are
common to all masses--the Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus, Agnus
Dei, with the Responses. We hail this as a step in the right
direction, but are forced to find some fault with this volume.

In the first place, we do not find the notation at all in
conformity with the Roman Gradual or Missal, and suppose that it
is according to one of those numerous "propers" which, in course
of time, have been patched up for the use of various particular
dioceses and religious orders. The spirit of the church to-day is
one which inspires a return to unity in even minor points of
discipline, of which the unity of the chant is, in our judgment,
not the least. Again, the division of the words, their adaptation
to the notes, and the length of notes given, makes horrible work
in some places with the accent of the Latin, and destroys the
majestic march of the melody. The effeminate sharp reigns
supreme, and fancy responses take the place of those given in the
Missal.

----

  Meditations On The Sufferings, Life,
  And Death Of Our Lord Jesus Christ.
  Translated from the French by a Sister of Mercy.
  Part First.
  Cincinnati: Robert Clarke & Co. 1869.

This is a very excellent book of meditations, well translated,
and published in the best style; to be completed in thirteen
numbers. The proceeds are to be devoted to the building of a
church annexed to the Convent of the Sisters of Mercy, in
Cincinnati, to be called "The Church of the Atonement," and to be
devoted especially to the adoration of the Sacred Heart of our
Lord, in reparation of the injuries and outrages which it suffers
from the neglect of tepid Christians and the more open sins of
the wicked. The book is one which will be very useful to those
who desire to practise meditation, and the object to which the
good sisters intend to devote the profits, which we hope they may
receive from it abundantly, is one that must commend itself to
the heart of every good Catholic. We give them our best wishes
for their complete success, and recommend their book most
heartily to general circulation.

----

  An American Woman In Europe.
  By Mrs. S. R. Urbino.
  Boston: Lee & Shepard.

A journal of two years and a half sojourn in Germany,
Switzerland, France, and Italy, in only 338 duodecimo pages, is,
as things go and as people write, really very moderate. It is a
simple, straightforward story of what the authoress saw and
heard, with a variety of practical information that many
Americans on a first European tour might find useful.

There is no affectation of style or sentiment in the book, and
the authoress may be said to belong to the realistic school of
travellers, who keep a bright lookout for railroad fares, hotel
bills, and the prices of things in general.

With disquisitions on art, Mrs. Urbino does not trouble us much,
although she admires the works of that queen of Jarleys, Madame
Tussaud, whose name she ungratefully prints Trousseau. At p. 228,
the authoress indulges in this reflection: "How out of place
crosses look in the Coliseum!
{857}
I cannot see why they were put there, since there are a
sufficient number of churches in the city." The good lady does
not appear to be aware of the fact that if the cross had not been
placed in the Coliseum, we people of the nineteenth century would
never have seen the noble ruin of that grand monument.

----

  Service Manual;
  for the instruction of newly-appointed Officers, and the Rank
  and File of the Army, as compiled from Army Regulations, the
  Articles of War, and the Customs of the Service.
  By Henry D. Wallen, Brevet Brigadier-General United States
  Army, and Commander of the General Service Department, Fort
  Columbus, New York Harbor.
  1 vol. 8vo, pp. 166.
  New York: D. Van Nostrand. 1869.

General Wallen has compiled this excellent manual from the
authorized sources, and added to it the fruit of his mature
experience and intimate practical knowledge of the subject. The
work possesses value, not only as an authentic guide to the young
officer in all the details of company, camp, and garrison duty,
his relations of subordination and responsibility, and his duties
and obligations to those above and below him in the military
order, but also is mellowed and animated by a spirit of kindness
and good-will, and that genuine characteristic of the good
soldier and thorough gentleman to whom duty is honorable, and
both command and obedience acceptable for their own sakes and the
inherent virtue they imply. This spirit animates this work
throughout, and gives to it a character far superior to ordinary
dry regulations. General Wallen is well qualified for the task he
has undertaken. He is an old and faithful officer, and intimately
acquainted with the service in all its branches and
ramifications. He served with credit in the war with Mexico, and
was one of the pioneers of the settlement of Oregon. Owing to the
fact of having been born in Georgia, General Wallen was
distrusted during the late war by Mr. Stanton, and ordered to New
Mexico. General Grant, who is his life-long friend, as soon as he
came into power, ordered him to the East, and did what he could
to repair the injury he had experienced from the suspicious
disposition of the late secretary of war.

This work is of equal value to soldiers and officers, and will
have a tendency to promote that mutual goodwill and cordial
sympathy between the two classes growing out of the faithful
performance of their respective duties, which we alone need to
make our military system perfect, and absolutely invincible in
war, as well as an example of honor and fidelity in peace.

----

  A Report On The Excisions Of The
  Head Of The Femur For Gun Shot Wounds.
  By George A. Otis, M.D.,
  Assistant Surgeon and Brevet Lieutenant-Colonel U.S.A.
  Being Circular No. 2 War Department,
  Surgeon-General's Office.
  Jan. 1869. 4to, pp. 141.
  Washington: Government Printing Office.

It is not our purpose, in calling the attention of the readers of
_The Catholic World_ to this work, to enter upon any
discussion or details of a purely surgical character, which would
be obviously out of place. _The Catholic World_ is
essentially _Catholic_, and while strictly and purely so,
aims to embrace within the scope of its critical observation
every subject of interest and importance to society; and
especially to award its cordial praise to those efforts which
have for their object genuine science, true humanity, and
national and individual honor and intellectual and moral
advancement.

The work before us is of the character indicated. In reverting to
the public calamities and private miseries of the late war, it is
a matter of satisfaction to know that out of the eater has come
forth some meat; out of the strong, some sweetness.
{858}
With the exception of the doubtful advantage of the knowledge
which we have gained of our brute strength, some improvement in
gunnery, and the familiarization of the public mind with battle,
murder, and sudden death, we have reaped no substantial benefit
excepting in the department of military surgery. The medical
profession gave during the war an extraordinary example of
courage, devotion to duty, labor, and self-sacrifice, which we
fear is not fully appreciated either by the country or the
government. They rose as a body above the political issues
involved, and the personal passions evoked, and, acting on the
great principle of charity underlying their vocation, saw, in
many a sick and wounded man, a friend and brother.

This principle was acted upon on both sides, it was the most
humanizing element which entered into the conflict, and aided and
seconded the chivalric spirit which animated the graduates of
West Point. These two qualities redeemed the late war from utter
barbarism.

There was, on the part of the medical officers, an earnest,
conscientious, and zealous determination to ascertain the best
methods of treatment in all cases, and an ardent desire to
relieve suffering, save life, and preserve limbs in the best
possible condition for future usefulness. The publications of the
Medical Department and the admirable museum collected at
Washington bear testimony to the accuracy of this statement, and,
while they are a terrible and sickening commentary on man's
inhumanity to man, they are also a sublime and beautiful
illustration of that power which turns temporary calamities into
permanent benefits, and of that humanity and science which are
both motives and objects of the profession of medicine.

The reports issued from time to time by the surgeon-general are
the concentrated and distilled expression of multitudes of crude
and detached observations, carefully elaborated, compared,
analyzed, and corrected, till they come to express the precise
knowledge and experience of the present day on a given subject.

The portion of this great work before us is prepared by Doctor
George A. Otis, Assistant Surgeon and Lieutenant-Colonel U.S.A.,
and is a model of patient labor, exact knowledge, just
discrimination, and acutely intelligent appreciation. It presents
all that is known in regard to a class of terrible and
exceedingly fatal injuries. The facts, evidence, and opinions are
carefully and impartially weighed and estimated, and the
conclusions are such as will be accepted by every discriminating
surgeon throughout the world.

The voice of the medical profession will, we believe, endorse the
opinion which we somewhat apodictically express.

Society and the country owe Doctor Otis a debt of gratitude for
his great work, and also the medical bureau which aids and
directs his labors. Such works belong to the class of benefits
whose value cannot be expressed by human standards. They reflect
honor upon the age and country which produce them, and are an
invaluable legacy to the future.

We cannot conclude this imperfect notice without expressing the
hope that Congress, influenced by the universal sentiment of the
country, will give all the material aid required to the
Surgeon-General's Department in prosecuting its great and most
fruitful labors.

----

  Silver Jubilee Of The University
  Of Notre Dame, June 23d, 1869.
  Compiled and published
  by Joseph A. Lyons, A.M.
  Chicago: E. B. Myers & Co.

This is a tastefully gotten-up volume, designed as a "memorial"
tribute to the students, past and present, of the University of
Notre Dame, in Northern Indiana, on the occasion of the
celebration of the twenty-fifth or _silver_ anniversary of
the corporate existence of that now large, flourishing, and
important Catholic institution of learning. It gives a brief but
interesting history of the university, from its humble
beginnings, a quarter of a century since, under the zealous and
effective labors of the Very Rev. Father Sorin and his
well-chosen and able co-workers, to its present wide and ample
proportions.
{859}
This is followed by an account of its internal economy or
arrangements; its study, discipline, and amusements; its
societies--religious, literary, and others; its library, museum,
etc., etc. Sketches are also given of the lives of its
presidents, vice-presidents, professors, and teachers, as well as
of its alumni, with a full account of the exercises of its recent
_Jubilee_ commencement. Altogether, the volume must prove a
very interesting and acceptable one to the numerous graduates,
pupils, and friends of Notre Dame.

----

  Nora Brady's Vow, And
  Mona The Vestal.
  By Mrs. Anna H. Dorsey.
  Boston: Patrick Donahoe. 1869.

The first of these stories is of modern times, and the other is
of the time of St. Patrick. Mrs. Dorsey, like all writers not to
the _Irish manner_ born, makes fearful work with what some
persons are pleased to call the _Irish brogue_. This is,
however, a small fault, with which we do not wish to quarrel. The
stories are presented to the public in a beautifully printed and
elegantly bound volume, and will, we doubt not, be welcomed in
many an Irish-American household.

----

  The Way Of Salvation,
  in Meditations for all times in the year.
  By St. Alphonsus Liguori.
  Translated from the Italian by the Rev. James Jones.
  New York: Catholic Publication Society,
  126 Nassau St.

One of the best signs of the present time, and a sign most
encouraging to Catholics of all classes and professions, is that
books of genuine piety are more and more in demand every day. It
was this fact that induced the Catholic Publication Society to
bring out in a neat and very convenient form the celebrated
_Way of Salvation_, by St. Liguori. It is one of the most
popular works of that sainted author; and the mere announcement
of its publication is sufficient recommendation.

----

  The Two Schools. A Moral Tale.
  By Mrs. Hughs.
  New York: The Catholic Publication Society. 1869.

This book presents in a striking manner the results of two
systems of home education. In it we have a vivid picture of the
consequences of wealth, recklessly lavished on an only daughter,
contrasted with the encouraging way in which the virtue of a
much-injured girl triumphs over the designs of base and cunning
enemies. The authoress possesses a happy talent of describing
persons in an easy and remarkably concise style, and she succeeds
in causing her characters to act and speak in a natural manner.
The book will be read, by girls especially, with the keenest
enjoyment. The conduct of Mary will seldom fail to draw forth
their approval, and all readers will agree that this is a good
story.

----

  A German Reader.
  In Prose and Verse.
  With Notes and Vocabulary.
  By William D. Whitney.
  New York: Leypoldt & Holt.

The text of this Reader has at length reached us; and in regard
to accuracy, arrangement, and clearness of type it is all that
can be desired. The selections are very good, although many of
them have already done service in German educational works.
Originality is only claimed for the vocabulary and notes, which
have not yet been published, so that we may only remark that the
volume will enjoy a very high reputation, if the forthcoming part
be prepared with the same attention that has been devoted to the
text.

----

  The Poetical Works Of Samuel Lover.
  London and New York: George Routledge & Sons.

A most beautiful edition of the beautiful songs of Lover, written
mostly, as all know, about love and lovers. Yet not all. We are
indebted to him for many charming ballads, of sweetest melody and
deepest pathos, to which indeed Lover owes his fame as a poet.

----

{860}

  The Irish Widow's Son;
  Or, The Pikemen Of Ninety-eight.
  A story of the Irish Rebellion, embracing an historical account
  of the Battles of Antrim and Ballinahinch.
  By. Con O'Leary.
  Boston: P. Donahoe. 1869.

This book is interesting, and free from the coarseness which is
found in so many stories of Ireland. The author has succeeded in
producing a readable tale of that epoch in Ireland's history when
secret associations became the controlling power of that
misgoverned country.

----

  Essay On Divorce And Divorce Legislation,
  with special reference to the United States.
  By Theodore D. Woolsey, D.D., LL.D.,
  President of Yale College.
  New York: Charles Scribner & Co. 1869.

This book, by one of the first scholars of our country, is a very
learned and laudable effort to effect a reform in our divorce
legislation. It would require a long and elaborate article to do
justice to the work and the subject. At present we can only say
that the community ought to thank Dr. Woolsey for the labor he
has performed in their service, and which he has done as well as
it can be done by one who stands on the Protestant platform.

----

THE CATHOLIC PUBLICATION SOCIETY has in preparation, and will
publish early in October, _The Illustrated Catholic Family
Almanac_ for 1870. It will contain the astronomical tables,
calendars, a great amount of valuable statistics, as well as
several well-written sketches of places and things in various
countries. It will be illustrated with over twenty splendid
wood-cuts, and will be sold for 25 cents per copy. Orders from
the trade should be sent in at once.


P. O'SHEA, New York, has in press, and
will publish this season,
  Lacordaire's _Sketch of the Order of St. Dominic;_

  _Memoir, Journal, and Correspondence of Mrs. Seton,_
  by Mgr. Seton, in 2 vols. 8vo;

  _Love of our Lord Jesus Christ_, by St. Jure, vol. 2;

  Library of Good Examples, 12 vols.


John Murphy & Co., Baltimore, announce _A Memoir of the Life
and Character of the Rev. Demetrius Augustin de Gallitzin,
Founder of Loretto and Catholicity in Cambria County, Pa.,
Apostle of the Alleghanies._ By Very Rev. Thomas Heyden, of
Bedford, Pa.


Patrick Donahoe, Boston, has in
press

  _Mary and Mi-Ka_, a story of "The Holy Childhood;"

  _Five Years in a Protestant Sisterhood,
  and Ten Years in a Catholic Convent;_

  and a _Life of Christopher Columbus._


Kelly, Piet & Co., Baltimore,
announce the republication of the
Roman periodical,
  _Acta ex Iis decerpta quae apud Sanctam Sedem geruntur.
  The Double Sacrifice: a tale of Castelfidardo.
  The Life of   Madame Louise de France, Daughter
  of Louis XV., in religion Mother
  Terese de St. Augustin. The Day
  Sanctified_; being meditations and
  spiritual readings for daily use.

  _Popular Tales_. By Maria Edgeworth.

  _Moral Tales_. By Maria Edgeworth.

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